AKA where not to buy a home.
Mapping homes you can buy from the US government for <$100k
111–120 of 123 posts
Re: Mapping homes you can buy from the US government for <$100k
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, IME, places with no employers tend to be populated primarily by addicts, disability fraudsters, and other criminals.
...or the elderly, retired, legitimately disabled, or just people temporarily down on their luck.
I get what you're saying and I see that how my comment could be interpreted.
I wish I had worded it better.
The most vibrant places in the world (again, IME) have a diversity of abilities, backgrounds, ages, and economic status.
There's another type of place - the sort of place I had in mind - that doesn't. That attracts people who are trying to get away from law and any sort of social contract. Some of those places look attractive on the surface. That's the sort of place I'm talking about. They're probably not as common as they seem to be to me.
Re: Mapping homes you can buy from the US government for <$100k
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing you said is wrong, but you could say that in 2013 too, and in that time apparently prices have nearly doubled and you missed out if you didn't take advantage. Mortgages are "heads I win, tails you lose" in non-recourse states like California. You're not down more than your down payment, but the upside is huge, and for the past fifty years it has been more financially advantageous to use that leverage to buy t…
> Nothing you said is wrong, but you could say that in 2013 too, and in that time apparently prices have nearly doubled and you missed out if you didn't take advantage. In 2013 you couldn't say that prices have nearly doubled since 2013 under ZIRP, which is the argument that buying now would be buying high. > Mortgages are "heads I win, tails you lose" in non-recourse states like California. You're not down more than…
> In 2013 you couldn't say that prices have nearly doubled since 2013 under ZIRP, which is the argument that buying now would be buying high.
But in 2013 you could say they've nearly doubled since 1998 under ZIRP, and then everything you say applies.
It's also an option on continuing to live in your same COL but a different city, with a nice large house. Worse case, prices fall enough you can afford a new mortgage even if your investment is wiped out. Worst case of renting is you can never buy because houses appreciate faster than you can save. You said
> then you'd still have the entire $380k plus whatever interest it earned.
And it's not enough to buy a house if prices continue up, and you've lived in a cheap (so probably small and undesirable) apartment for years while your friends are building up their household.
Re: Mapping homes you can buy from the US government for <$100k
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are people fighting their HOA, tooth and nail, because the HOA is enforcing their rules about signage, or giveaways, or something, and these people are even featured on the evening news and portrayed as "innocent HOA victim" when in fact, they're trying to illicitly run a business out of their garage and gin-up foot traffic for that business from passers-by in a SFH residential-zoned neighborhood. Isn't this…
An HOA is, by definition, your ordinary neighbors. And by the principles of “small government” and subsidiarity, the HOA is tasked with establishing rules and guidelines that help make good neighbors live in harmony, such as uniform aesthetics, prohibited activities, and so forth. These rules are otherwise handled by landlords or municipal codes. It is really about conformity and keeping the peace, so that the Clark…
> And by the principles of “small government” and subsidiarity, the HOA is tasked with establishing rules and guidelines that help make good neighbors live in harmony, such as uniform aesthetics, prohibited activities, and so forth. These rules are otherwise handled by landlords or municipal codes.
The trouble here is that the principle of subsidiarity doesn't lead to the HOA making these decisions from both ends.
For many of them the HOA isn't local enough and the decision should be up to the individual property owners, e.g. they should have nothing to say about you putting solar panels on your roof or operating a business that isn't meaningfully disruptive to the neighbors.
For the others, the rules have regional/national implications for things like housing affordability and small business viability and the HOA is subject to perverse incentives. Each suburb wants a different one to host the strip mall, with the result that there is an insufficiency of land zoned for dense construction and mixed use, and then it requires a higher level of government to act because too many of the local ones refuse to allow any at all.
