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Young couple seeking answer to million dollar question: Rent or Buy?

We are young, really young (19 and 20) and live in Vancouver WA. We've done the apartment thing (very expensive) and we've done the shared housing thing (bad choice of housemates). We don't mind sharing a home, but both situations we've had were terrible, and we are for sure moving out at the end of this month. Here are the options we've considered. First, a 1 bed 1 bath apartment. The cheapest we've found were around $550 - $600 in the Vancouver area, which is okay. The next option we've considered is getting a nice 2 bedroom apartment and getting roommates to split the rent in half. For example, if we find a nice 2 bed 2 bath for $800/mo, it would be $400/mo for us, saving us more money. Then we would have the choice to pick our roommates, but the downside would be the initial move-in costs and however long it would take to actually find a good roommate. Then we kept finding ads that told us to buy instead of rent for the same price, or a little more. They said that 3 bedroom houses were going for $150,000 in our area which would come to around $950/mo, and require no deposit and no credit check, and take over lease payments to own, or something like that. I've never even considered buying a house, especially at my age, but with the market how it is would it be a wise choice? I currently make about $2500/mo at my job, and my girlfriend is recently unemployed but looking. We don't have any debt and would just like to know which option would be best: Rent or Buy? Thank you so much for any advice. We have been together 2 and a 1/2 years and are engaged. Would be married but want a nice wedding and don't quite have the finances for that

Public Comments

1. Rent the one bedroom apartment. Do not buy a house with a girlfriend. Wait to buy a house with a wife. You think you had messy things with roommates? Wait til you are trying to split up who owns what and who gets to stay and who owes who in a gf/bf buying a house scenario. Never ends well...seen it too many times. Something shady about a company putting ads saying NO credit check NO deposit, just take over the lease and you will own the place? Nope, doesn't work that way. If the bank found out about this, they would call the loan, you would get evicted and then what are you going to do? Just rent the one bedroom apt for now. You will avoid a huge headache, believe me.
2. Presuming that you are married, it would be a great time to buy - what with the housing market, low interest rates, etc. If you are not married, then it's a whole different case - you can (probably) still buy, but for both of your sakes, it would be best to get in writing, before purchase, what happens if you split up..better safe now than sorry later :}