Category Archives: Home

Home, Real Estate & Rent

Buying a House in Silicon Valley (Spoiler Alert: LOL)

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It’s been two years since we sauntered into our first open house. I brought us to a home selling for $1.7M list, and that would inevitably go for at least $1.9M more than that. I brought us there to see what we “couldn’t afford” expecting to be at least somewhat impressed.

Nah. The 1300 square foot 3br/2ba house on a 5000 square foot lot needed a lot of updating. Thus started our ongoing and continually more depressing adventures in buying a home in Silicon Valley.

Who the flying fuck can afford a $9k a month mortgage? That’s what these houses cost if you put down 20% (if you have $360k or so lying around for that.) It’s just frustrating that I DO have the $360k but a $9k/month mortgage for 30 years is not in the cards for us. On my husband’s salary we can afford about $2k a month which leaves me with $7k to cover–and god forbid one of us loses our job (given I’ve been fired 6 times it’s bound to happen.)

So we’re not really going to buy a house with a $9k mortgage. Either we have to save up a lot more for a giant down payment to get the monthly mortgage to about half that–or we’re not buying here. And… we are probably never buying here.

This makes me very sad, but I’m trying to get over it. It’s upsetting to know that where I raise my child/children will not be a home that will be filled with memories for many years to come–or that we won’t be able to make our home really ours in the way you can when you own a property (even though it’s a pain in the ass to do so and really is that how we want to be spending our time or money?)

Well, I definitely feel we’ve outgrown our 800 square foot $2500/month one bedroom apartment. I’m ready to move yesterday, but hubby wants to keep seeking out the perfect home–one that we can buy with his parents. Together we can pool our money and afford something and then live happily ever after on the same property, or so that’s what he’d like me cheerfully accept as our real estate fate. I hate to be Debbie Downer, but I’m not into the idea of living on the same property as his parents. I just want our independence and to deal with it being tough together as a team and I don’t know, maybe I romanticize that a bit but living so close to his parents just doesn’t appeal to me. Down the street? Fine. In our backyard or attached to the same building? Eh…

The problem is that if we’re not going to live with his parents, I have to figure out a strategy to earn more money for the long term. I basically just have to assume my husband’s income is $0, in case it is, and somehow come up with a plan to afford $9k a month, or something, that would be a realistic mortgage here.

Why don’t you just move? Yea, thought about that… but husband is committed to staying in the Bay Area, and I’d like to stay here as well if we can make it work. I’m starting to look at housing options in the east bay but I really don’t want to lock myself into 1.5 hr commutes each day in massive traffic.

So the most likely option is that we’ll look at houses until late spring then rent a bigger place by summer. House rentals are about $5000-$6000 a month, which will be hard to stomach, but that’s better than $9000 a month and at least if I lose my job we can get out fairly quickly. PLUS we can keep the $360k that would be stuck in a downpayment working in the stock market. Maybe houses will continue to go up in value here as much as they have in the past 10 years, but I doubt it. Who knows. I just think putting that much money into a downpayment is giving up on gains that one could have in the market. It’s worth it, for so many reasons, but if we can’t make it work I’m just trying to remind myself of the positives. Like, we can pick up and move for better jobs. We can rent in a crappy school district then move to a good one in 4 years when our son is old enough to go to kindergarten. We don’t have to deal with the many costs of home ownership. And such.

Yet I still just feel fucking depressed about not being able to afford a house. I know we’re not the only ones but it’s one of those things that makes me feel like a failure, even though I know not being able to afford $9k a month doesn’t make me a failure. I mean, it DOES, because I could be a VP already and spend the next 30 years earning $250k plus annual raises and bonus and whatever, but instead I’m insecure and can’t get my shit together to convince anyone I’m worthy of keeping my job, and I can’t convince myself of it either. I guess that’s the big issue. I’d like to completely change my career but doing that all but guarantees buying a house is impossible. It’s just all kind of nauseating to be where I’m at (and where I’m not) at my age–doing so well financially, yet also it not mattering at all.

 

Home, Real Estate & Rent, Wealth

Another post on the impossible goal of buying a home in the Bay Area

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When I drive from point A to point B I’m often calculating various life possibilities in my head. As of late, my math is focused on determining what kind of mortgage REALLY makes sense for my family. I figured $8000 a month DOESN’T make sense, but given prices of housing here are ridiculously high, I was hoping to at least get a number that felt somewhat doable.

