<prompt> Human: House: 8 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, with 4300 square feet of space on 3 levels ground floor, upstairs, and a finished basement. It was originally built in 1951, but its had a ton of renovation and expansion work completed. The place looks immaculate inside at least to my untrained eye. It could honestly house 20 people without feeling cramped. House Location: Good, but not great. Easy commuting distance to work for both of us. A little higher crime, and the school districts not great 310 on Zillow, but were familiar with the area now and comfortable with it. Maybe 2 miles from a mini downtown with a bunch of great bars restaurants, live music, etc. Its on a small lot, but everything in this area is similarly small, so thats not a deal breaker. We currently live a few blocks away from that same mini downtown in a 1 bedroom apartment built in the early 1960s with 750 square feet. House Price: Asking 750K. Originally asked for 800K back in February, but theyve been lowering it ever since. Zestimate suggests 730K is reasonable, so could probably go lower on price. Neighboring houses are mostly in the 500-600K range, so this is pricey for the neighborhood, but its also in much better condition than everything else there not to mention, double to triple the size of everything else there. Virtually everything in the neighborhood was built in the early 1950s. Small mostly-original houses go for 500K with 1000-1500 square feet of space. Maybe 5-10 of the houses have major renovations or have been torn down and rebuilt selling for 700K. If this were blocks from the mini downtown, itd sell for 2M easily, but I think location is driving the price down significantly. Us: Just my wife and I and a cat. No kids now. We might have kids in the future, but no chance of having 7 kids needed to fill up the house. Were both in our early 30s working professional jobs in the area. Combined income is a little over 200Kyear, though not a lot of job security for me my wife has a lot more stability. Financial condition is pretty solid. Weve been living below our means for years now, so weve got a lot saved up for a down payment could do up to 300K if we had to, but wed probably opt for a 20 down payment regardless of house price. Assuming we both stay employed, mortgage costs are reasonable. Only Reason Why Were Considering It At All: Everything in the area is pricey. Were also considering a 450K condo around 1100 square feet and a 650K townhouse around 2000 square feet. My thought process: if we have to spend 650K for a modest-sized townhouse, another 100K on top of that is only a 15 increase in cost, but it more than doubles the size of the house and gets us a much nicer place overall. It just seems like the better value. Essentially, the condo is the small bag of popcorn at the movie theater, the townhouse is the medium bag of popcorn, and the huge 8 bedroom house is the jumbo bucket of popcorn covered in butter and cheese for only a dollar more. Admittedly, we only need a small bag of popcorn for our current situation, and maybe a medium bag if we have a few kids down the line. Still though, would it ever make sense to buy the jumbo bucket even if we dont need it?Overall Thoughts: I feel like an idiot for even considering this place at all, but I cant get it out of my head after touring it in an open house over the weekend. My wife loves the place too. Are we absolutely crazy here? Tell us why were about to make the dumbest move of our lives.Assistant: In short: yes, youre crazy for even considering it.1. Its well above the range for the area - youre not likely to get a good price when you sell.2. Its not in a great area. Bad schools means private education .3. You dont need a house that big - this is self-explanatory, and really trumps s 1 and 2. 4. Youre ignoring the wide range of possibilities between the condo and the 8-bedroom monster. How about a 4 bedroom home? You can afford half the home youre looking at and still be happy. 5. With larger homes, larger expenses. It was built in the 50s and has been redone, but do you know how well its been redone? Old houses need lots of work, and given that its a larger home to begin with, your baseline is already way above what youre currently paying. ETA - OP has commented elsewhere that the middle route of a smaller home isnt doable because smaller homes are as expensive as the massive one. uslolift made a great point here in saying that this should send off HUGE alarm bells. Comps are generally the best metric for home purchases. LOOK AT COMPS. Secondly, it sounds like OP isnt in a situation that mandates buying. The best option appears to be continue renting and wait for the perfect home to come on the market. Otherwise OP would get stuck in a place they didnt need or didnt fit their needs well. Human: Thanks so much for your input same goes to everyone else in this thread as well. To address a few of your points, were thinking the mediocre schools are both detrimental and beneficial at the same time. Itll hurt resale value and private education is expensive, however, it also means things are cheaper for us in the short term. Is it fair to call that a wash? After all, even if my wife gets pregnant tomorrow, itll still be another 5-6 years before theyd start attending the local public schools. Thats enough time to sell the house for a hopefully higher price and move to an area with better schools. Were also still 5050 on having kids in the first place, so school quality is only important to the extent that it impacts resale value. Also, unfortunately, there isnt much middle ground in the area. The area boomed right after World War II, so you have a ton of tiny houses all dating to the 1940s-50s. If you want a single family home for under 1M, itll have been built before 1960. There are 4 bedroom houses out there, but theyll be just as old and only a little cheaper than the 8 bedroom place actually, many are more expensive than the 750K offered for the 8 bedroom place. Newer development is either townhouses typically built in the 1970s or later, condos typically built in the 1970s or later, with popularity increasing over time, or single family home teardownrebuilds typically built in the 2010s or later, but all selling for well north of 1M. Brand new townhouses go for roughly 1M. Brand new condos go for roughly 600K. If we go the townhouse route, wed target something built in the late 1970s to put us in the 600-700K range. Its just a pricey area Northern Virginia. Excellent point about ongoing costs though. It looks like the last owners were professional house flippers. They bought the place for 585K in June 2016 and dumped a ton of money into it. Everything in the house is brand new kitchen, bathrooms, appliances, furnaces, etc., and as I mentioned in the OP, it looks spectacular. I think they completely gutted the place, did a lot of work fixing it up, and hoped to profit 50K-100K in the year. Im not a house expert though, so no clue if the foundation or other aspects need work, but presumably, thatd come out in the home inspection. Because everything is brand new, Id hope itd be cheaper on the maintenance side when it comes to things wearing down over time, though everyone is absolutely right to point out that heating and other ongoing expenses will be much higher. And yes, we dont need 4300 square feet. To be honest, aside from a stinky litter box, the 750 square foot apartment is actually pretty spacious for the two of us. A lot of people in the area live in much smaller studios 1 bedroom places in the 400-600 square foot range. Even jumping up to an 1100 square foot condo will feel like a big increase, but condos have their own issues.  <response>: You know why 4 bedroom houses are more expensive? Because theres actually a market for them. No one wants an 8 bedroom house so they cant command more than theyre offering. I think its pretty unlikely you make a profit when you eventually sell. 