housing decisions

Lately, we have been trying to decide what we are going to do about housing on a long-term basis. We signed a six month lease on this apartment, thinking that hopefully we would have the house sold by the end of the 6 months, and then we could get another house here. But then we thought, maybe we should try to get all of our credit card debt paid off before buying, so that we could afford to buy a house we would be able to stay in for 10 years (instead of just 3 or 5). So, that would mean maintaining low housing payments for another 2 years approximately, to free up money to pay off the credit cards quickly.

The question this brought up was, could we stay in an apartment for 2 more years? For me, it isn't so much a question of whether or not I could stay in an apartment for 2 years (no problem), but can we really ask that of our kids? To spend 2/5 of their pre-school, at-home years in an apartment?

Honestly, I cannot figure out what the stigma is with an apartment. Is there something inherently bad about sharing walls with another family? It is actually quite economical; it saves insulation, energy, building materials, space. There are a lot of reasons I should love it, because I love efficiency. Furthermore, as a stay-at-home mom who feels isolated at times, having neighbors I am forced to see should be a plus, right?

I know a major downside of an apartment is not having an outside play area (i.e. yard) for the kids. However, this apartment complex does have a playground - better equipment than I could expect to have in my own backyard - and there is a park with deluxe playground across the street. Still, I know I am less likely to give them outside play time when I have to march across the parking lots with them (or pile us all into the car), and then sit and watch them play. With a house, I could just open the back door and let them out (theoretically - but there are always people who would disapprove of this approach and say I should still go out with them and sit and watch them play, just like at a public playground - still, I would at least avoid coordinating a walk or drive to the playground).

And then there is the economics argument - is renting throwing away money that could be going toward equity? In this case, since we would be moving again in 2-3 years, we would only accumulate enough equity to pay for the closing costs and realtor fees.

Talking to Heath about it, though, he very much wants to own a house. And in fact, so do I. I can't explain it logically, but there seems to be a stigma toward living in an apartment once you have reached a certain stage in life. It seems to subconsciously signal failure on some level. So, we are now looking for homes that would still yield a low housing payment and allow us to get the cards paid off just as quickly as living in an apartment. Even though we will just break even financially in 3 years, and we will have to deal with all the responsibility and upkeep of owning a house (not to mention selling it after those 3 years!), for some reason it is more appealing that renting an apartment. Heath tried to explain something about it being part of man's nature to want to own land. Maybe that is it. But for my part I still can't explain why my heart is so traitorous to my logic in this case.