We purchased a house for $30K with $15 down last December, all earned by us (I’m 26, he’s 28). It will be paid off by May 2012.

Don’t get down on their accomplishment just because they used their resources to their advantage.

Check out Thirty Bucks a Week (http://thirtyaweek.wordpress.com/), by a couple in NYC who have been eating for $30 a week for the past three years. I think it would be hard to say that they don’t care about food.

However, don’t forget that this couple also committed to preserving and growing that inheritance. They went from $18,000 to $50,000 – saving an additional $32,000 is quite an achievement. They did so by continuing to live below their means and making frugal choices. Just because an inheritance helped to kick start their down payment savings goal, doesn’t negate all of their other hard work. It’s not as if this was a story about them inheriting the whole $50,000 and using that money to pay down debt and use as a down payment. This was a story about a couple lucky enough to have a sizeable inheritance AND good fiscal habits that allowed them to more than double the original inheritance AND who chose a fixer upper house they could buy out right with cash.

It was very smart of you to leave the DC area. When we sold our house back there (with nearly $100K left on the mortgage), we were able to pay off the mortgage and purchase a home outright, with cash, when we moved to the SW. Oh, and our DC house? Built in the 1950s, great bones but definitely outdated. We made all of the improvements ourselves (saved a bundle, as you can imagine), and it made all the difference when the time came to market our home. It got snapped up immediately, forcing us to move sooner than we anticipated. Never looked back. Best decision of our lives!

Happily mortgage free now and regularly adding to the retirement fund.

Again, congrats! You’ve already achieved success and you’re very young. Your story is an inspiration, and hopefully a LESSON, to people twice your age

My only suggestion is to remember to take breaks; don’t work on the house all the time, or you will burn out. But also don’t pay too much attention to folks who tell you that it’s too much work for the payoff. We made back 160% of the money we put in, after subtracting real estate, interest, and materials costs, when we sold toward the end of 2009. I don’t regret one bit all the evenings I spent stripping wallpaper, replacing roofs, floors, and just about everything in between. The money we made gave us enormous flexibility when hunting for that post PhD job.

Oh, and for those who think they can’t move to a cheaper cost of living area, that may be true. But many of us search for jobs nationwide after college or grad school, and I think cost of living is important to take into account. When DH was searching for his professor job, one of the things we did was look at the ratio of housing prices to expected salary. Anything above a certain point was deemed too expensive, and he didn’t apply for those jobs. While this wasn’t the only criterion we used, it was one of the most important. Housing where we live now isn’t quite at the 50K level (more like twice that), but it is in many places in PA, w. NY, and the Midwest. I’ve lived in some of these places, and they have a lot of advantages over expensive large cities, where I’ve also lived (academics move a lot).

I spent ten child-free years fixing up my first house. My husband and I sold it, bought another fixer upper that never got fixed up after our kids arrived.

I recall my understanding 7 years ago, prices are inflating at rates greater than personal income. Thus buying sooner than later, given there was nothing out there about price declining precipitously, buying was what I needed to do.

If I had extrapolated my logic a bit I may have drawn the conclusion that prices are inflating at rates greater than personal income, meaning, this is unsustainable and likely a bubble which I can take advantage of somewhere down the road.

I’m owning it but it’s not fun.

Not fun, but not impossible either.

I could also give up my free time fixing up a house on my own and not network or date. (A friend of mine did that — not a good idea!) I also like having retirement savings and an emergency fund. (I’m several years older than this couple, so my priorities are a little different).

A house just doesn’t mean that much to me that I’m willing to give all that up. I agree it’s all about priorities, but i think you’re making something sound much easier than it actually is.

Check out http://www.thestonesoup.com. This website can show you how to eat very well on $25-$35/week.

Hmmm. Some of us who care live where our loved ones are. Even if that means we’re stuck with higher real estate prices.

In Calgary, $50K won’t buy the smallest lot in the worst neighborhood, let alone a house. These folks had a generous dose of luck and family help, too. Even their insanely low grocery budget — at least for here, land of expensive food — was padded with donations from parents. Good on them for using their windfall wisely.