[legion]

Rammy's thread got me thinking...

I live in a 1600 sq. ft. house with a 3 car garage. We have more furniture (we inherited a lot of VERY nice stuff when my father passed) than we have room for. We have a few nice pieces out in the garage. The wife and I want to start a family in the next two years, but we don't have a place to put a crib or any of that stuff.

Both the wife and I are doing well professionally. Incomes are stable and appreciating at 3%-7% a year.

Over the weekend, I put together a spreadsheet to work out the numbers on buying a new house. I ran 4 scenarios of the house appreciating from 3% - 6% in the four years we have owned it. For each of those scenarios, I also put together numbers for selling with a realtor versus selling FSBO.

Based on what we want to move to, houses cost $200k - $225k. Based on the eight scenarious above, we would net (equity + appreciation) anywhere from $13k (3% appreciation selling w/ realtor) to $50k (6% appreciation selling w/o realtor).

We can pretty much only make the numbers work in the three most positive scenarios (4% - 6% appreciation selling w/o realtor). I don't want to move until things look good in ALL scenarios--which can be accomplished by just staying put and accumulating more equity and letting the house appreciated more.

Am I being too cautious?