Would you buy your dream place, even though you knew finances were likely to change for the worse short term?

[Belgianchox]

That's it really. Currently renting, and have put an option on buying beautiful appartment. It would mean slightly higher repayments than we are paying in rent at the moment, but hopefully only for a year or so as next year some savings we have will be freed up and will allow us to pay off a lump sum of mortgage. But, the downside is that my DH has today discovered that he will more than likely be laid off by the end of this year.
So, should we stay in rented accom, bearing in mind that it's not all that cheap, but we would still have a nice cushion of savings (we have equity from a previous house sales to one side), or take our chances now with buying the appartment as realistically it might be a while before banks would look at us again for a loan???? We already have an idea what repayments would be and would opt for a fixed rate.
I'm in such a dilemma about this, on the one hand I think it's our chance and we should take it, we would manage, I know we would. On the other I don't want us to end up tied into something we can't honour. Then I think well if we can't pay mortgage repayments, the chances are we'll struggle with rental too. To put this in perspective, there would be a difference of approx 150euros between the two payments.
So what do you think? We have 7 days to retract our offer without penalties, it's lake or break time for us......

It sounds like if you were to find yourselves struggling, it would only be for a year, so I reckon it's worth the risk.

We have just (sort of) done this. We went into a house swap, got an above market price for ours and a great price for theirs (on market for ages, a divorcing couple who had to sell and didn't want a chain). The mortgage itself is not the problem (we've only borrowed 2.5x our combined salaries), it's the childcare on top which is scary. We have to cut back quite a lot and are currently looking at potentially taking in a lodger for the loft room- unless the maths prove that a live in nanny really is cheaper. And put DD1 in private school. So, there is someone crazier than you are, don't worry.

Anyway, the upshot is, as others have said, is there fat in your budget and re the redundancy how certain are you of this. I mean, I have a market geared job so it's always theoretically a threat. But I decided that you can reach a point where you are acting out of fear so much you never follow your dreams (how corny is that???)It depends how definite you are about this. In your shoes, I would consider selling the ski place to fund the main property...you probably don't want to hear that though! And I understand why.

HarriettheSpy - did you buy the house with the slopey garden? If so, I have just dug out the pictures of my old one and I would happily look at yours... God, that thread is probably so old, you have forgotten all about it

Harriet, we've pratically decided we're going to go ahead with the purchase. The redundancy looks very probable by the end of this year, but I just think we're not going to have all the conditions lined up to buy as we do now for a long while again. We do have some fat in the budget, we'll just have to look at what we can cut back on in the short term. Re the ski flat, I personally would sell like a shot, the town we live in is 20mins drive from the nearest ski resort (i work there), and within an hours drive of
at least 6 more resorts. However the ski flat is an inheritance from dh's mum and has real sentimental value. We'll only sell it if we have to.It's still good to know we have it to fall back on though.
Glad to know I'm not the only one barmy enough to consider this in the current climate!

Lala
Yes yes we did! I would love to take you up on your offer of pictures and advice. After a long long process, we just completed last Friday.

Belgian. What I would then do, under the circumstances, is rent rent rent rent as much as possible. Heck, we might even be interested!!

Good luck.

I meant rent the ski property by the way.