Even though our household income should be over $400,000 this year (as long as I maintain my employment), there is absolutely no way to guarantee we’ll come close to this every year for the 30 years ahead. With my husband making $90k 1099 (I consider that $60,000 salary equivalent since it has no benefits and is taxed at a higher rate), and my income ranging in the past 10 years from $150,000 to $400,000 (total compensation), I feel fairly comfortable committing to $200k total family income for next 30 years–a combination of my husband staying in his job OR getting a job with benefits with a $60k salary minimum, and my having a job making at least $150k a year on average (which seems reasonable based on the various offers I’ve received in the past.) Theoretically our income would go up with inflation and more experience, but my husband has never asked for a raise and is not inspired to take on more clients beyond his one client, and I am fairly confident I’ll have to take a pay cut over and over again to remain gainfully employed, not to mention that I’ll likely take some time off to have kid #2 (and #3?) Plus, I figured out recently that we spend about $3500-$4000 a month not including housing on our lifestyle. Sure, we could be more frugal BUT I don’t want our housing to get in the way of being able to travel to see my family, see the world, send kids to summer camp, etc. I don’t think our lifestyle costs will go down that much as our kids get older–we’ll cut in some places and add to others.

So $200k a year in salary is $16k a month. If we max out our IRA/401k, that’s about $3k a month, leaving us with $13k pre tax, or about $8k after tax.

I think planning our next 30 years based on $8k after tax income makes a lot of sense. It still feels aggressive and scary to commit to anything based on it, but it’s not unreasonable.

If we make $8k in after tax income and our monthly expenses are $3500-$4000 a month, then we have $4000 left for a mortgage OR rent. Of course a mortgage is fixed while rent can go up over time… but let’s ignore that for now and just say that we can afford a $4000/month mortgage (including taxes, etc, esp since there are no meaningful tax deductions for real estate anymore.)

If my math is correct, IF we can put $600,000 down (50%) we can afford a $1.2M home.

But we don’t have $600k to put down, and the opportunity cost on putting that much of our life savings down will basically kill our retirement. We can put down less but then our monthly costs go up, which would significantly impact our lifestyle.

Even if we got our living costs under $2500 a month, that leaves $5.5k for a mortgage, taxes, etc MAX. That seems like better math… a $1.2M home with $300k down (more reasonable at 25% down) would be about $5.5k a month. BUT I don’t think we can find a house for that in this area — if we buy a condo, then condo fees would be on top of the mortgage, meaning we could afford less in a condo than in a house (sort of… maintenance costs in a house would eat up the HOA fees and then some.)

I keep running the numbers and I just don’t understand how anyone can afford a house here. I’m terrified of being stupid about this and buying something far from perfect for way too much money because I really want to own a house. It just doesn’t make sense.

I wish I could have a rational conversation with my husband about this. He just wants his mother to gift him the money and then we’ll live with his parents for the rest of forever. I want to find a place WE can afford on our salary without his parents living with us. He isn’t willing to consider getting a job that pays more and I can’t commit to earning more than $150k a year for the next 30 years.

My thought is that our best strategy right now is to rent a 2br/2ba and stay there for a few years and wait to see if our savings increases or what happens, but he’s pretty adamant about not renting. He makes me feel pretty crappy about not wanting to commingle my savings with his mother’s money (even if she is “gifting” it to him.) It’s beyond a matter of pride, though that’s part of it. I just want to have flexibility and once we buy with his parents we’re stuck for the next 30 years.

We could rent a 2br/2ba for $4000-$5000 a month now.

We could stay in our 1br for another year (or two, depending on when I get pregnant) — for $2500 a month and continue to save. Once we hit $3M in net worth, I can see putting $600k down on a house as we’re still diversified. But $600k on $1M in networth is too much.

That said, we’ll probably have a recession in the next year or two and our $1M will be worth a lot less. So selling stock now to buy could be a good move… or will housing prices come down with a recession? I wish I had a crystal ball.

 

Adulting, Home, Real Estate & Rent

We ALMOST Bought a $1.8M House…

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And I am, at this moment, regretting not doing it.

$1.8M.

$1-8-0-0-0-0-0-0.

That’s a heck of a lot of cash.

We’re not rich people. We’re not the type of people that should be spending $1M a home, let alone $1.8M.

But — that is what it looks like we HAVE to do if I don’t want a crazy horrible commute and we don’t want to leave the area.

