However, in addition to my mortgage, there’s maintenance costs, the itch to make home improvements, and when things break I’m the one who has to fix it or pay for a repairman. Inevitably the night before I have friends over for dinner the dishwasher breaks and I find myself unclogging icky drains instead of studying.

And I realize this is a ridiculously long comment, but I want to end with, I LOVE being a homeowner. It gives me such satisfaction and a sense of adulthood while I’m not living a very grown-up life. And it is awfully satisfying to paint a room, replace a fixture, and fix the #(%& dishwasher.

Our home right now is a condo and we desperately need more space. However, sometimes I think I overestimate how happy a new house would make us.

Enjoy the freedom an apartment affords while you have it.

One last thing. I think you should keep your retirement savings at 10%. You are so young and this money will have so much time to grow! It seems like such a shame to contribute less to your 401k to buy a house, particularly when you think you may move!

In addition to the above, man-friend just reminded me to be cognizant of how much my work matches. I think I can go down to 5% without sacrificing any match contributions, but I need to double check. My work has a ridiculous matching policy. They automatically contribute 5% , and they also match up to 5%. I invest 10% every month. I always forget how great the benefit is.

Definitely need a bigger cash cushion, especially for the foreclosures/short sales. Thank you for your input.

Also, a word about Trulia. They seem to be a bit on the slow side for updating listings to reflect them going under contract.

First of all the “how much will my mortgage be” calculators I used prior to buying seemed to undercalculate my P&I. Second, don’t forget insurance. Taxes and interest are at least things you can write off, but if you are (as you sound like you are) a single income earning household that’s probably not a big tax advantage. In my experience You probably need to be two income earners making well upwards of six figures to really benefit from the home deduction (though you could probably get a spreadsheet, do some calculations at your local bank website, and figure out whether it would make any more sense to itemize and deduct interest than to you use the standard deduction. If you are already itemizing it might be an advantage).

I think it’s great you want to have a bigger cash cushion. I really wish we had done that. We cut it pretty close. We got a good deal over three years ago on a forclosure. Problem with forclosures is no one’s been taking good care of it so a lot of things can go wrong right away (plumbing, water heater, oven, dish washer, heating, insulation, termites). When you are renting the landlord takes care of all these things, and generally keeps the place in better care so they don’t have to shell out a lot. In your own home you may not be able to initially afford a lot of the things that would keep your house in better condition and will be forced to do a lot of quick fixes. That being said, if it really is about equal to what you pay in rent, and is in a good neighborhood, it’s probably very worth considering. Missie is right about it being a good addition to what you are invested in. Also the sooner you get equity in a home (even if you sell it and move the equity to another house) the better chance you can pay it off before retiring.

That does sound like a good plan to me, though — as you said, your retirement is in good shape, it is still a buyer’s market (for the most part), and you’re not blowing the money on something frivolous; you’re simply setting aside funds for a different kind of investment for your future.

I say look upon it as diversifying your portfolio