Good afternoon, first time poster. Looking for feedback on buying an 8 acre lot and building a house on it. My wife and I have 4 kids with 1 more on the way. We currently live in a 1600 sq. ft. house with no basement. We don't keep a lot of stuff, but even seasonal clothes are getting hard to store as the family grows! We want a larger house, but also really like the idea of having some land for us and the kids to roam around on. We found a great parcel of land about a mile away from our current house. It's really neat because it has a rural feel with creeks, woods and about 3 acres of open land. It also has 14 acres of adjoining public woods! But, it still has the convenience of being connected to walkable neighborhoods, a local park and is 1.5 miles from the kids elementary school. It's also conveniently located to groceries, family and all of our existing connections. It also has public water and sewer which is not common for larger parcels like this. The land is about $200,000 + whatever it would cost to build. We’re not super picky about a house so I’d hope it would be around $500,000 to build one. That puts us at about $700,000 all in if we go down this route. We live in South Central Pennsylvania and the cost of living is average. My wife and I are both in our mid thirties and our oldest kid is ten.
Our financial snapshot:
Gross annual income -
$270k/yr (me),
$3k/yr (wife)
Debts -
$64k (mortgage, 30 years at 4.5%)
$44k (HELOC 1.99% for another couple months, recently used to buy Toyota Sienna minivan, hope to payoff in a few months before intro rate expires)
Assets -
300k current home estimated sale price
280k taxable brokerage invested in stocks
257k IRA
260k Roth IRA
129k 401k
80k HSA
106k 529
30k cash
We make a lot more money than we did 10 years ago when we bought our current house for 117k, but 700k feels like a boatload of money. Our income and finances are pretty strong though so I can’t tell if I’m being too cheap when hesitating on buying the land. Is this too much for us to responsibly take on or am I just being a tightwad?
Our financial snapshot:
Gross annual income -
$270k/yr (me),
$3k/yr (wife)
Debts -
$64k (mortgage, 30 years at 4.5%)
$44k (HELOC 1.99% for another couple months, recently used to buy Toyota Sienna minivan, hope to payoff in a few months before intro rate expires)
Assets -
300k current home estimated sale price
280k taxable brokerage invested in stocks
257k IRA
260k Roth IRA
129k 401k
80k HSA
106k 529
30k cash
We make a lot more money than we did 10 years ago when we bought our current house for 117k, but 700k feels like a boatload of money. Our income and finances are pretty strong though so I can’t tell if I’m being too cheap when hesitating on buying the land. Is this too much for us to responsibly take on or am I just being a tightwad?
Statistics: Posted by jonfleck — Fri May 03, 2024 6:06 pm — Replies 0 — Views 10