Did you pay off student loans before buying a house?

[Anonymous]

No. We purchased a condo and a house and only recently paid off our loan - and we have over $250k in equity in our home now.

[Anonymous]

Paid off 2 before buying this summer. Still have one ~30k that we hope to pay off in the next few years.

[Anonymous]

No. They are at 1.8% over 20 years. Will never pay early, even though I could pay them off tomorrow.

[Anonymous]

We paid off our student loans (undergrad for me and grad school for both of us) in our late 20s, but we have not been able to save enough for a downpayment yet. We have around $70k saved in our early 30s.

[Anonymous]

Nope. Bought a condo in our early 30s, paid off loans a couple years later.

[Anonymous]

No, but my rate is also 1.65%

[Anonymous]

Yes. Paid off loans a few months ago. House shopping now.

[Anonymous]

Yes! We paid off every debt and made sure our credit scores were 800 before buying a house. Took awhile but the peace of mine is important to me. I would not buy any other way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, because you're going to be paying rent anyway - how much would you save by renting versus buying?

OP here. We have cheap rent. Much cheaper than mortgage will be. And then add all the other costs of home ownership...

Same here. Very cheap rent for this area, you can hardly even buy a condo for as cheap as our rent is. And we would never buy a condo.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes! We paid off every debt and made sure our credit scores were 800 before buying a house. Took awhile but the peace of mine is important to me. I would not buy any other way.

Mind*

[Anonymous]

Bought my first house at 28. I still don't have my student loans paid off (9 years later) but the interest rate is so low that it doesn't make sense to prioritize paying them off.

[Anonymous]

Bought a townhouse at 25 (that we still own and rent out) and bought a SFH at 31 that we live in. Combined equity over $300k. We still owe about $50k on student loans at under 2%. I would never have prioritized these loans over real estate. Never.

[Anonymous]

No, because we would lose access to employer and law school student loan assistance programs. And student loans are so much more flexible than mortgage debt, if you lose your job. So we went for the smaller mortgage.

Part of this is we were buying in 2010 and wanted to move quickly to take advantage of low prices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bought a townhouse at 25 (that we still own and rent out) and bought a SFH at 31 that we live in. Combined equity over $300k. We still owe about $50k on student loans at under 2%. I would never have prioritized these loans over real estate. Never.

How did you get such a low rate on student loan?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bought a townhouse at 25 (that we still own and rent out) and bought a SFH at 31 that we live in. Combined equity over $300k. We still owe about $50k on student loans at under 2%. I would never have prioritized these loans over real estate. Never.

How did you get such a low rate on student loan?

They were federal graduate school loans issued at 2.85% on up to $18,500/year. The rate was capped at that from about 2001-2005 maybe? Then you drop 1% after signing up for autodebit and making 12 on time payments.