First Time Buyer Considering $20k Quick Sale Home

[Kayla Jobes]

My Fiancé and I HAD a plan to wait 2-5 years to buy our first time home, and just be in a better financial place (paid off credit debt last month, working on his student loan and my personal loan. Gotta love 18 year old mistakes). We are getting married and going on our honeymoon next year and have started funding for that as well as our first home fund. We are funneling $900 away per month for that. Our current rent is $880 with all amenities, and we are moving to a new apartment for $1,200 per month with all amenities. A quick sale house has come up. It will need to be completely gutted and have new roof, gutters, probable finishing of a basement if it has one, and yard work as well. We had a plan to have our first home be a rehab JUST like this, and live with a friend while we rehab to be habitable, then just take it slow from there and be a live in flip. We could easily put away more savings, have a tenth of the cost for a mortgage (we don’t have the full $20k), and flip significantly with all the freed up cash from not renting and pay it off in a couple years. We have no flipping experience and this would be our first home/live in flip/ investment. We have a realtor picked out, and know a couple contractor friends, as well as a family friend we could use as a private lender should we not qualify. We also have credit scores above 700, but don’t have much savings. Should we take the plunge???? Please say why either way. 😊

[Kayla Jobes]

@Kirk R. We cannot just move in with a friend. This would have been a situation where we would temporarily sleep on an air mattress in someone’s living room... our rent is not going up each month, it is a yearly increase from moving apartments. We live in a college city that typically has $300-$400 off rent lease specials, but they go up at the end of the lease. Because of COVID, and the lack of students in the city, no specials are happening this year and we are stuck with the normal rates. I will be taking your advice and sticking with our original plan though! We will be putting the money away for the future and paying down current debt. 😊