To buy or carry on renting.

[chewbacca83]

My husband and I are having a dilemma and would appreciate and advice. We live in the north of England. I have a permanent job and average salary but will soon be going on maternity leave. I expect I will go back to work 3 days a week after a year off. My husband is on a temporary contract (common in his field until he becomes senior) he currently has 3 applications in the pipeline for permanent positions but the recruitment process takes several months. His contract has another 18 months on it with the likely hood of it being extended by a short time.
We are renting a dodgy house in a different dodgy area (but very easy commute for both of us). We had to find somewhere to rent quickly that would allow 2 cats so it was all pickings!
I am selling my own house which I have rented out for the last year so we will have a very healthy deposit to buy. We are currently paying out double what a mortgage could be in rent.
With new baby on the way we are desperate to buy a family home in a nice area. However my husband's work situation is very complicated (academia) and if he is unsuccessful in these job applications we may have to live cities and if that's the case I may have to pay back some of my maternity pay.

Question is....do we bite the bullet and buy now knowing there is a chance we may have to up sticks and move again in a year. With all those moving costs and the stress of moving with a new baby. Or do we stay in our rented house paying over the odds in rent for a house which I affectionately call the shit hole for the stability until we know for sure what the future holds for my husband?

Advice from wise mumsnetters needed!

I would look for somewhere cheaper and nicer to rent. Buying when you might move in a year's time could be £££. Unless you could consider moving to a city that has plenty of academic institutions within commuting distance.

Everywhere is really expensive to rent where we are. If we wanted to live somewhere nicer we would have to have a much smaller house and probably much further from the good transport links. Moving house whether to rent or buy is expensive. When we found our current place we had to give 3 months rent in advance as deposit and first payment. We couldn't afford to do that again. My preference would be to move into our own home or not at all. I just worry that buying when we may have to move again would be silly. But then we would probably spend the same amount in rent as we would lose in fees. literally thousands a year.

Start looking for somewhere to buy then. You say North of England, but if it's somewhere like Leeds, Liverpool or Manchester, you could be within commuting distance of lots of academic institutions.
Your husband might get another contract where he is.
There's not much point in being in a home you hate when you can afford to buy.

I think that's my thinking too. We are near to a few major cities so I would hope he would be able to get a job nearish. I worry too that if property prices go up much in the next year we will be priced out of the areas we want to live in.

I don't think prices will rise but I'm not an expert and they might do where you are. One concern I would have is that i that you could not afford 3 months rent upfront, and your income isn't guaranteed.
Start looking and be realistic about what you can afford.
Sorry if I seem a bit pessimistic but I think you are making the right choice.
Good luck with jobs, baby and househunting.

With the deposit we have we would need a fairly small mortgage so our monthly repayments will be half what our rent is. Much more affordable on a single income if it came to it. We don't need a big expensive house, just somewhere without yobs on the street at night and rubbish everywhere. Somewhere with an actual community would be nice!

You'll find somewhere.

Having a low mortgage would def take the edge off with temporary contracts and pt work, but I'd say give him a bit more time, maybe a year, to find a permanent job.

If no leads by then, as someone said then buy somewhere with commuting distance to as many unis as possible while being good for your work also.

I don't think house prices in most parts of the country will rise in the next year - will likely stay the same or fall slightly. Although you might want to check on the areas where you would think about living to see if there's an upward trend.

Technically though your deposit would be subsidising what you'd spend in rent, it's not like it would literally be half the cost as you'd have a large amount of capital tied up to reduce the monthly spend. With the job uncertainty and a baby I think I'd wait the year personally.

I am usually very risk averse when it comes to these things. It's really tricky knowing what the best thing to do is. The longer we leave it we might as well stay where we are because his contract will be up. At least if we move soon we have at least a year in a new place. And we would be able to afford a cheaper mortgage on one salary whereas we would have more difficulty paying the rent on one salary.