What makes the $1.8M possible is that we’re still strongly leaning towards buying with (AND LIVING WITH) my in laws. The big requirement is that they have a separate living area from us (separate unit on the property or at the least an in law with separate entrance.)

The $1.8M house was super cute. 3 bedroom, 2 bath, with a 400 square foot garage we could convert…

It had its issues. Other than being $1.8M. It had some termite activity, according to the disclosures. The 400 square feet of the garage would be challenging to turn into a real 1 bedroom apartment (my in laws aren’t married but are friends, so they can live in the same unit just need their own rooms.) The lot didn’t seem that big, though I guess it was at 7,500 sq ft, but most of that was in the front yard and in a very long driveway.

I regret not buying it, but I would have regretted buying it.

It was originally a 2br/1ba, and along its life some time an addition was plopped on the back of another bedroom and bath – the master suite. But the suite wasn’t that sizable… a full sized bed felt tight in there. While the home showed quite nicely, the reality was that for $1.8M it was too small for us, given we want to grow our family soon.

But I don’t think anything here will really be the right fit… unless we want to spend $3M+, which we don’t, and we won’t, unless we win the lottery we don’t play.

That said, my husband and I started tracking our joint net worth and it’s about $920k right now. Not too shabby. Mine is about $840k of that! But that’s ok. We’re doing well, yet living in a 1 bedroom apartment. I realized that this year, with my stock and bonus and such, I could clear $300k-$350k before tax ($117k of that I’ve already made as of April 1, which is crazy to think.) If I could maintain this level of income for the next 30 years, sure, we can afford a $1.8M home. But I won’t. I won the job lottery at the moment and am holding on for dear life. In 3 years, I can save a good $300k and we should break $1M in net worth. After we hit $1M, I’ll feel comfortable having another child… but I’m not sure I feel comfortable purchasing a home for $1.5M+. $500k, sure. $800k, maybe. $1M, possibly. $1.8M…

That’s too much for a house. That’s just insane.

My husband makes $80k a year. We aren’t paying for childcare right now, but if his parents got sick that could change any minute and we’d have $2k/ mo right there. With another kid, that’s $4k a month. It just doesn’t add up. Even if his mother puts down $1M and we have a $800,000 mortgage, that’s about $7000 / mo. How does anyone do this?

Home, Real Estate & Rent

Should we buy a house with my husband’s parents?

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It has become increasingly clear that owning a house in the Bay Area (unless I want a 1.5+ hour each way commute in bumper-to-bumper traffic for the rest of my life) is pretty much an impossible feat on our own.   Theoretically I can become a VP and make $200k a year for the next 30 years of my life, but with my husband’s expected $50k income, we just can’t buy a house on $250k. And that’s IF we both are gainfully employed in such roles for the next 30 years straight.

His parents, not married but quite friendly with each other, are both seemingly interested in purchasing a home with us and living together. My husband, thankfully, realizes it’s not a good idea to live in the actual same house without an in-law unit (attached or dettached), and I’ve recommended if we’re going to go this route we look at duplexes which would be more expensive up front, but would give us more options long term as rental properties should they no longer want to live there for any reason (and we spend more than we would just us since there needs to be space for them.)

Duplexes around here seem to go for anywhere from $1.6M to, well, much higher. A really nice duplex could be $2M. The duplexes don’t come with much of a backyard usually (not that any property here does) but what’s nice about them is that together we might actually be able to afford ownership and the stability that affords.

His father is open to paying $2,000 a month towards a mortgage. I don’t know yet about his mother as she could likely help with the downpayment and then have to pay less monthly for a while (she apparently has most of her savings in cash, for better or worse.) Then, between all of us, maybe we could afford an $8k monthly mortgage. And, although I’m not quite sure how it would work, I think we could split the mortgage interest deduction three ways (since they’re not married) and thus actually be able to take the full deduction (though it would be worth much less to retired people, and I’m not sure it would be worth much of anything at all to them.)

I’m torn on whether living with his parents makes sense. His father is already offering to help out with the kiddo and I wouldn’t mind living with his dad if his father had an in-law type unit, or we had a duplex. He is very quiet and a nice, introverted guy that isn’t bothered by much. He’s a bit older too, in his 70s, and I think he just wants to spend time with his grandkid, which I appreciate. And it would be nice for my child to have a grandma it is close with (since my dad is across the country and due to his cancer may not be around that much longer unfortunately.) He currently lives in a very small one bedroom apartment in a 55+ apartment complex and I think his quality of life would increase substantially should he live in a house. He’s been sending my husband links to houses for rent with makeshift in-law units so clearly he’s very big on this idea of living together.  It certainly makes sense to offer him decreased rent/mortgage payments in trade for helping out with the baby.

