Reply to With a 70k salary, should my daughter buy a condo or a house?

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Reply to "With a 70k salary, should my daughter buy a condo or a house?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Op here, thank you for the responses.  We have looked at the numbers and the $400k  condo we know she can afford. She will have $150k savings + $50k first time home buyer money (although we are not sure how this part works yet).  Plus we the parents can help out if need be.  She also wants to have a friend move in and pay her rent so that will help too.  So we are thinking the condo is best for now, but [b]I really want her to buy a house [/b]if she can find one in an area she likes in good condition, which may be really hard to do on her budget.  It would have worked 2 years ago  but house prices have really gone up a lot here.[/quote]

Unless the buyer is someone who has done home repair and maintenance work before, they should not buy a SFH for a first purchase.  If she buys a SFH, at those prices, it will be a fixer upper.  Who is going to mow the lawn?  Rake the leaves?  Shovel the sidewalk and driveway?  When the old toilets have a problem, who is going to fix them?  Has she ever changed a flapper before?  If older appliances have a problem, who is going to take care of them?  You can try to get a home warranty plan to cover appliances, but they squirm and try to get out of paying for anything and everything including things that are explicitly in the package.  The homeowner needs to read the entire package and know what is covered and know how to handle the customer service reps to ensure that they handle covered repairs.  If the roof has a leak or issue, does she know how to handle it?

Buying a SFH, especially an older one, has a lot of maintenance and home repair issues that need to be deal with.  At that age, most buyers are used to just calling a landlord or property management company for problems.  But when you buy a SFH you have to deal with it all yourself and many younger first time buyers are not prepared for all of that.  A condo is safer because many things are taken care of by the HOA, like lawn and landscaping work, raking leaves, plowing the parking lot.  For many, the plumbing and HVAC are covered by the building HOA and individual owners are only responsible for the plumbing inside their unit, which is much easier to handle.

So, while a SFH may be a better investment, a condo may be a better first purchase for a single first time buyer.
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