Condo-fication: Part 3

They want $181 900 for this place as a condo.

$181 900???!!! Holy crap, who’d have thought this place would cost so much!!
The official letter from the new owners of our soon-to-be condo came yesterday, and now we have a tough decision to make. I’m torn over whether we should buy or not. On the one hand, we really love the location and our apartment (despite being leaked on) and would love to stay. Plus we hate moving. On the other hand, the asking price was waaay more than I was expecting. Coming up with a down payment by August will be tough, especially since I’d want to put down at least 20%. Borrowing against my 401k would be an option, but I’m a little hesitant about taking on that much more debt at this point, especially considering the credit card debt I’ve been trying to dig out from under for the past year. Doing some rough calculations putting down at least 11% on a 20 year mortgage would make the mortgage payment about the same as what our rent is now. That would mean I’d also have to factor in that darned PMI as an additional cost.

Well, we have a little bit of time to make a decision. The first thing to do will be to head over to talk to one of the sales reps sometime next week. I’d like to find out what they have planned for the condo-conversion process (new flooring, appliances, other upgrades?) and see if there’s any wiggle room in their price.