moving to Buffalo over the summer- houses are cheap, but resale is questionable. Trying to decide whether to get into a house or rent- any input would be appreciated.
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Buffalo: Buy vs Rent
Started by johnjohnjohn
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What is your price range? Certain areas are not really appreciating, others are. Buying the house on time to get instate residency saves you 15k off the bat. Purchasing a house in a decent neighborhood will ensure that the property appreciates. Including the 15k off tuition, yous hould profit upon your resale.
The question really comes down to whether or not you want to be responsible for the property.
The question really comes down to whether or not you want to be responsible for the property.
Definitely buy. Houses here are cheap, don't really depreciate at all if in the right neighboorhood and renting here in Buffalo is expensive. You can find a nice house here for 100k for around 1400 sq feet or so with a full basement. Try to rent a house for 600/month, you won't be able to find anything that you would want to live in. Also as the previous poster said, close before the residency deadline and you can get instate tuition the first year, that will 15k which is the downpayment for the house. Good luck next year.
July 1st- to rent one unit in a two unit house is about 650-750- maybe more. To rent an entire house is about 1k-1.2k- the same or more than a mortgage.
TucsonDDS- are you attending Buffalo? If so, what areas would you recommend that tend to maintain value and/or appreciate.
1k-12k seems a little high for Buffalo. I imagine that is what you found on the internet. When I spoke to students @ Buffalo some of them bought houses and were paying 500 a month. One guy even said he bought a house for 78k and was paying like 300 something.
Unless he put 50k down he is full of it. The area won't have much to do with your mortgage rate...certainly not enough to give you a $300 a month payment on 80k.
If you pm me a price range, I will tell you where I would look if I were you. There are certain areas that have good spots and bad spots mixed together as well, so if you find a particular house you may want to run it by some people from Buffalo before committing.
Also, the orientation website is a better place for you to seek information than here. If you would like the name of a real estate agent here, I can give you the contact information for a friend who is partner in a local firm.
If you pm me a price range, I will tell you where I would look if I were you. There are certain areas that have good spots and bad spots mixed together as well, so if you find a particular house you may want to run it by some people from Buffalo before committing.
Also, the orientation website is a better place for you to seek information than here. If you would like the name of a real estate agent here, I can give you the contact information for a friend who is partner in a local firm.
JohnJohnJohn,
if you are not certain that you'll stick around Buffalo after dental school I don't think it is a good idea to buy a house. If you know you want to live in Buffalo for many years to come go ahead and buy. Personally I think it is absurd to buy a home so that you can shave off say $100K to be considered instate for the next four years, especially since NY allows you to change your status after 1st year. I mean are you going to saddle yourself with a home mortgage over this? Rent in Buffalo from what I've seen are very reasonable.
if you are not certain that you'll stick around Buffalo after dental school I don't think it is a good idea to buy a house. If you know you want to live in Buffalo for many years to come go ahead and buy. Personally I think it is absurd to buy a home so that you can shave off say $100K to be considered instate for the next four years, especially since NY allows you to change your status after 1st year. I mean are you going to saddle yourself with a home mortgage over this? Rent in Buffalo from what I've seen are very reasonable.
But, a 80k duplex for example...that 15k takes you down to 65k, get an arm loan b/c you are going to pay it off in a few years anyways...rent out half for 600....with no money down that leaves you with a roughly $50 a month mortgage payment, if that. If the house appreciates at all, you can get some return on investment and possibly have very little living expense while here...if you don't end up making money. You could keep the property as a rental property too (if you do this, you would want a different type of mortgage though).
The risk is in if something goes wrong with the house, both financially and in the time you have to spend dealing with it. Also, it is a pain in the *** to buy and sell homes...
The risk is in if something goes wrong with the house, both financially and in the time you have to spend dealing with it. Also, it is a pain in the *** to buy and sell homes...
Dental school was enough of a pain and took up a lot of my time. I wouldn't advocate buying a house unless you are really handy and want to deal with the maintenance of it on top of having exams and labwork. There were som married students in my class who bought, although there were also married couples renting apartments and homes. The majority of the class rented. Also, Buffalo never saw the crazy appreciation that the rest of the country went through so I wouldn't necessarily count on that as part of your reason to buy.
We paid 95K for a 3 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath 1 car garage full brick house. After 20% down our payment is 385 plus taxes and insurance. We are 5 houses away from a large park with 5 or 6 baseball fields, an indoor hockey rink for my kids to learn to skate and a nice pool for the summer swims. I am about 2 miles from campus by Lincoln Park in Tonawanda (area code 14223) with very nice neighbors (1 is one of my instructors). We have a fully fenced yard for the dog and a big *** tire swing in the backyard for the kids. I will admit that you have to either be a little handy for the infrequent drips that a 50 year old house brings but it is well worth it to own. We looked at places to rent and the cheapest we found was about $1000 for a comparable house in not as nice of a neighborhood or not as close to the school. I will admit that we were very lucky in finding our house (it was on the market for about 20 minutes before we made a full price offer) and we got a 5 year arm at 4.5% but even if it cost a couple hundred more a month I feel that buying was right for me and my family. I also just got a post card from my realtor who sold us our house and it had a big housing breakdown of the area. The average home price went up by 4.7% over last year and the average days on market for my zip was 42 days. Not too bad. I figure I will have saved about 20k in rent and will have made about 15k in appreciation over the 4 years of owning it. And even if I don't make a dime on selling it, at least I am not having to ask someone else if I can paint my kids room.
