Relocating - rent first or buy?

[yarrow]

We're strongly considering relocating to a different part of the country. I'm thinking I'd rather just buy another house so we don't have to move twice but my dh thinks we should rent first so we could see what the different communities surrounding the city are like before we decide on one. But our ds is 16 and I'd like to be settled before he leaves for college.

 

Any thoughts or perspectives from someone who has already experienced a relocation. Also, the real estate prices are significantly higher in our possible new location so, unfortunately, our mortgage will be higher although our pay will be lower (I know, why are we doing this).

 

Thanks,

Karen

[FriedClams]

I am a former military officer and now a military wife. One great piece of advice that I received a million years ago was to rent for 6 months to a year before you buy. I think it's brilliant. You can find your church, the good library, parks, dance studio, sports teams, etc. that you are going to use regularly. You will also find all the cool little eclectic neighborhoods, watch the market, get to know people, etc. I can't tell you how many people I know would have bought in a different part of town if they had lived there are year first. I know we would have!!

[ElizabethB]

I am a former military officer and now a military wife. One great piece of advice that I received a million years ago was to rent for 6 months to a year before you buy. I think it's brilliant. You can find your church, the good library, parks, dance studio, sports teams, etc. that you are going to use regularly. You will also find all the cool little eclectic neighborhoods, watch the market, get to know people, etc. I can't tell you how many people I know would have bought in a different part of town if they had lived there are year first. I know we would have!!

:iagree:

 

You do not really know the area well until you have lived there for a while. Plus, with the current foreclosure mess, house prices will most likely keep going down for a bit longer.

[Mrs Mungo]

I am a former military officer and now a military wife. One great piece of advice that I received a million years ago was to rent for 6 months to a year before you buy. I think it's brilliant. You can find your church, the good library, parks, dance studio, sports teams, etc. that you are going to use regularly. You will also find all the cool little eclectic neighborhoods, watch the market, get to know people, etc. I can't tell you how many people I know would have bought in a different part of town if they had lived there are year first. I know we would have!!

 

:iagree:

[Mergath]

I'd definitely rent. You're not going to lose that much money by renting for six months or a year, but you could lose a great deal of money by buying a house and then deciding soon after it wasn't the right decision.

[LibraryLover]

Rent.

 

Rentrentrentrentrentrent.

 

Did I say rent?

[Elinor Everywhere]

I am a former military officer and now a military wife. One great piece of advice that I received a million years ago was to rent for 6 months to a year before you buy. I think it's brilliant. You can find your church, the good library, parks, dance studio, sports teams, etc. that you are going to use regularly. You will also find all the cool little eclectic neighborhoods, watch the market, get to know people, etc. I can't tell you how many people I know would have bought in a different part of town if they had lived there are year first. I know we would have!!

 

:iagree: We're not military, but have had several corporate moves. Like you, we never wanted to move twice, and the company pays packers & movers so if we moved once we really didn't have to do any of the move ourselves. However, If I do a 4th one, I'll rent first. While I like my neighborhood, I find myself driving too much to other areas, and I would have bought in a part of town where most of our extracurriculars and church are located.

[CindyPTN]

We're doing this right now. We are renting for 6 months to a year and will then decide if a home purchase is right for the town. We've explored most of the neighborhoods, but don't know the pulse of the community, where we want to go to church and where the kids are for a kid friendly neighborhood.

 

We're looking forward to the breather room to explore and enjoy what the community has to offer before putting time into a home and making it feel like our home.

 

Plus, we do need to sell the home we're moving out of before even thinking about buying. So if you already have a home, then definitely sell it before thinking about buying. 2 home mortgages can get stressful.

[lovinmyboys]

I vote rent too. We just moved across the country and we bought because DH's new job paid for the move and with three little kids I did not want to move twice. It has worked out fine...we just chose to be involved where we bought and we got lucky. The house second on our list would have had terrible traffic for DH to get to work. If we have to move again, and we probably will, we will rent first. But, this house has been great the 8 weeks we have been in it. I don't regret our decision, but I wouldn't risk it again.

