Nontrad purchasing a home before medical school

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Sc1entific

I apologize if this exact situation has been discussed in other threads, but I couldn't find a recent thread that closely matched my situation. Here's the deal. My fiancee and I are currently employed full time and making about 90k a year combined. I deferred medical school admission for a year. He is applying to law schools near my medical school. Assuming he is accepted, we'll begin school in about 11 months. Ideally, we would purchase a house in the area between our schools and pay on a mortgage instead of rent. Some details:

1. We would be qualifying for our mortgage and making the first few payments while employed full time. We are not trying to qualify for a mortgage with student loans as our only source of income. We're doing this well in advance of taking out loans. We have a downpayment together.
2. We would be looking for a house in the $40-$70k range.
3. There are no homes for rent in the area that offer what we need - washer/dryer in unit, a fenced in yard for our dog and a pet-friendly lease as well as more than one bedroom/one bath in a quiet area. Lots of places meet some of the criteria, but most of the places meet all but the pet requirement. Additionally, the college towns near our schools are predominately student-rich, party zones and the small towns in between do not offer pet friendly housing for rent. We currently live in a one bedroom apartment, and the time commitment of walking the dog on a lease and heading up and down flights of stairs to get outside, plus coordinating laundry in a shared laundry area with all the other building residents is a huge waste of time that is okay now, but not feasible while we're both in school.
4. I am mostly concerned with whether or not we need to disclose to a mortgage lender that we will be leaving our jobs at some point after the mortgage begins. I am also not sure how the living expenses work with loans - I assume the remainder after tuition is dispensed to the student in the form of a periodic check, which then goes into a bank account to be spent as needed, correct? The mortgage lender just needs the bill paid, I assume, and is not concerned with where the money comes from, but again I am not sure and this is why I'm asking.
5. We are getting married before beginning school/hopefully purchasing a home.
6. We're aware of the hidden costs of home ownership, and the risk in not being able to sell or rent it out after school is done - these are very real concerns but are currently outweighed by the need to find housing that meets our needs for rent and the inability to do so. Mortgage payments are significantly lower than rent, even rent at very modest places, but I assume we'd be coming out about even either way when you factor in taxes and insurance and the cost of repairing things that break and such.

Any and all help, advice, input, stories, etc is very appreciated.

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As someone who has had nearly everything you can imagine happen to them during approximately 15 years of home ownership, I can tell you that "the hidden costs" of home ownership can be very substantial, depending on the condition of the home you buy. I personally would not buy a home that I wasn't planning to live in for at least 5 years, and the open question mark of both residency and where your husband might be getting a job after graduation would leave me in substantial doubt about whether owning made more sense than renting. We currently rent after selling our previous house (located in another state) just last year. Since we moved in 18 months ago, our landlord has had to replace both HVAC units (to the tune of about $6k). I've never felt better about writing a monthly rent check in my life.

That said, once you're in the mortgage no one cares how you pay it and where the money comes from. Only that the bill is paid every month.

Student loan overages disburse by each semester, you use those funds as you see fit.
 
7 year homeowner here. I wouldn't recommend it. As noted, even if you try to budget heavily for hidden costs of homeownership you really can't predict it. My house is nice, inspected well, and I've spent about 25k on surprises (these DON'T include routine maintenance or things like replacing the water heater, etc). Plus dealing with fixing things while a busy student sucks too.

But more importantly is the fact that you know you'll be going to residency after 4 years of medical school. So you'll likely have to move. Unless your fiancee wants to stay while you go elsewhere, or you rent the place out as an absentee landlord, you'll have to sell in a kind of forced position.
 
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