Can I afford it?

heres the situation; I make 30 k. I have 17k in debt at 9.75 i have 16 k in mutual funds. 1k in savings bond. my parents make 120k combined. owe a house worth 200k, but has 90k in debt on it at 6.05. they will cosign my mortgage. i can get 250000 at 5.84 locked for 5 years. with my income plus renting rooms out I can easily make more then the monthly payments. thus saving instead of renting. I know renting has hassles. but ill deal with them. I would be renting 400$ a month (split an apartment). thats alot of money to throw away. I know rates can go up, but I can sell in 2 or three years and do it again?

im not yet 22.

Never bank on rental income, you need to afford whatever purchase on your own. I would also look at paying down your $17K debt before assuming any other debt. Also ensure that you have enough to put down 20% on the purchase, it will give you some security against potential deflating home prices and will secure you fixed interest rates at the about the same rate of your variable protecting you against interest rate hikes.

How will you sell if the prices of homes keep going down???

No you can't afford it. Your debt to income ratio is over 50%, no bank would give you a loan. Get your debt below 25%.

Rent for now. Take all your mutual funds and savings and pay off all your credit cards, and cut them up, except 1 which you keep as a backup.

Immediately add up all the credit card payments you were making every month, double it and set up an automatic transfer from your bank to your broker, to be invested in an aggressive growth mutual fund.

Do this today.

If you have friends you could have been renting rooms to, approach them, pool your rental money and rent a big house. This works best with big houses and lots of friends, like 5 people total. This will cost less than each of you renting an apartment, and you will live better. I did this when i was younger. Possible problems: Keeping the place clean especially the kitchen, can ruin friendships. Budget in a maid with the rent saved.

Don't buy a house until you have saved up 10% of the value.