[Punchie]

Rent! Just b/c a neighborhood looks nice online, doesn't mean you want to live there. I am so glad we rented a duplex in the neighborhood we (thought) we wanted to live in when we first moved here. And man oh man...if we had bought there, we would have an extremely hard time getting out from any house bought there, plus there was a fair amount of crime. The neighborhood we ended up buying in wasn't even on our radar initially.

 

We're getting ready to move again, and plan on renting again before we buy.

[mom2a&z]

I highly recommend renting first. We've moved twice in the past 10 years and each time we rented first. It gave us a chance to get to know the city and the different areas.

 

The second time we moved was with corporate movers, but we still rented. We just had the moving van stop twice, first at the apartment and then at the storage facility. Even though we had to eventually move everything out of storage ourselves to our new home, it was still worth it.

[jenL]

Definitely, definitely rent! We knew the area we were moving to when we made the 1000 mile relocation; however, we should have rented first and then picked a neighborhood. We love where we live in terms of town, but we would not have chosen to build in this neighborhood had we been in the area longer.

[Lux Et Veritas Academy]

Just went through this- totally rent! The economy doesn't justify buying right now....over the long term it won't make much difference. You will have flexibility this way!

[Brenda in FL]

We've moved twice and chose renting both times - for the reasons stated and also because until we sell our rental property - we have no downpayment. However, both times we've really liked the location and currently - I hope not to have to move again for 2 to 3 years. (I hope by then the foreclosures and short sales have funneled out of the pipeline and we can sell our FL house.)

 

Renting really saved us the first time - 6 months after his transfer - DH's company laid him off. We would have been in serious trouble if we had purchased a home.

[gaillardia]

I didn't want to move again, so we bought when we, the kids and I, got here.

Now we feel we are too far from dh's job, college, store, especially considering the things that happened with the job.

We were packed for nearly a year before we moved; you know, non-essential belongings, extra hsing books, books, books.

I guess I wish we would have rented NOW.

[gaillardia]

sorry double post!!

Edited October 23, 2010 by gingerh
double post

[specialmama]

We moved across the country a few years ago and decided to rent for a few months. 2 actually LOL. I'm glad we did because we didn't really know which areas to avoid, which areas were best as far as hospitals, public transportation, etc. It's good to get your bearings first. We rented a small appt and put most of our stuff in storage for the 2 months so we weren't living in boxes. It was a cozy time of living only with the bare necessities, but I wouldn't change a thing. :001_smile:

[unity]

I've moved across country a few times and done it both ways, but I have to say the buying worked to our advantage. When we moved to San Jose, CA, we couldn't have afforded to buy, but renting worked out well because we did move 6 months later. Also, renting worked out well when we moved to AL because we were living on base which turned out to be a good thing for us at the time.

 

BUT both times we moved to NH (different parts of the state) we just bought a house--once sight unseen (but my mother scoped it out for us). The first time I got a good real estate agent who helped find what we needed. We made money on that house, even though we sold it mid-market crash. Even though I did not feel, when we were living there, that it was the most perfect house imaginable, it was OK, had most of what I wanted, and, did I mention we made money? ;)

 

The second time we moved back to NH it was to a town I'd never been to before, but thanks to the Internet I learned a LOT and we took our time scoping out online listings. I Googled how far the YMCA (only plausible swim team in the area) was, researched churches, gymnastics places, everything. I viewed topological maps of lots (to avoid the drainage issues common in NH), scoured floor plans, and studied pictures of the houses like a detective.

 

Now, we've been in this house we bought sight unseen for about 2 years. It works extremely well for our needs. Yes, sometimes I regret that I didn't move to this or that location, but then I remember the tradeoffs that a move like that would make. Because there are always tradeoffs. We thought very hard, researched very carefully, and bought a house that suited our needs, and it does. In 2 years I have never seen a house that was "better" across the board than our house, taking into all factors like price, privacy, and other things important to me. Time will tell, but I am pretty confident we will make money eventually on this house, too.

 

So if I had to do it again, I would definitely buy and not rent. Especially in a market like this one.

[Laura Corin]

We rented briefly when we moved to Scotland. We got some good advice during that time, otherwise we might well have bought a house in a not-so-good area. I think we were very lucky in choosing the house we did - it would have been better to rent for longer and get to know the area before choosing.

