I see mine as a part of my retirement plan. Get your expenses as low as you can. Paying off the mortgage means I need less money to live on every month. Rent will never get that for you (and rents will likely continue to rise in the future).Originally Posted by Henry Rogue
Freedom is a state of mind. Nobody can take that from you unless you let them.
The plan should be don't buy until you have at least a year of expenses for a back up plan...
Rental properties are still dirt cheap and without the hassle of taxes or another bubble. Phoenix is already on the rollercoaster again. I do flooring and have been busy the way I was back in the end of 05- into 06. Prices are up last year alone in some areas 36%. Yay..
my rent is $450 and i don't live in a dump.
hard to beat that without living in a ghetto.
"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also." ~ Mark Twain.I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all remaining respect for it, and pitied it."
--Henry David Thoreau
Property taxes, water, sewer, insurances and maintenance are rent and they will continue to rise with the rate of money printing.
Fixed income/fixed cost is a wet dream.
http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=48017
New Home sales fell by 7.7% in December. They were predicted to go up. We’ve got the lowest mortgage rates in the history of mankind and the entire freaking country of 115 million households has only 23,000 new homes sold in December???? Even better, only 10,000 of these homes are actually completed. The rest are either under construction or not even started. Still, the guy at Calculated Risk and the rest of the MSM try to sell you on some sort of housing recovery. Does he even look at his own charts? Can anyone show me a housing recovery in that chart?
New home sales are at the same level they were in 1981 when mortgage rates were 18% and the population was 229 million. Today we have 3.3% mortgage rates and a population of 315 million. Why are supposedly intelligent people so blind to the facts? There is no housing recovery. Artificial price increases have been created by inventory manipulation by Wall Street banks.
http://www.census.gov/construction/n...ewressales.pdf
I think the fact that if you have good credit you can save hundreds a month actually owning your home. A market correction is probably due but it won't be dramatic.
In California, they are not allowed to raise your property taxes by more than 2% in a year (thanks Prop 13!). All of those costs are included in rents too. Consider that my property taxes run a bit over $100 a month currently and compare that to renting a comparable unit in my area of about $1100 a month today. Paying off the mortgage is saving me about $1000 a month over what renting would cost. Plus I have an asset which can be sold if necessary (or desired) in the future. A renter has no such asset. Another thing is that this is an investment not in addition to what you are paying in rent but something you can get for roughly the same money as is currently paid for in rent with nothing back and no lower costs at any point in the future- money going out and giving you nothing in return (yes, a roof over your head temporarily).
Freedom is a state of mind. Nobody can take that from you unless you let them.
Out of curiosity, have you looked at housing starts compared to say, 5 years ago? How about say 10 years ago? 15? 40?
2012 starts - 780k down (-43%) from 5 years ago, down (-54%) from 10 years ago, down (-47%) from 15 years ago, and DOWN (-67%) from its 40 year generational peak in 1970 friggin 2!
2007 starts - 1,355k
2002 starts - 1,705k
1997 starts - 1,474k
1972 starts - 2,357k
and of course the numbers you are citing are SEASONALLY ADJUSTED. AND why not peal back that MSM sponsored headline number?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...recovery-story
wake me up when we reach the BOTTOM of the previous housing market down trends, then I might get excited about the possibility of a housing recovery. Till then, its no point to speak of housing being in ANYTHING BUT bull market territory.
Should perhaps note that the seven percent decline was from the previous month and sales were still well above a year ago. For the entire year, sales were up 20% and compared to the previous December, the December 2012 figures were up 8.8%.
Sales of new single-family houses in December 2012 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 369,000, according to
estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
This is 7.3 percent (±15.3%)* below the revised November rate of 398,000, but is 8.8 percent (±24.8%)* above the
December 2011 estimate of 339,000.
The median sales price of new houses sold in December 2012 was $248,900; the average sales price was $304,000. The
seasonally adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of December was 151,000. This represents a supply of 4.9
months at the current sales rate.
An estimated 367,000 new homes were sold in 2012. This is 19.9 percent (±4.8%) above the 2011 figure of 306,000.
Freedom is a state of mind. Nobody can take that from you unless you let them.
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