Life Advice - Should I buy a house?

As the title says, I wanted to seek the advice of others since I don’t really know who else to talk to (beyond my family) and this is my first time going through this process. I know the figures here pale in comparison to many Bay Area TCs and property values, but it’s still a non trivial decision to me so any advice would be appreciated.

I live in Dallas and during covid (about 6mo ago) changed jobs to take a job building out a DS team at a non profit. My company isn’t based here but I am totally remote permanently. My parents live in the DFW area and I really value being around them, in fact I’ve been living at home during covid and really enjoy it. I know you shouldn’t make decisions based on the opinions of others or anything like that, but the primary downside to being at home is the dating situation, it can be difficult bringing girls over or say having a group of guys over to watch football (post covid).

I have been looking at places in Dallas and you can get really nice townhomes/condos (with low HOAs) that are roughly 2k sq ft and in great parts of the city in the 5-600k range.

My TC is about 215k and primarily cash (no stock since non profit) with about 15k of that being deferred. In terms of investments, I have about 370k liquid in the market, 401k, etc so a NW of 400-500k ish. YOE 4 so I’m mid 20s, single male.

I may look at jobs in the Bay or NYC in a couple years for higher TC, in which case I could rent this place out, but ideally I want to have something near my family so I was thinking it might not be a bad idea to lock in now with low rates and even if I leave and come back, I’d then have something.

Though TX is growing, I understand it’s never going to appreciate like CA or Seattle.

Since I have my family here, there’s no urgency to move out, so my question is would I be stupid to buy a place? Monthly payments would be $3000-3500 for a place at 550k. I know I’d be hanging out with my family a good amount anyway, so the place wouldn’t be occupied 100%, but since I work remotely permanently it would be nice to have a dedicated office and a place to entertain.

Anyway, would you all consider this rational, wasteful, in between? Should I just keep all the money In the market?

Thank you for your thoughts!

#personalfinance #investments #realestate