Advice - Buy Now or Wait another 2 years

Management fees includes insurance and maintenance of the building exterior plus a % for a sinking fund for major costs. Individual house owners need to pay building insursnce and regular repairs & maintenance like painting, gutter/ window cleaning, boiler service etc. so it probably balances out over a few years.

Of course there are some lucky owners who can diy everything and never have to pay a tradesman 😉

There are reasons houses like that in those areas are so much cheaper though.

I suppose one point the OP hasn't really touched on, where are they looking to buy?

They said if they waited another couple of years they could do 380-400k. Where would they be in 1 year I wonder?

If it were me I'd be hanging on to get a house if I was still living at home with the folks.

I always found apartments to feel like stop gaps, bought and lived in one myself for about 6-7 years but always thought of it as a stepping stoned to get to my current house.

Depends really on location of “apartment now” and “house in future”.

Did OP say what part of the country they are looking to buy?

Is there any duplex you could afford? I started off with one of those and was a decent compromise with own small garden etc

People have been murdered in Foxrock. Different people have different experiences in different locations.

Yes, a lot of folks living in harder, working class areas like that will be fine. Others might not. Some people might not like having to walk past gangs of dodgy teenagers on the way home, some folks might be okay with it. Some folks might not like hearing joyriders flying passed their house, other folks might like to sleep to it.

You are right though re the OP, we really do have nothing to go on. Don't even know where they'd ideally like to buy.

Can't really form any kind of suggestions without that information.

You can get a 2 bedroom house in D7 for 350-400k. I'd put that down as a nice happy medium between your 300K 1 bed southside apartments and Love/Hate land 😁

Living remote in the countryside also brings up it's own problems too though.

No public transport, far away from medical facilities, far away from entertainment venues, far away from friends/family. Couldn't do it myself.

Ah right ok sure they’re all grand those areas, listen I’m from an area that would be looked on as a bit rough I suppose another city not Dublin, when I was growing up there I didn’t really know any different, I thought it was normal for gangs of lads to chase you and if they caught you beat the hell out of you, I literally thought this happened to everyone, well it happened to everyone I knew.

It was only when I went to college (and getting there was a struggle) and got a different perspective from people from different parts of the country that I realised how truly bad it was, and believe me where I was from would have nothing on Coolock I’m very familiar with it.

I won’t defend these areas and say they’re fine I never saw any trouble, they’re not fine and would be the last places in Ireland I’d bring up kids, sure you may not see any trouble, but if you have kids they’re they’re the ones who’ll see it, they’re the ones who’ll be targeted by gangs of little scumbags. And not even that if they’re surrounded by people with no ambition it rubs off.

having lived in really nice areas I can safely say I’d rather commute than live in an area like that or take the chance on bringing up kids there, having grown up in it myself no way.

theres a reason most people want to live in citys, living in rural area,s usually means long commutes to work, i live in dublin ,i use the bus or i cycle .keeping a car on the road is not cheap, insurance ,cost of petrol maintenance. i don,t understand the logic of saying ,ill wait for 2 years and then ,ill buy a house unless he can maybe save 70k in 2 years . its a lot more complex than working class area, = love hate , crime,chaos versus middle class area equals heaven peace and tranqullity. my friend lives in a house in finglas, 99 per cent of houses on the estate are owned by the tenants bought from the council.i,d be happy to buy a 3 bed house there even if it was the same price as a 1 bed apartment in the city centre , eg its a council estate

she,s lived there for 20 years and never had any hassle or anti social behavior.

i think you should buy in a place no more than 35 minutes commute from your job

Definitely move out if you can... min 2 bed apt though, to maximise the chance of selling it on later.

The greatest thing I ever did was move out. Design the apartment as you see fit. Put your stuff wherever you like, stay up dancing around the place nekkid all night if you want ;)

I was in a similar situation fighting with siblings too. Sometimes it's hard being under one roof.

Ironically once I moved out, the family got closer as we had the space to live independently, so I get on well with the siblings now (though at Christmas we can last around 3 days before the fights start again, so it's always nice to have my own home to return back to)

You have yet to meet a partner and have kids, so the first step would be to meet the partner, and then if you have a kid you will always have the 2 bedrooms.

If the family gets larger that's a lot farther down the line and perhaps you could sell the apartment and move to a larger house in the commuter belt.

Its amazing how that just goes over so many peoples heads and they take a fit at anyone pointing it out.