His mother is a bit of a different story. She’s also quiet and independent, but she’s a mess. Like, more of a mess than I am. I’m a mess, but she’s like a “I have a bunch of cats I gathered from the outside and a billion purchases from thrift stores I’m hoarding” a mess. My husband knows this, and doesn’t want to live with her if she will continue this behavior. But he seems pretty confident she will change if she moves into a new space (she lives in her own parents house now, and her parents also collected  lot of junk so that place is just chaotic.) She isn’t ready to move yet, but her mother is in her 90s and eventually she will have to leave the house and find somewhere else to live. At that point, we could all put our savings together and find a home that works.

I wish the duplexes weren’t so expensive. While I’m still a little concerned that she would let the house become disgusting, if she lived with my husband’s father I don’t think it would happen. I mean, maybe her room (if we had a duplex with a 2br for them) would be messy, but the rest of the place and the outside areas wouldn’t be. If they were detached units on the same property, that wouldn’t be so bad.

The other option is to rent a house that happens to have a room with a private entrance. This wouldn’t work with his mother, but she’s not ready to move right now anyway. My husband’s father would move in a heartbeat. I think we’re still pretty set on staying in this apartment for the first year of our kid’s life, but it really might make the most sense to move now since the first year is when grandpa will be helping out the most (and taking 30 minute train rides to get here, since grandpa doesn’t drive.)

I’m pretty certain if I pushed for it and found the perfect place, we could move in together next month. I’m not sure that makes any sense though — our rent is now about $2500 a month. So we’d have to find a house that is $4500 a month max. The houses around here that are $4500 are not that nice, and I haven’t seen any with in-law type units. We could maybe get a regular 2br/1ba for $4500 a month… but I think we all agree that living in the same house–especially with one bathroom–is a bad idea.

So we’ll probably just stay in this apartment at least for a year, but be opportunistic in purchasing should the right property come along. His mother may change things if she needs to move sooner than later. But we’ll see. I do think her savings would make it possible for us all to purchase something a bit nicer. If we could split taxes on the property 3 ways, that would help as well, since there is the $10k per person/couple limit on that deduction now, including income tax.

What do you think? Should I consider a duplex or house with in-law purchase? Should we rent a house? Should we wait?

 

Home, Parenting & Motherhood, Pregnancy, Real Estate & Rent

To Move or Not To Move… That is the Question

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7 months, 3 weeks in counting until the arrival of baby “E” (we have two names picked out for girl or boy child, both start with E, so calling it baby E .) 7 months, 3 weeks is not that much time before our lives change forever.

Outside of finally figuring out how to keep my apartment clean, focusing on obtaining stability at my job, and trying to eat healthy and exercise and such, I’m perturbed  by our housing situation and whether or not we should move or stay put. The general consensus until my anxiety attack of this last week was stay put until kid is 1, then figure it out / move to a two bedroom / etc. Continue reading To Move or Not To Move… That is the Question →

Home, Shopping

Lessons in Adulting: How Much Should Living Room Furniture Cost?

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When we moved in together two years ago, my Craigslist-purchased couch with ripped cushions and protruding feathers, along with my once-glued together, now peeling-apart IKEA coffee table and self-desctructive Tar-gey bookshelves which are not safe to be around a small child, seemed perfectly fine for a trancient space. With barren white walls and a few half-filled and altogether empty frames scattered about the floor, this now-married couple is trying to figure out how to create a place that feels like “home” without overdoing it (you know, like we (…ahem… I) overdid our wedding.)

Right now, we really can’t have guests over because the place is embarrassing, even on its good days when I’ve cleaned up the piles of mess. Our lease is up in May, but it is doubtful we will move next year or anytime soon (the only real reasons for us to move is 1 – rents going up an unreasonable amount, 2 – we have a child and said child turns 2, or 3, one of us gets a job super far away, like, in another state, and we need to move.) Otherwise, it looks like we’re hunkered down for a few more years in our 800-square foot, overpriced-due-to-Silicon-Valley-rental-costs abode.

This furniture has got to go. Continue reading Lessons in Adulting: How Much Should Living Room Furniture Cost? →