491–497 of 497 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A mortgage payment is a lot lower than current market rent, however. How do you figure? Rents in London are substantially cheaper than a mortgage. In my current house, a mortgage with 10% down would be around 30% larger than the rent I'm paying. Unless you bought 5-10 years ago, but that's not really a fair comparison.
I bought about 2 years ago. Sounds like we're in different areas of the city. I'm in Enfield.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an incredible way of putting it. I'm not sure if I like what it implies, though, but I'll definitely be mulling it over. It's not a perfect analogy to securities shorting, because no one is going to lend you a house to immediately sell, so effectively all us renters would actually be naked short-sellers! Maybe there is a business model in lending out houses so people can short the housing market? Again, not s…
Lending out houses.. Explain. I'm intrigued. My long term goal (we're not counting my husband here) is to buy a townhouse, live in it for a few years, then rent it out and buy a free standing house - with a backyard! Now we'll have two or more rental properties in competitive markets hopefully bringing in some income. I've been extremely lucky with the house I own now. Good tenant that I did not raise the rent on at…
I own a stock. You think the price will go down. To make this bet, you borrow the stock from me. You then immediately sell it at the current price. Later, if the stock is down, you can buy it back at the new (lower) price, give it back to be, and pocket the difference. If, unfortunately for you, the stock's price has actually gone up, you have to either continue to pay for the carry on the position (essentially paying me rent for my stock), or else take the hit by buying the stock at a higher price, giving it back to me, and eating the difference.
The analogy doesn't quite work with houses, because they're not fungible. I don't care which specific share of stock I get back, because they're all the same. I DO care which specific house I get back if I rent it out to you. Furthermore, I would be REALLY mad if I rented you a house and you then sold it to someone else, since that is just flatly illegal.
Still, I wonder if a lot of the structural problem with housing markets is that there is insufficient short pressure. In other words, there is an obvious way to make the bet that prices will go up (buy one), but no obvious way of making the opposite bet, unless you already have a house, and decide to sell it and begin renting, which hardly anybody does.
How can we let ordinary people short housing in their area?
The New York Times has a fairly detailed rent-vs-buy calculator that makes it easy to see the effects of changing some of the variables the author talks about in the article. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-cal...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That of course also ignores all the non-financial benefits of owning. All I see is more maintenance :D
It is your personal point of view. Some people want their flower garden arranged their way. Some people want a shed to hold their antique car in. Some people want plastic pink flamingos in front of their window. Some people want ... On the other side some people want to move every year. Some people want nothing to do with maintenance. Some people need a bed and a shower and will not be home for anything else. The abo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He is arguing that it is not clear that "buying cow is obviously better". Because many people really do argue like that when it comes to rent vs. buy.
The analogy seems obviously flawed. You can get the world's best cow and give it the world's highest standard of care but there's no way it's going to live over 100 years. Additionally, while I don't want to downplay home maintenance, I don't think it's as big a responsibility as taking care of and regularly milking a cow. And it's not like you might have a week here and there where you don't really need lodging.
I own because I like knowing I can modify my living space however I like. I took out a bedroom to make a home theater, could never do that renting. There are definitely advantages to home ownership psychologically that can’t be defined in a dollar figure. His main point though was that renting isn’t throwing money away. I say if renting is the better option for you then who cares?
* The roof was leaking, and the landlord patched it ... poorly.
* The heat exchanger in the furnace was cracked and letting CO into the living space. He refused to fix it for over two weeks as I fought him. At the time I was young and did not know better, but this literally could have killed us.
* Our microwave broke, and the landlord refused to repair it. I was not allowed to replace it.
* Our water heater failed. It took our landlord over 3 weeks to replace it.
We finally decided to move and were able to purchase a house for $235k that was literally twice the size for $200/mo less than we were paying in rent. We lived there for 7 years and sold it for $417k. I am pretty sure we could not have invested the $200/mo savings (about $17k) for 7 years and made close to $170k in profits.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Though 1k is a pretty naive estimate, 12k a year is just not right. I'm having trouble coming up with any way to prove it wrong, besides common sense. Think of the price of appliances, and then think of how many you can get with 12k. Reshingling a roof tends to be around 5k, and lasts for 30 years. I can't even imagine a scenario where you spend 12k a year.
Having owned a 2500 sq ft home on 0.25 acres, honestly 12k is totally within the realm of reason. A roof may last for 30 years, but odds are the home you are in has a roof that needs replacing sooner than that, so you only have 5-10 years to save for its replacement. Also don't forget that the previous tenant let his kids shoot BBs at the siding, so the water has been leaking in causing it to wear faster and faster,…
Therefore, a lot of the improvements you made should have added value to the home. I'd consider improvements different then simple maintenance/random failures (your cement issue). The siding, roof, and driveway should have all been things you took into account when buying the house, so any improvements made there should have an immediate affect on the value of your house.
>Oh and when you bought this home, did you already happen to have a lawn mower, edger, fertilizer spreader, and such?
If you buy a house and legitimately have to worry about the $200 you'll spend on a lawn mower, then maybe buying isn't for you.