Foreclosures and Newlyweds — Why Home Purchasing and Wedding Planning Should Not Mix

Today on the front page of Yahoo! Finance there was an article reporting that foreclosures went up 93% since last year. This made me wonder how many of those foreclosed homes belonged to young newlyweds. It seems that to many people buying a home is the ultimate sign of settling down, and is an integral part of getting married so many couples actually make home purchasing a part of their wedding planning. I am getting married in four days, and throughout our engagement many people have asked us if we were purchasing a home. The fubby’s parents even generously offered to help us with the downpayment and my parents also already gave us a fairly large cash gift that they hope we would use towards our downpayment. We decided against buying a home during our wedding planning, and here are some of the reasons why:

1. The Stress — Wedding planning take a lot of time and patience, and so does buying a home. Since we’re both software engineers working full time, it’s already stressful enough to use up our nights and weekends to plan for the wedding. If we added home shopping to the mix we would have another huge decision to make amidst all the other things we have to book for the wedding. Home and mortgage shopping would just make everything more complicated and add anxiety to both of us.

2. The Timing — It’s nearly impossible to time the home purchase and the wedding perfectly so that we could move in right after we get married. A couple friends of ours bought a new construction home that was not finished until four months after their wedding. This is not a big deal if you are willing to wait, but why add stress to the engagement if your new home will be available after the wedding anyway? Also, when you shop for a house before the wedding, the wedding becomes somewhat of an artificial deadline for your closing date. When you put a time constraint on purchasing a home, you might not make the best choice. It is also a little risky to purchase a home before a wedding because technically you’re not yet married. So whose name will be on the title? Also, what if the wedding doesn’t happen? What will happen to the house then? So in my opinion, the engagement is never a good time to buy a home because it is a time of uncertainty.

3. The Expenses – A wedding is already a huge expense. When you throw in buying a house into the mix, the bleeding of cash would be extremely painful. Usually when there is a surge of expenses, a lot of people could get into credit card debt and other financial trouble. A lot of the times people also underestimate the cost of simply purchasing a home just like I underestimated a wedding. So unless money is no object, the expenses of buying a home could take a substantial toll on the relationship and add stress to the wedding planning.

4. The Emotions — People are always asking me, “Are you excited about the wedding?” I am actually more anxious than excited, but the point is that the days before a wedding is an emotional time. When people are abnormally emotional, they don’t tend to make the most rational decisions. Buying a home is such a big decision that just one mistake could send someone into financial ruin. I really think that in the premarital months some couples get too excited about starting their lives together in a big beautiful place and buy way above their means. I don’t have real statistics to support that this happens a lot, but I know I could have fallen into that trap.

5. The Credit — Both the fubby and I are 24. We have no debt and have never missed payments on anything, but our credit histories aren’t very long so our credit scores aren’t as high as they could be. It’s more likely that young people like us won’t get the best loans possible even if we have very good incomes and the downpayment. Anyway, I really think credit scores are a funny thing, because apparently I need more debt to improve my score. I don’t plan to incur more debt, but waiting a few years so that our credit histories age a bit is probably a good thing.

I have also told a lot of you that I am not considering buying a home mostly because of the current prices of homes. It’s really out of our control that our engagement happens to occur during one of the greatest housing bubbles in history. I’m sure for some couples the cost not a big deal because the home is paid for by their parents or they’re independently wealthy enough to have substantial financial resources. Unfortunately for us, we would land in jumbo loan territory even with a 20% downpayment on most homes here and will have to pony up more than 50% of our paychecks for the monthly payments. I really don’t want to end up a foreclosure statistic. Regardless of the cost of a home, the sheer amount of work in choosing a home, a reception hall, a DJ, a caterer, bridal party, invitations , and all the rest could really weigh down a relationship. In conclusion, I really believe that buying a home while planning a wedding is a potential danger to the relationship and financial health of an engaged couple. We do want to purchase a home sometime, but we will do it on our own terms without the additional pressures of a wedding.

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