I put 25K down on an 80K house and my mortgage payment was $321.55 to be exact. I lived in north buffalo right near the south campus on a safe dead-end street, paid less taxes because I technically lived in the city, and was close enough to school to walk if i wanted. I highly suggest buying if you have the means.... If you don't have a family and find someone to live with you, they can easily pay your mortgage with their rent and then you live for free (minus utilities, taxes, sewer rent, garbage- truly don't add up to all that much).
320 included your taxes? Also, with 25k on 80 you were able to opt out of PMI...
I exaggerated my post a bit, but you cannot get 80k for 300 a month.
I am not at all against buying, especially for out of staters. Being from the area, and not being sure of whether I will stay, I personally decided not to rent. I don't get a tuition discount though and didn't want to risk my time and money on whether or not the house was going to stay in good shape for me...but I don't always have the best luck
I exaggerated my post a bit, but you cannot get 80k for 300 a month.
I am not at all against buying, especially for out of staters. Being from the area, and not being sure of whether I will stay, I personally decided not to rent. I don't get a tuition discount though and didn't want to risk my time and money on whether or not the house was going to stay in good shape for me...but I don't always have the best luck
$321 did not include taxes. I will also tell you that I bought at the right time and locked in a 30yr at 4.25% (lowest I have ever seen). I turned around and sold my house for almost a 20% profit, so not only did I live for free in Buffalo, I also funded my first year of living (rent) in Manhattan during my residency. You want to talk about sticker shock... my rent is now 5 times what my mortgage was... yikes....
That sucks lol...the way i was looking at it was with a PMI payment of 70 or so a month, taxes in north buff are what, 1500-2500 depending on the street so figure in another 150 or so...with 10k down you are probably looking at a mortgage payment of 650. You can get a lot of house for that 650. I pay about that in rent now. North Buffalo has some great areas and lots of houses and duplexes. With the right deal, you can really make out. One of my big issues though, was that most of the homes were built b.w 1920 and 1940. There is a large potential for problems there. A good inspection can alleviate some of the risk though and there are other areas with newer homes for comparable prices.
On a side note, when my dad was back at the school in the 80s, a classmate of his bought a house for around 70k, and sold it 4 years later for nearly the same cost.
That said, I'm probably going to rent...still looking for places though. A house close by would be nice, but I might just end up at an apartment 10-15mins away. Just gotta get a roommate.
That said, I'm probably going to rent...still looking for places though. A house close by would be nice, but I might just end up at an apartment 10-15mins away. Just gotta get a roommate.
I just got a market analysis letter from Hunt Realty which is probably the largest realtor in Buffalo. Said that the average price per square foot for all sold properties in Erie County in the last 90 days was up 8% from the same 90 days a year ago. This brough the average price up from 78/sqft to 84/sqft. The average days on market was 66. In my immediate area of Tonawanda about 2 miles or so from school the average house was about 100k for around 1100sqft. We purchased our house in Oct of 05 for 95k for about 1350sqft which works out to be about 70/sqft. Once again, buying in or around Buffalo isn't for everyone but I don't think you will lose any money on a home here in the area unless you buy in one of it's "depreciating" neighborehoods, which you probably wouldn't want to live in anyways.
Don't quote me on this but I believe all you need is a NYS drivers license and mailing address to get residency.
They have more info at the orientation website.
http://src.buffalo.edu/studentaccount/residency.shtml
Just buy the house, close and make it your permanent residence and fill out the application by the deadline.
It says "Generally, in-state tuition becomes effective one year after a student has established a New York State domicile."
There's nothing specific about homeowners getting residency faster. Anybody?
The wording has changed a little bit since I last looked at that link. I do know that one guy in my class and a few in the class under me have received in-state tuition by closing escrow on a residence prior to the deadline, however with the change in the wording perhaps they are trying to close that loophole. Your best bet would be to call them and get the information from the actual people who grant residence classifications and not from a bunch of other students.
I am not a dental student or anything (DPT), but my wife and I bought a house very close to UB's dental school ( in Amherst) for 85k with 2 bedrooms, big kitchen, big dining room, and a huge living room. We rented upstairs for $600/month and currently paying $1000 for our mortgage including taxes&insurance. It could have been a lot less than it is now, but the interest rate is too high. Overall, we like it and would do it again. But i suggest that you buy a multi-unit house and rent the other unit which will cut the cost for the house by %50.
Can anybody explain the process for getting residency after buying a house? I called Buffalo today and they did not have any information and suggested that I talk to the people that told me this is possible. The application suggests that buying a house is no quicker way to residency than a drivers license. Thx!
I think you will need to wait for a year to get the residency in NYS.
Not true, you can get residency after the first year regardless of whether or not you own property. One of the advantages to buying it to get resident tuition the first year. Its like a 15k down payment on the house. You have to buy early enough to be eligible and unfortunately, I am not familiar with the process, but someone on here will be able to send you in the right direction.
I am also very confused about in-state tuition. I remember during interviews people told me about the loophole of buying a house and getting immediate in-state tuition. However after looking at the src website, it seems they eliminated the loophole. Furthermore, can anyone explain how I can get in-state tuition AFTER my first year if i simply rent an apartment? I've heard this is possible but that website is confusing with its requirements and it seems as if I have to live in NY after dental school to meet the NY resident requirements. I will probably move back to GA after dental school so is it possible for me to get in state after 1st year?? Thanks
Well I haven't been able to figure anything out about whether or not you can get in state tuition after simply buying a house but the market here seems strong. The house directly behind mine just sold in 6 days for 3k over the asking price. It may be because Buffalo never had a big run up so housing here hasn't taken the hit as the rest of the country has because I think this is one of the few places that hasn't decreased in value in the last couple of years.