Re: Mapping homes you can buy from the US government for <$100k
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nothing you said is wrong, but you could say that in 2013 too, and in that time apparently prices have nearly doubled and you missed out if you didn't take advantage. In 2013 you couldn't say that prices have nearly doubled since 2013 under ZIRP, which is the argument that buying now would be buying high. > Mortgages are "heads I win, tails you lose" in non-recourse states like California. You're not down more than…
> In 2013 you couldn't say that prices have nearly doubled since 2013 under ZIRP, which is the argument that buying now would be buying high. But in 2013 you could say they've nearly doubled since 1998 under ZIRP, and then everything you say applies. It's also an option on continuing to live in your same COL but a different city, with a nice large house. Worse case, prices fall enough you can afford a new mortgage ev…
> But in 2013 you could say they've nearly doubled since 1998 under ZIRP, and then everything you say applies.
The problematic number is the home price to median household income ratio:
https://www.longtermtrends.com/home-price-median-annual-inco...
In 1998 it was ~4 having been stable in the 4 to ~4.5 range since the late 1970s. By 2013 it was ~5, from being five years into ZIRP. The peak in the housing crisis bubble was 6.8. Right now it's ~7.
> Worse case, prices fall enough you can afford a new mortgage even if your investment is wiped out.
Where are you getting another down payment having been wiped out? The original down payment was $200k. It only takes a 25% decline to wipe you out and even at the lower price you'd need another $150k to get a new mortgage. And just after a crash would be the time to buy, but that's when you'd have just been zeroed out.
You might be better off to keep the existing house even if you're slightly underwater on it, at least then you don't need to sink another down payment, but then you're stuck continuing to pay the mortgage for a million dollar house when it's only worth $750k.
And there is also a third option. Suppose the prices don't move significantly up or down for a while. Then the leverage neither wipes you out nor gives you leveraged returns, but it means you're paying the interest on that $800k loan while getting no return from it.
> Worst case of renting is you can never buy because houses appreciate faster than you can save.
Which is precisely the problem with buying if that's the thing that actually happens to other people. If prospective buyers can't afford to buy your house for the high price anymore then you can't sell it for the high price anymore, so the next thing that happens is that the price comes down.
> And it's not enough to buy a house if prices continue up, and you've lived in a cheap (so probably small and undesirable) apartment for years while your friends are building up their household.
Which is again predicated on the prices continuing to go up. How high can the home price to income ratio get before something gives?
Re: Mapping homes you can buy from the US government for <$100k
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very commonly in the U.S. are liabilities that "run with the land", not the owner. This is done intentionally. Easements can be a huge headache too e.g. some utility may have an easement to come on your property at any time and do a whole list of activities to maintain a pipeline, or power line, or what have you.
yeah I had a neighbor spend a lot of time and money planting flowers only to have the city destroy all of it when it was time for new utilities heh. You need to know about easements. I find mineral rights interesting. You can own some land, say 20 acres, and then discover something valuable under it like oil but then it turns out the rights to that oil are owned by someone else. Further the owner of those mineral rig…
> Further the owner of those mineral rights can drill on the surface of the land, which you own, without your permission.
The oligarchs always win.
Re: Mapping homes you can buy from the US government for <$100k
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Otherwise it seems to me like this is a ripe opportunity for scams. Buy house, have contractors refurbish it, sell it for a much higher value, then the contractors register their debts and now the new buyers or their insurance is on the hook for the refurbishment. This is called ‘fraud’, it is already illegal. Mechanic’s liens are good and necessary for customers like the current US President who fail to pay their…
Yeah I don't have a problem with liens, I have a problem with unregistered liens. There needs to be a system for registering and searching liens, it needs to be publicly accessible and the lien needs to be registered before it's valid. In order to register a lien on a car you need the owner's signature, that can't work when the owner has changed. Mechanic needs to get the contract signed then report the new lien to w…
> If they try to register their lien once the owner of the vehicle has changed, it can not be accepted.
