A week ago, my Fiancee and I decided that we wanted to spend one day, just one, not thinking or doing anything regarding looking for a house to buy. After a stressful week of open houses and meetings and googling, the day came.
We went out to Uvas Canyon Park. It's hidden away in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a twisting labyrinth of trees and rivers. It was raining, but that is the best time to hike around waterfall loop, a mile stretch of downhill river slope. The sound of the river crashing and echoing off the hillsides, the rain splattering in your eyes. There's nothing quite like it, the way the rain drowns out all other noise, leaving you to your own little isolated pocket of existence.
It was freeing. Luckily I didn't do one of those awful things where you start crying, but it's raining so nobody can tell. Yeah that's only in like...anime. Anyhow, being physically away from the process actually did help to clear my head, and my Fiancee and I have come to a sort of crossroads.
We have a pretty sweet deal going on where we are renting, it's a great place in a great area, and we are 10000000% positive that should we move and have to rent again, that we will never find a place this good for the price. That being said, we are still "throwing money down the drain" by renting. Our biggest issue is trying to determine if we should call off the house hunt now and wait till November to start again, when we should have approximately $60k more on a down payment, meaning we wouldn't have to worry about a piggyback loan or mortgage insurance. Or, the second option, do we plan to continue with where we are, and buy a house before interest rates get higher? There's also the option of just not buying and instead seeing a possible greater return and flexibility with putting our money elsewhere, like mutual funds or bonds, or somewhere else.
They don't make this shit easy to figure out.