Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

nation.maps.arcgis.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 350 posts

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#331

Post by dahart »

briankirby wrote: post #329
dahart wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can rent and invest, you can also buy and invest, right? The only way that renting is an investment advantage is the down payment, but you have to subtract your rent from your returns to see if it makes sense. In the example at the top of this thread, 6k/mo rent is 750k over 10 years. You have to have a very large down payment and very good returns consistently for 10 solid years to make that back.

"If you can rent and invest, you can also buy and invest" Not necessarily, the less you put into the downpayment the more you pay in interest, the less the calculation makes sense. I'm not disagreeing that there are many scenarios, likely including the 6k/mo example, that buying makes sense. What I take issue with, and I imagine other commenters did as well, is the idea that "When you rent, your money is gone. When y…

I hear you, that's fair. Cheers!

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#332

Post by hajile »

madengr wrote: post #303
hajile wrote: post #123

With houses getting larger every year, it's crazy to assume anything less than a couple years is possible. An average house is 2.6K square feet and is going to take at least a man-year of time to complete. Materials are about 80% of total labor costs. Those places with super-low housing costs require some combination of: 1. below average wages for construction workers 2. low standard for building materials 3. surplus…

Hasn't the average home size always been 2400 ft^2

In the 70s, it was around 1600

http://www.aei.org/publication/todays-new-homes-are-1000-squ...

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#333

Post by DesiLurker »

I recall per bob shiller (of case shiller index) on an average it has taken 30 years of work to own a house throughout ages. Now try to figure out how many years of that life were spent working for real estate agent? at 6.5% commision if you go through 4 houses that's 25% of cost. so effectively 25% of your life you have worked for realtors!

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#334

Post by DesiLurker »

slg wrote: post #100
ianai wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. End of life care can drag on and is expensive. Even if you're really lucky and net $1 million from your house a single illness could wipe that out quickly. Retirement homes cost much more than comparable rent/mortgages.

Those things can be mitigated with some smart financial planning. You can take your lump sum and buy an annuity and use those annuity payments for health and long term care insurance. I would also add long term care insurance is doubly important for the grandparent commenter who doesn't have children who could help care or support them if something goes wrong.

Annuities are mostly scams with so many knobs & levers that are designed to get unsavvy people on hook with weird mix of investment and insurance. best to keep them separate.

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#335

Post by DesiLurker »

shados wrote: post #312
tunetine wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sell it and rent. The bank won't even come close to the true value of the home for a reverse mortgage.

Selling it means I can't live in it anymore. Renting is the ideal option, but if I'm 85 years old, maintaining a rental property or dealing with property managers would be tricky at best. (My actual goal with my current property is to sell it once I'm having trouble going up the 3 flight of stairs leading to my unit and using the money to live in a much smaller place as people mentionned already)

IMO he meant sell the property and rent for Yourself. invest the proceeds.

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#336

Post by pas »

dis-sys wrote: post #251
ddeck wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true in the US. In other areas, leaving the city might not be a realistic option. Consider Hong Kong as an (extreme) example, where leaving the city means emigrating to another country with another language etc. (yes, HK is technically a Special Administrative Region of China, but can be considered standalone in this respect). The median apartment price/income ratio here is 18, compared to a US average of 3.9…

The real problem of HK's home affordability is the land release/auction system. It is a highly corrupted system controlled entirely by the local elites and major real estate developers backed by big banks. They managed to push average joes to the very limit when 90%+ of the land in HK is used for reserves/parks under the name of environmental protection. What is worse, this cancer got exported to mainland China in th…

Sacrificing parks for more housing just creates more pressure for sacrificing even more parks.

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#337

Post by [deleted] »

icedchai wrote: post #151
user5994461 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's easy to buy when properties are only twice your salary and can be fully paid off in a couple of years. You were just lucky to leave when properties were cheap and interest were high.

Luck is part of it, but not all. I know people who bought homes at similar times who have refinanced every 3 years and now owe way more than they started with. They don't care about debt. They continue to spend more than they make, year after year, live pay check to pay check despite their high salaries...

[deleted]

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#338

Post by 35bge57dtjku »

niij wrote: post #284
jhall1468 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True with those examples. I live 20 minutes out of Seattle. I have hundreds of restaurants, every movie in theaters, hundreds of dance clubs/bars/social clubs within a 20 minute drive. I can't get a well-paying job, or access to any of the above without being close to the city.

Can't you just commute the 20 minutes to a job in the city?

I thought that's what he just said he was doing.

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#339

Post by JamesBarney »

astura wrote: post #298
dahart wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So sure, a mortgage in SF is $6k/mo. But rent might be $6k/mo as well -- and you don't earn any equity or tax write-offs while renting. When you rent, your money is gone. When you buy, you normally get most or all of it back later. There's barely any economic comparison between renting and ownership. The tax write offs is the one of the least of your concerns. People go completely and absolutely nuts when they end…

When I sell my house I'm not getting back all my property taxes paid, interest paid, closing costs, inspection cost, realtor commission, insurance payments, and routine maintenance costs.

Or the dividends from keeping your down payment in the stock market.

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#340

Post by codingmyway »

aceon48 wrote: post #299
0xbear wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a dude who makes $800k/yr and still lives paycheck to paycheck. Lack of savings is not necessarily caused by lower income. People tend to shovel money out the door as quickly as it comes in.

What does he do to make that kind of money?

Half expected he answer to be 'owns 20 other houses'
Post reply on HN