Hello all! I have been doing some recent reading about REI and lurking on the forums for the past few months and decided I would make my first post. I am a current college student soon to be graduating with a job secured in the St. Louis area. I will be graduating and beginning my new job here in a couple months and am looking for some advice about home buying vs. renting. Ideally I would find a property in the right area that could use some renovations and modernization (what I would call a grandma house) and slowly value add via renovations and modernization. I would also ideally close a couple weeks after I graduate. I would be looking at getting an FHA loan or pursuing seller financing in some way because of a lack of a large down payment. My issues with this are I will have around a 2 month gap between graduation and starting my job, and then almost a 3 month gap between graduation and my first paycheck. With the right deal and timing I would be able to make payments work with the help of current savings, relocation benefits from job, and family, but I am not sitting on an endless supply of cash. Another issue is just the timing of everything. I have been given relocation benefits, but my new job and relocation company are notoriously slow so there is no telling when I will start working with the relocation specialist. I also have an obligation to be in St. Louis around a month before I start my job, so I would potentially be looking to rent for a month or two before I close on a deal. So my current options are:
Sign 12 month lease soon after graduation and find a deal later or search for a deal and sign month to month lease until I find one.
Basically do I take a safer and less stressful approach and jump into REI a little later, or test my luck and see if everything works out. My current thoughts are to try and buy a deal if everything is working out, but then default to the safe approach if nothing seems to be going my way. If I can make it work and I can take full advantage of my relocation benefits (the relocation for home buyers is often much more valuable then just defaulting to renting) then great, if not there are deals to be had later. Advice or thoughts?
