Reasonable Expectations - Good deal vs. great deal

[Emily Fischer]

Hello All, My husband and I are looking at buying our first home. We have been sacrificing by living with my parents for the past 8 months to save up money. It has been hard. My parents have very different life styles and I have an hour plus drive (one way) to my work and my friends. I've reached the point where I'm just so sick of all the driving. It's impacting my mental health. I'm ready to buy a place now. I've been talking to my husband about the idea of real estate investing. My parents own 3 duplexes and that has been really good for them. After discovering biggerpockets he is finally on board.

The big problem is we are in the Denver/Northern Colorado market. Where we need to live, we can't find much for under $250k. We are planning on house hacking, but we would most likely still have a payment we would have to cover. I feel like my husband has unrealistic expectations. He expects to have rent cover all of our payment. I've run the numbers on several prices and I don't think that is going to happen in this market.

I've been thinking we find a good deal (instead of waiting forever for the perfect deal). Once we have a place of our own that is also paying us some money through rent, we can be patient about finding the next deal. Eventually we are thinking about investing outside of our market, but that is down the road. My husband wants to be super extreme and wait until we find the diamond deal. I don't think I can do that and it's causing some friction between us. Any advice?