I haven’t found that to be the case, for me. OMMV.Originally Posted by Stone
I haven’t found that to be the case, for me. OMMV.
”But in the end all of these ideas just manufacture new criminals when the problem isn't a lack of criminals.” -JRB
Hush now sir, you'll anger the boomers.
Actually those figures are pretty damned appalling tho.
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Why would we be angry? We already knew it was a better time to be alive. (Even if some things were more difficult.)
Anyway this boomer ain't bitchin'. I wouldn't trade places for a house of any size. (By the way, I bought my first and only one at 50.)
There's nothing civil about this war.
I think you have a point, but you have to live somewhere. We just sold a house and moved. Sold it for more than we bought it for, but when you factor in everything you mention above we were either even or negative. The only thing you don't mention is that you have to live somewhere. I know people that pay more than I pay in my mortgage as rent. We lived in our old place for about 18 years. At $1000/month we'd have paid 216K in rent over those years, and we could never rent what we had for 1K a month, maybe we could have 18 years ago but it would be more like 2K/ month now.
It is also something to keep in mind if you are waiting out the high market. If you wait 5 years to buy, you can just tack on 5 years of rent to your purchase price.
Home ownership also stabilized my bills more so than rent. Over time insurance and property taxes increased, but my mortgage either remains the same, goes down if I refi, or goes away when I pay it off. The increases in taxes etc, were a lot less than the increases in rent in the same time period.
In general it costs money to live.
Owning my home is a far better investment than renting the same house, in most times.
If you like living in an apartment, sharing your walls with noisy, transient neighbors, just to pay less overall, I won't argue with you. You do you.
The big costs to owning are interest rates, taxes and upkeep.
If you think those costs are not bundled into your rent payment that you send to the apartment/rental owner, you should rethink that.
Your choice is to pay rent to someone, cover their costs, while their owned property appreciates, or at least throws off some cash for them, or... put that money into your own house and recoup at least some or all of those costs when you sell for, hopefully, a higher value.
We paid about $360K for our house 15 years ago. Zillow says it's worth nearly $600k today. That difference covers a bunch of interest, tax and repairs and I don't share a wall with my neighbors. And I have a pool in the yard, next to my smoker and grill, behind my 8-foot fence.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
A home is an asset...as long as you can afford it.
A large part of the issue with housing issues is how real estate is “pushed”. Too much HGTV showing young couples in half-million dollar homes. Not to sound sexist, but way too many females (and female controlled males) fall into this trap. We have owned 3 different homes. Each one a bit larger as our family grew. Each time we upgraded, we were initially steered to something way too expensive. Our (wife and I) philosophy was NOT to buy something we could afford barely in the best of times. Rather, we looked for a more basic home, in a decent area with decent schools, that we could afford when times weren’t so good. There were more than a few times when things weren’t so good. My wife didn’t have the Italian marble foyer, but our kids never went without what they needed, their education and childhood never suffered, and for the most part none of them ever realized things were tight. The money we saved doing this went into our children’s education and into our retirement (and retirement home).
It was never about her and myself. Still isn’t.
Working diligently to enlarge my group size.
Haha you ain't kidding brother. The cars were cooler, the movies were better and the Smith and Wessons didn't have internal locks. Although I guess power steering and air conditioning weren't around then so I can see that being tough
I jest, I jest.
I don't mind the apartment living lifestyle, though the wife and I would like to upgrade to a house or townhouse within the next few years. All jokes about economic collapse and blaming all my problems on the boomers aside, it should be handily affordable regardless of the mortgage environment so my wife and I are truly blessed.
Really the timing is what frightens me more than anything. Don't want to buy a home for 300k, put down a 60k down payment and find the home drops in value to 240k next year. That would just suck to watch 60,000 dollars vanish into the air.
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And, not to mention one day either your mortgage disappears or you leverage it to "level up" into a nicer locale/home....whereas if you're renting, you just keep paying rent until you die.
@Stone, that thing called "equity" is indeed an asset. Ergo, owning a home is an investment, as you increase equity over time. investments usually incur a liability now in exchange for a return of greater assets in the future; that's literally how the concept of an investment works, and why the term ROI (return on investment) exists. Under your way of thinking and articulating the issue, my retirement accounts are not investments just because I'm putting money into them every month without getting anything out of them right now.
That's patently ridiculous.
"Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll."- Last words of Todd Beamer
It’s like everything else. Some good some bad. Buy a house you can’t really afford and you’re house poor, with either a 40 year mortgage, bubble payment, all that crazy stuff that hit folks into a pickle nut so long ago.
Homes are investments, long term investments at that. You buy one you can afford and yes for a while you’re upside down, but once you crest the mortgage hill it’s an asset you can leverage later in life. We sold our home as the neighborhood went down hill and became debt free. So in that regard we leveraged our asset to our advantage.
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All I know is every wealthy person I personally know (a few) or hear about is buying property like it's going to be gone tomorrow. Not gold, silver and other precious metals but property and especially VRBO's. The poor man has his money in the bank and the rich man has his in assets that are working for him.
Precious metals are decent investments but they are also susceptible to manipulation. All you have to do is flood the market with more or less of a thing. I think land and/or real property remains king.
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