[LittleMissPink]

Would you buy an "okish" house in a nice area, even though it may not meet all your needs (rooms size etc) just to get into the property market if you could?

Or would you wait, and save and hope that by the time you had enough to buy a better house that the prices had not risen so that you coudnt get into the market at all?

This post has been edited by LittleMissPink: 21/01/2013, 11:06 AM

[tenar]

I'd buy.

Your ideas about what is OK, how much space you really need, etc, may change. The nice areas will also tend to increase in price faster than the less-nice areas.

[HollyOllyOxenfre...]

We did the former. Our house is on the older side, and the bedrooms are pretty small, but it's a massive block of land and there is plenty of scope for us to renovate or knock down and rebuild. We were also fortunate that we bought at the bottom of the market downturn, so our house is worth a lot more now than what we paid for it.

If we have a second child we could feasibly stay in this house for another 5-7 years. This would give us enough time to save the money needed to either sell and buy elsewhere, or do the renos/rebuild to make this place exactly what we need. If we'd waited to save a heap of money to get the "perfect" house that would last us through the entirety of our children's childhoods until they move out, we would still be renting. So if you can manage financially to get into the market now (and by manage I mean comfortably, not just scraping by), I would do it.

[LittleMissPink]

For more info, the house is a small 2 bed, on a big block of land, in a town on the pacific hwy, quite busy. In a few years there will soon be a bypass going through, so less traffic and the prices will jump as it becomes more appealing, and quieter. But I can affoord the house now.

[MissingInAction]

It's up to you and what you're happy with.

I sometimes wish we'd waited before purchasing our place. It ticked all the boxes we thought we wanted at the time, but now I wish we had one more bedroom/spare room and lived a little further out of town.

[*Lib*]

I'd wait. We built a built a house, that we are going to list this week, because its WAY too small for what we need.

[bright*future]

I don't think the market is going to take off in a crazy way in the near future, so you have some time up your sleeve to buy the right house if it comes up soon. Having said that, it sounds like you're looking in a fairly small area, so perhaps the right house won't come up in the near future, in that case, I'd think very seriously about buying what is on offer now.

[BadCat]

I'd do the former.

I bought a cheap unit as a single person because it was what I could afford at the time. When I met my partner and we decided to buy a house the sale of the unit provided a very nice deposit for the house.

Depends a bit on your time frame though. Stamp duty can be the killer if you move too fast.

[~spirited~]

We bought a unit first, but in the area we liked. We are now in a house (stayed in unit 4 years, bought and sold at the right time) but 10 minutes further out. Doesn't sound like much, but in Inner Sydney it makes a huge difference. We have more than double the land, and an extra bedroom and bathroom than what we could have bought for the same amount in our old suburb.

[BellaMoja]

hmmm its a big decision - we just bought our smallish 3bedder in a nice area of Sydney - just couldnt afford to go to the next price bracket and knew that if we waited that we would miss out due to priced. Our house increased in value by $235k in 3 years CRAZY!