Should You Buy A House If You Are In The Military?
Buying a house is a big commitment and something you really have to think about before you decide to go ahead and do it. Home ownership is something that a lot of people hope and dream for. Even those of us that move around more often then others.
When you are a Military family, the urge to put down some type of roots is strong.
Before moving to any new duty station, any Military family has to figure out where they are going to live. For some that means on post. That is the only place they want to live and that is a good choice. There are a lot of benefits to living on post. But for those that don’t want to live there, they must decide between renting or buying a home where they are stationed.
We moved to Ft. Campbell in 2010 and started with a rental. We hated it. We knew we were going to have to move. We thought about moving on post but didn’t really want to. We looked at our options. We could buy a home in Clarksville or we could rent. We knew we would be here at least another three years.
We looked at rent and at mortgages. We knew buying could be an investment for us. We knew that if we bought we would no longer have a landlord to call if we had issues, we would have to take care of that ourselves. In the end we decided on buying because it made the most sense at the time. Renting would have cost over $100 more a month in rent then if we bought. If we rented, we would have less control over the house that we lived in.
As of today we will have been in our house for 4 years. I love that we have been here that long. We used my husband’s VA loan to buy it. Overall it was a pretty easy process too. We love our home and neighborhood and glad we made that decision. However, we are looking at a move to California in the next few years. This means we will have to decide on selling or renting out our home. It is a big decision and as of right now we are not sure what we are going to do.
So how do you decide if you should by a house if you are in the Military?
You really need to talk it over, figure out what your plans are and know that things could change. You could buy a house thinking you will be in the area for years and then have to move before you have lived in it a year. You never know and that is the risk you have to take.
You have to decide if it is worth it. If you could handle selling or renting out a home. You have to figure out if it would just be easier to rent from someone else until your spouse gets out of the Military.
There are benefits to owning a home, especially around a Military Installation that will be around for a long time. You can look at it as an investment, you can make the home the way you want it and you always have a place to come back to once you get out of the Military. You can rent it out when you leave and know it will help you in the future.
We are all about buying houses at duty stations. We didn’t buy one here since flying to Hawaii to manage it would be unreasonable, but we’re happy with the house that we currently own on the mainland and plan on buying again when we get back. Like you said, our mortgage can be cheaper than rent, and since there are constantly families moving in and out of military towns, we haven’t had an issue getting the house rented and the mortgage covered.
That is great! I can imagine buying in Hawaii would be a whole nother thing.
We bought one last duty station as we were going to be there 3 years and it was a buyers market. Unfortunately the market didn’t rebound like we hoped, so when we got orders we had to rent it out. That actually has been fine for us, and now we are hopefully close to selling it. It was a bit of a pain to manage renters as we are overseas and we aren’t making any money from renting it which is basically why we are selling it. We had no real plans to go back to it, and it wasn’t exactly near a base. I’m not sure I’d do it again, tbh.
Oh I hope it will sell for you soon!