Aren't houses in Michigan like $30,000 or something? I heard they were selling for less than the materials required to build them. If you guys are planning on hanging out there why not utilize some Government cheese ($8k tax credit) and buy a house?
Lots of reasons, most of them involve thinking ahead a few years.
Yes houses are incredibly cheap back home right now. The $30,000 houses are in places you don't want to drive through, much less live. We could find a condo in Ann Arbor for $60,000 and a respectable house for around $120,000.
The problem being we don't know where we're going to end up living in the state. The Detroit area is HUGE and if you live in Plymouth and end up working over in St.Claire Shores, you'll end up driving 2 hours each way to work. If I'm working 60 hours a week, that's not time I want to lose.
If we buy a house right now, I don't think we'll be able to sell it in 3 years when I'm done with school. If we end up getting jobs in Lansing or Kalamazoo, we'd be in some serious trouble as we'd end up paying a mortgage on a house we can't live in.
Further, we need a few things out of an apartment that most people don't think about. We have to have a private entrance to the apartment as nearly every apartment complex has cats in it, whether they allow them or not. I've got a cat allergy so bad that if I'm locked in a room with a cat for 48 hours I'd be dead, so I've quite literally been hanging out at a friends place with a cat in an apartment down the hallway and after about an hour I'm already having problems breathing. This requirement drives up the cost of the apartment, but it's something we're unable to compromise on.
So basically we're purchasing mobility with continuing to rent. Believe me, we'd prefer to say, "Hey, let's just buy a place and get a job in Ann Arbor!!!" But, IMO, that's an incredibly high risk to take, especially when you consider that I'm about to take out $100,000 for law school.
