So, FI and I have decided to stay where we are for another two years. After weighing the pros and cons, we felt that this was the best decision. This way, we can pay off 3/4 of my student loan debt before we move and we can take trips and not have to worry about our budget. We came to the realization that the only reason why we wanted a house right now was for more space (we live in a one-bedroom apartment).
FI's going to send an e-mail to our real estate agent tomorrow telling her what we decided on and also saying that, in two years, we would like to have her as our agent for when we build. In two years we'll be able to build a much nicer house than we could right now (pre-approval is off of FI's salary only; most of mine will go towards paying off my loans).
It would have been nice to have more space, but I'd rather wait and have a much, much nicer house than what we could afford now. We're in the process of moving things around and getting more storage so that we can have more room (and a table for eating! Right now we eat off the kitchen counter). The bottom line is, we don't need more space right now. Anything we get from the wedding that we can't fit or that we want to save so that they'll be "new" when we move into our house we can leave at our parents'.
Thanks everyone for your advice! We feel like we've made the right decision. We want to have our first kid in early 2015, and we want most of my loans paid off by then (once we build, the loan payments will be much lower than the first two years because by that time the loans left will have a lower interest rate than the mortgage so there's no use putting all our money towards the student loans).
I'm happy because FI will be able to sleep better now. Poor guy's been losing sleep trying to figure out which path is best for us. We'll probably still go to new-build open houses in the price range that we'll be looking at just to see what we can get
