Is Buying Our First Property in Honolulu Worth it?

[Skylar Jennings]

My fiancé and I moved from southern MO where housing is very cheap to Honolulu, HI (Oahu) January 2020. Just in the past 2 years the median cost of a house here has gone from $735k to $1.15M. We’ve recently been learning as much as possible about 203k loans and originally were going to wait till we moved next to somewhere around NW Arkansas to utilize it. My fiancé works for the USDA so there’s relocation benefits as well as first time home buyer benefits through his job. We have saved about $50k in the past 2.5 years or so and have been considering more and more pulling the trigger while we’re here but we only have about 6-8 months left here so not enough time to do an owner occupied loan. $50k will go a lot further on the mainland. Any advice is welcome! We’re not sure what to do or if we had analysis paralysis for too long and missed our chance in this market.