When should I start buying houses?

[StaceyUK]

I have 35,000 so technically enough to buy a house but not do anything with it. When is the best time to start buying?

[Rampant Luck]

I'd say count on using an extra 20% of the purchase price for furnishings and fixing up. If you have the garden dlc, that's about another 5%, but I wouldn't bother for the cheaper houses.

[dark_haunt]

You get back what you put in, plus a bit extra. I usually budget around au$5,000 for the smaller houses, as that gets enough of a sale to be able to afford the next house without having to earn much extra through jobs. So if you buy the houses in order, then you could buy the first one when you have roughly that much plus the cost of the house.

On the other hand, it's not a bad way of playing to get all of the jobs out of the way before starting on the house flipping. Not only can you level up your skills so the flips are a little cheaper and easier, but you'll also end up with enough money that you'll have a bit of leeway to learn the buyers' needs (so you can tailor houses to them for higher sale prices) without having to worry about whether you'll have enough money for the next house.

When you choose to buy the first house really depends on how patient you are to get flipping :)

If you have the Garden DLC, you'll need to make your flip budget a bit higher but be careful not to make it too high. The maximum reward you can get is 50% of the house's sale price, so if you budget for under half of that (for house and garden combined), you should still make a profit. The more under half your budget is, the more profit you'll make. Sometimes it's better to aim for less stars too, as earning full stars can be too expensive to be practical for the smaller houses.

[Kathykins]

I usually just do all the email jobs before I start buying. They are fairly quick, you get skill points to use, you'll unlock tools/equipment and they are great for money. Don't really remember how much I ended up with, but at LEAST 180k (Euro). Might be more.