Have you considered getting a house in town and a summer/weekend place 100 or so miles outside of town? Might be doable at your budget.

We outgrew the one acre place, going for ten acres and a small brick house. Suburbia grew up around us. Too many red lights, too much traffic and exhaust. Every corporate store and restaurant known to man within a couple miles, sucks. Time to give over to the tide.

Small living quarters, large storage, workshops, gardens and critter space.

Even "when stars line up," your timing on pulling funds from your IRA(s) may prove to be a very bad exercise from the standpoint of lost run-ups in the market. The stock market does not move in static lines. Although the long-term can be averaged, in forensic chronology, it moves erratically. ALL the dramatic, record average-breaking upward movement in the market can be traced and condensed to just a very few weeks/months of movement. If you missed those periods of condensed investment time - then you have missed out for all time. If you think you can time the market, as many here and elsewhere believe they are capable of - you've got a lot of company......unfortunately armchair market timers have yielded +1.56% upside, according to one data center I read covering a 10 year period. The lesson is, you've got to be in it to win it. The market is impossible to time or predict when to be in, or out of it.

Depends on the time element. The fact of the matter is that the longer a dollar is in the market, the greater the compounding of that dollar. Getting a late start on building a portfolio of anything, RE or stocks, seriously diminishes the benefit those investments can or will provide decades later. Small retirement dollars contributed and allocated in one's 20s 30s to any IRA will usually trump by a long shot any large dollars contributed in one's 40s and 50s. Getting the base started and rolling in one's 20s and 30s, will allow for a much easier financial time of it in one's 50s and 60s, etc. The hard small dollars were deployed decades ago - be they in investment RE, or various investment accounts.

The wrong time to start thinking about where your retirement income is going to come from is in your late 50s - by then it's kind of too late in my experience of observing many other's situations over the years.

__________________
'06 E320 CDI
'17 Corvette Stingray Vert

Five Acres and Independence: A Handbook for Small Farm Management: Maurice G. Kains, J. E. Oldfield: 9780486209746: Amazon.com: Books

It's all perspective. I have relatives that live up in westchester county on .33 acre lots and they complain about the upkeep.(yard) of course they spent the first 40 years of their lives in APTs in queens and Brooklyn. I grew up in western pa. I think anything less than 20 acres is useless. But again we had the gardens, grapes, animals etc.

__________________
86 300SDL. 250,xxx on #14 Head. One eye always on temp gauge.. Cruising towards 300K

Also there was a book put out 30 or so years ago called "Back to basics". 5 acres is more than enough to feed a family of 6.

__________________
86 300SDL. 250,xxx on #14 Head. One eye always on temp gauge.. Cruising towards 300K

Oh that's a bunch of crap, I'm making a lot of money doing lots of things with houses. Sure some houses you overpay just to live in because they are nice, but those are not investments; no different than buying a car or boat. Just a financial trophy/reward.

Waiting for natural appreciation is a fools errand and not investing, its called speculating. Speculators don't make money in RE, they get burned. (note I have done some good old fashion land speculation, and got lucky and made a killing doing it. But its gambling so don't do it with money you can't afford to burn)

Their is a massive difference between speculation and investing.

This is what I would recommend the OP do, its proper RE investing and right now is a FANTASTIC time to do it. But time is running out, interest rates are still low, but all the good deals are getting bought up!

For this example I'm going to use a real house I looked at yesterday and would buy if I had the spare money for a flip. This is the kind of house you can buy in just about any city:

Its bank owned and they are asking $136k for it now. Lets just say you paid $136k for it. Now it needs $50k worth of work, but if your young and handy you can DIY it all and probably cut that number to $25k-$30k.

Renovated I'd list it for $259k, and take the first good offer over $250k that came along.

So you would have at most say $190k into it, and at TODAY's market prices have $60k in equity in it. Never buy real estate unless you are getting paid equity when you sign on the line and close. Your money is made when you BUY not when you sell, or over 20 years. Will some houses appreciate in the next 20 years? Probably but who knows, I can't see the future and no one else can. So you have to base your purchases on a known factor, which is today's FMV.

Now an enterprising first time buyer could mortgage this baby out, say at $150k, which would cost you $1200ish a month all in. If said buyer wanted to move on they could get at least $2k in rent for it. So its cash flow positive TODAY if you wanted to rent it.

This is how real estate is done properly, this is what the OP should look for in his town.

__________________
2016 Corvette Stingray 2LT
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Hatterasguy - exactly.

BTW - I don't see the good deals going all that quickly (maybe 1 month till first accepted offer) in the parts of NJ where I'm looking.

Great advice, but harder in practice!

__________________
TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

Not really, especially if you can get a Fannie Mae/Homepath renovation loan.

Gov subsidized profits. What's not to like about that?

True, the place I live in now is a testament to that. I am looking to basically do what Hattie just mentioned, with bank foreclosures. I may just be intimidated by the paperwork. Also a bit concerned at estimating my DIY ability - I can likely do all wall/plumbing/electrical work to code but that's about it. Still 8-12 moths off buying my first place though.

__________________
TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

Why wait a year? I can't speak to PA, but prices in NJ are pretty much at a nadir now.

Is it better to sit on a pile of cash and see it be lost to inflation stoked up by the Bearded Counterfeiter's policies? Thankfully, both him and Bloomberg will be replaced come the end of 2013; neither is seeking another term. Maybe they can get together in Bermuda where Bloomberg has a house and orally pleasure each other -- they'd make a cute couple.

Down payment. I'm only 25 so I don't have a huge amount of cash in savings I can play around with. Past downpayment it's easy.

__________________
TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth