Long Personal RE/Finance Question: I’ve generally avoided buying personal residential real estate for the reasons outlined in this article: https://jlcollinsnh.com/2013/05/29/why-your-house-is-a-terrible-investment. I’m 30, single, 760+ credit score, about 250k in various Roth investment accounts and will graduate next year with about 150k in very low interest student debt (5 year variable, currently at 1.17%) and around 200k in comp. I’m moving to Austin, TX in summer 2022 post-MBA, and thinking of buying a 2 bedroom condo around South Lamar, somewhere in the $500k range. I have access to VA and TX VLB loans meaning low rates, zero money down, and zero PMI. Texas property taxes are high, but I get a good discount due to my military disability. With this is in mind, I’m very tempted to just borrow 500k in this low rate environment and lever myself into a house. My only hesitation is that the Austin housing market is simply insane right now and prices are sky high. I’m tempted to wait and try to buy low, but I’m not sure if that will be in the cards for Austin. I just really dislike the idea of buying at a high. I’m also not 100% sure I will stay in Austin, but if I move I will likely keep the place as a rental property (I’m fairly bullish on Austin’s future) If you were in my shoes, would you buy or continue to rent? Bullish on Austin? Thanks for reading through this saga!
P.S. If I wanted to get reallly aggressive, could even buy a place and then take out a line of credit on it (again low rates, yay) and put that money into a broad index fund for the long term. Crazy?