All this talk of buying houses by Early Retirement Middle Way and Money on My Mind has me yearning for another property of my own. Of course, it’s completely out of the question for the moment because:
- I’m in the USA for another two years so there is no point buying another house back in Australia now;
- My finances are such that I probably couldn’t get a loan for another property now anyway; and
- Apparently house prices have started dropping in Australia, so I can’t really recoup a profit from one of the other houses if I sold it.
Still, it doesn’t stop me dreaming. I love having my own place. I envisage having my own garden, putting in rainwater tanks and a greywater recycling system. I foresee a solar system on the roof. I want to live close to town so that we can do without a second vehicle and so we can walk or ride to shops, cafes and work. If we rent, we won’t be able to do any of these things.
Unfortunately, in order to buy a property close to the town I’m thinking, with enough land to have a garden and fruit trees, it’s going to cost a pretty penny. *Sigh* I guess I’m going to have to relegate this dream to the ‘longer term’ pile and just focus on the baby steps to reach that goal.
Photo by: Aaardvaark
Its a lovely dream & I love that photo!. Re wanting a place close to town with enought land to have a garden and fruit trees – we live close to the CBD of a major city – and although the block is very small we have made sure we can fit in a vege garden, chooks and fruit trees. I love the challenge of using space efficiently.
Happy dreaming!
For some reason, I thought you had “your home/place” in Austrailia and was perhaps renting it out while you are in America. And that you are looking to trade it for more land in the future.
If your dream location will be costly, would you consider when the time is right, selling some of your rental properties in order to purchase it?
You paint a beautiful picture of what you want!
will you be going back to Australia when your mandate in the US is finished? Maybe then you can re-visit your housing situation with a view to purchasing your dream home…
@Tricia: Thanks for reminding me that I could probably do what I want with a smaller place. That will probably help with the budget when the time comes to buy a place.
@Middle Way: I have houses in Australia, but they are rented out and they are not in a city I would choose to settle in. Ideally I would sell one or more of them to fund my future home, but with the debt to value ratio I have at the moment I really wouldn’t make enough profit by doing that. I think the best thing is to aggressively pay down debt/save money for a new deposit so I’m not reliant on sales to purchase a new place.
@Money Minder: Yes, I’m heading back to Australia in just under two years. The thing is that even then I’m not sure I’ll be settling in my long term place. I’m still young and need to put all my effort into reducing my massive debt before I can buy myself a dream property and drop off the grid so to speak. I just need to ponder this a lot more over the next two years.