Decision - rent together first or take the plunge and buy

j.e.j.

x90tsb wrote: »

I'm not sure, I think we would be fine buying together straight away but also appreciate that's easy to say, the longest we have "lived" together is on holidays etc for 2 weeks, and that is no problem at all. Although I have heard the saying "you don't really know someone until you have lived with them".

My parents never lived together before they were married. Neither did most people a generation ago. Most people did not 'try out the goods' first before buying :rotfl:

Having said that there is nothing in your post to say you are committed enough to that person to marry them (?) so it's a rather different kettle of fish in that case.

A mortgage is going to tie you for 25 years or so. Renting: just one month

lika_86

manchee wrote: »

if nothing else, it will help you decide what you want (and don't want) in a house you buy. Every place ive lived in in the past few years has taught me something, my current one - check out the roads between you and work (we live round the corner from a 'local' sainsburys, people park everywhere, double yellows be damned, and its a nighmare trying to get down the road, it enrages me everyday!) and make sure the kitchen and the lounge are on the same floor, the last one - we don't want to live right in the center of town, the one before - the importance of double glazing and loft insulation (yeah that was a 'fun' lesson lol). Etc etc

this ^^^^^^^

Waffle_On

Prothet_of_Doom wrote: »

If they agreed up front a legally bidding methodology, there is no need for mess.

Actually I wasn't thinking of how the assets were split. The scenario I've seen most often is that neither can afford to buy the other out, and the house won't sell for enough to cover the mortgage. No agreement can plan for that!

DivineSaver

OH and I bought our first house together last year. We had been together just over 4yrs. However he informally moved in to my flat prior to buying together so we had a good idea that we could live together. Even now we still have little niggles over expenses and housework but I expect that is the norm for most couples.

SandC

Personally I would rent for a while, another poster made a good point about it being a good way to find out where you do/don't want to live. It might also help you decide if you want to buy somewhere that needs a bit of work or you want something already done up to your tastes. Nothing worse for a relationship than thinking you'll do all these jobs to get the perfect 'us' home and it creates friction from the word go if you find out that you hate DIY, are rubbish at it and don't have the spends to get someone else in to sort it all out!

I live on my own but still rented for a year before buying my place as going straight from home I worried that I wouldn't manage financially with the big step of leaving home with an unrealistic board payment to a mortgage commitment.

Having said that, on a personal level, also agree that people used to marry before living together and learnt how to live with one another afterwards. It can be done!

sep89

My partner and I moved in together in June, having never lived together before. We are 25 and 29 and been together for 4 years. It has worked fine for us, if you know someone then you know them. Living together doesn't change that! A big factor was us that we didn't want to waste our deposit on rent.

DigForVictory

My repect for my family members who went up the aisle & into a house together has gone up a bit. These days we've become a bit serious-commitment-shy & both moving in with each other & buying a house are serious commitments.

That said, moving into a rented place to check the area makes loads of sense, unless prices are going utterly daft. As not only are you learning if t'other one's a duvet-napper with all the domestication of a feral hyena and no money sense at all, you can also check out the local shops & markets, find out the hard way about which postcodes are more expensive for house insurance & possibly even get an idea about local health care, dentists & schools...

(And you know where to start asking other than t'internet? In a church. The godly matrons will be curious, but delighted to be experts & native guides. And it's always useful if you do decide to get married.)

It can all go unpleasantly wrong & there are solicitors who can minimise that, but buying into a new geographical area blind is underprepared.

thorsoak

I'm one of the generation referred to by DigforVictory - whilst we'd been engaged for 2 years, we'd never lived together (bearing in mind, this was early 60s, before they really started "swinging) - but we commited to each other in marriage and bought a house - in an area completely new to both of us - by the time I was 20 (and 3 weeks) and OH was 23.

That was the norm for those days - it only ended with his death after almost 48 years.

burlington6

Rent. Don't buy whatever you do. Follow your head not your heart.

catkins

Me and OH didn't live together until we got married and we had only known each other 5 months. We celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary earlier this year.


I would say buy a house. Things could go wrong but they could go wrong if you rented first and then bought couldn't they?