 

Laura

[yarrow]

Thank you all for your responses. Renting seems to be the most popular opinion so I'll go with my dh on this one. The company will be paying relocation so it did seem easier to just do it once. But, you're right, we don't really know where we want to be until we get there.

 

Now, to find a country rental that will allow our animals!

 

Thank you again.

 

Karen

[elfgivas]

for me, it definitely depends how often you move, and how often you've moved and developed the skills. in our "the military is moving us every year, but paying closing and real estate costs" phase, we moved 5 times in 5 years. the military flew us to the new place for a week long house hunting trip each year. we developed some great skills on how to find a house that would work for us for a year, and would be easy to resell. we had our top three criteria, and then went from there. among other things, it taught me that most things i thought mattered to me about a house, didn't really.

 

then we went into the "move two or three times more" in a lifetime phase, and approached it very differently. spent a year looking one time, the next time rented for two years, while dh looked at acceptable commute times and air quality in SoCal.

 

most places, it is possible to look at where crimes are committed, and that can give you an idea of areas to avoid, even in the rental phase.

 

hth,

ann

[Laura Corin]

Thank you all for your responses. Renting seems to be the most popular opinion so I'll go with my dh on this one. The company will be paying relocation so it did seem easier to just do it once. But, you're right, we don't really know where we want to be until we get there.

 

Now, to find a country rental that will allow our animals!

 

Thank you again.

 

Karen

 

That's what we did. We had our furniture moved to the area and put it into storage. We rented a furnished place short-term until we bought, then only had to move the stuff in once. See if the company will help out with this solution.

 

Laura

[AHASRADA]

I would say it depends on your situation. We have done both ;).

 

When we chose to buy:

- We intended to stay in that area indefinitely, or at least 3-5 years

- The housing market was good, so a profit was expected

- We found an area to buy in that we had no doubt was perfect for us

- The house we bought kept our kids in an atmosphere/lifestyle similar to what they were accustomed (what was available for rent would have been a culture shock)

- dh's relocation package paid the realtor to sell our previous home and all our moving expenses, so it made sense to put our profit on that home into another, rather than "banking" it

 

When we chose to rent:

- We had no idea what neighborhood we wanted to be in

- We were unsure how long we would be in the area, and if we would want to change neighborhoods once we became accustomed to the area

- No relocation package to help with expenses (we needed our savings for living expenses, couldn't afford to put it into a downpayment)

 

Of course, we only stayed in the home we purchased for 1 1/2 years, and have now been in the same rental in the neighborhood we originally selected in our new area for 3 years, so you never know how things will work out. Still, we didn't regret either decision, because we did make a good profit on the house, and enjoy the freedom renting gives us, since we still don't know how long we will be here

 

My primary concern right now would be the housing market. In most areas, it is much more difficult to sell a home, and much less likely to make a profit in the short-term (unless you buy a bank-owned property). I would think long and hard about the possibility of being stuck with a home you can't sell if and when you want to leave the area, or change neighborhoods. However, if the rental choices are terrible, and you are confident in your choice of neighborhood, intend to stay in the area, and the housing market is healthy (or you can get a great deal), it might be worthwhile to buy.

 

HTH,

[Elinor Everywhere]

We rented a furnished place short-term until we bought, then only had to move the stuff in once. See if the company will help out with this solution.

 

Laura

 

That's a great idea. I wish we we would have thought of this when we moved here, and I think dh's company would have still moved us in when we bought a place. We are lucky & I like our neighborhood, but knowing how far I drive the kids to their sports/bands/clubs/etc, I'd have probably chosen a different location.

[Margo out of lurking]

I'd love to say just buy but . . .

 

We've been there, done that (moved from Colorado to Virginia three years ago), and this past June, we bought another house in a completely different area about an hour away. It turned out that nothing in our life (church, friends, hsing activities) was in the nearby town (small population), and we were driving an hour to do everything, several times a week. I hated being so far away, and I felt like my kids had no life outside of the car.

 

Within the first two months of our move, my ds saw his best friend more times than he'd seen him in two years. My dd is able to take an outside biology class that I'd really wanted her to take. EVERYTHING is close. I am thankful EVERY day that we were able to make this move, and I feel terribly guilty about the time we spent in the other house (I'm the one that picked it out).