This is true in practice with houses, not in theory. Here's an example (differs by jurisdiction) of how the deadlines work for filing a lien: https://www.levelset.com/payment-help/question/can-we-lien-a.... The title search should include "are the sellers the defendants in a lawsuit wherein if they lose, the judgment results in a lien on the property." We actually went under contract on a house where the owner's name matched someone in bankruptcy and triggered this. We knew the guys were different (ages, addresses) but our mortgage lender needed the title company to figure out their mistake first. So the lien attaching to a house that sells in the meantime is a really extraordinary circumstance: closings usually take 30 days so what are the odds that something gets filed in that meantime without already being underway? If the lien does attach to the house, then the buyer would have a tort against the seller for putting them on the hook, but the mechanic would have a backstop for getting paid in the form of the lien. The buyer could get a judgment against the seller. But that'll all be handled by the title insurance if it ever comes to that.
> The person who takes the debt is responsible for the debt. If they sell the car then they pay the debt with the money from the sale, if the sale doesn't cover the debt then they still owe the rest.
This is how it really works in practice. The mortgage company won't let you buy the house with the liens still attached. The debts will get paid out of the purchase price of the house. Who gets paid what out of the sale price is already determined before the actual closing date, and the mortgage company writes separate checks to everyone who needs to get paid (I think). The insurance is there in case something very out of the ordinary happens. Even the cost of paying someone to figure out who gets what is part of that insurance policy (again, I think).
> If the owner fails to resolve their debts when they sell that should be their problem not the buyer's.
It effectively is. The title search before the closing reveals all of this and pauses the sales process. Nothing proceeds until they come up with a plan to pay it off. The insurance is only for extraordinary circumstances where someone messed up the recording of the lien.
> There needs to be a system for registering and searching liens, it needs to be publicly accessible and the lien needs to be registered before it's valid.
This would be the best. I'd love it if it were federal so you just had to search one thing. Bankruptcy is federal, so why not this? Even better: if the system could record the house going under contract. You're a roofer who's been lazy suing somebody. Every Monday you upload the CSV of addresses that owe you money. One of those days, you see "this house is now under contract and you have 5 days until the window to register lawsuits against the sellers closes" You call your lawyer and tell them to start the lawsuit for the unpaid debt. Sellers and buyers get notified that the title isn't clear and there's a suit worth $X to work out.
This then produces the problem of people monitoring every address in their town and threatening the parties to the sale with a baseless lawsuit in order to pause the sale. You may have to bring back corporal punishment to stop such individuals. Hmm. Much to consider.
Re: Mapping homes you can buy from the US government for <$100k
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In 2013 you couldn't say that prices have nearly doubled since 2013 under ZIRP, which is the argument that buying now would be buying high. But in 2013 you could say they've nearly doubled since 1998 under ZIRP, and then everything you say applies. It's also an option on continuing to live in your same COL but a different city, with a nice large house. Worse case, prices fall enough you can afford a new mortgage ev…
> But in 2013 you could say they've nearly doubled since 1998 under ZIRP, and then everything you say applies. The problematic number is the home price to median household income ratio: https://www.longtermtrends.com/home-price-median-annual-inco... In 1998 it was ~4 having been stable in the 4 to ~4.5 range since the late 1970s. By 2013 it was ~5, from being five years into ZIRP. The peak in the housing crisis bubbl…
I was thinking the same thing 10 years ago, but people are still buying houses, the stock market keeps going up. It doesn't make sense. But I lost a lot of money not being more heavily invested and buying a house I could easily afford. I also feel like we're a zombie economy that doesn't know it's dead yet, but all I know is somehow I'm going to be screwed and I won't see it coming.
Re: Mapping homes you can buy from the US government for <$100k
#119OP, your site makes for nice reading, but that quantity-sorted list of states to filter by is kind of maddening to work with. Alphabetical recommended :)
Re: Mapping homes you can buy from the US government for <$100k
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not understand what sane person attaches taxes to a property instead of to a person.
Local governments that very much want to get their tax monies, even if receiving them is delayed by a few years before someone buys the property.
Yeah, so you attach it to a person, and then you don’t have to wait at all.