[IGTBAR]

Originally Posted by UFO

We were in a similar scenario a couple years back, making half your income though. Income aside, we set very tight limits on what we should be paying for each type of home, got approved for a silly mortgage amount but ended up using less than half

Our consideration to stay in the city (bby townhouse) was closer proximity to both of our work, closer proximity to family and also a number of our friends who were still living the kid free lifestyle. we wanted a larger th 1400+ sf so we were limited to older complexes. Coming from a condo where strata was an absolute pain to deal with (and I was the strata president!), this was a big part of our decision making process as well as the th we were looking at all had a good chance of upcoming maintenance. In the 6 years we were at our condo we sank $75k+ into maintenance related items and an immeasurable amount of stress, while our property increased maybe 30-40k over that same amount of time. The deciding factor was also knowing that the th was still going to be an intermediate home for us and we would be making at least another move to a larger home in maybe 5-10 yrs.

We ended up in a detached house in Coquitlam. Paid ~15% premium over what we wanted to spend on a th. Our commute to work sucks, we are a bit further from family and friends, but really with our young family its not like we have a ton of extra time now to sit around and chill, we'd rather catch up on sleep. We live in a great quiet neighbourhood with many youngish families, feel very safe, and have full control of doing whatever we want to our property. We're within walking distance to a large urban park/forest which is great for the kids. Owning a detached house is a lot of work though from a maintenance point of view, and can also potentially be lots of $$ too. Ultimately we have peace of mind that we can comfortably grow into our house, and if we move in the future it will be more bc of frivolous desires and not bc we feel we need more space or amenities.

Fwiw we figure our house has gained 100-120k in value in our 15 months of ownership, this really doesn't mean anything though. We are just fortunate about the timing because if we were in the market now, we wouldn't be comfortable buying detached at current prices but we also wouldn't be satisfied with buying a th at the similarly inflated prices.

Thank you - this is the type of feedback I was looking for.