We have lost somewhere between $80,000 and $100,000 on our house (about 1/3 of the value). We have also decided that buying a home is stupid unless you can pay it off in ten years or (much) less. We even figured out the expenses of renting vs. paying off a mortgage over 30 years and it turned out that renting would cost 25% - 40% less than buying.
That's just it. It all matters where u lived at, when u bought and where u live now period. Every part is cheap as hell for every part that is expensive as hell. Atlanta is cheap compared to any other major city, my aunt lived there until about 4yrs ago and I was always amazed. Where I live in IN is considered a Chicago suburb basically since it is roughly 30 miles from where I live in NW IN. I ended up in a small unincorporated area with good schools(will go to my old schools) and it saved huge for me on taxes and the like. 2100 sq ft house, 28*32 garage with apt over it rented out Land is between 2.0 and 2.1 acre Mortgage+taxes+insurance is $853 Gas and elec is about $300 septic and well(adds to elec and u have to buy salt) garbage pickup runs $30(unincorporated) Apt rent $725(does count as income tax wise) groceried $300-400(hard to get good number since we shop 2-3 weeks at a time) Bought it in 2010 for 160k and have put in say 20k to house and 5k into apt(dumbassed trashed it out pretty bad) House is modular(sucks I know) also get blessed with a 2 point hit on mortgage interest rate as well. So far if any appraisal is to be believed it is worth 175k, but with what I have put into it I am still underwater. Having the apt does help with taxed due to appreciation and I have it rented out for less than market value(should at least fetch $800-850 where I am at on the open market, which it will be if I ever loose my current tenant), but have a good tenant who is clean and has good family and the like so I will not have a destroyed apartment when all is said and done.(hardly hear him, hardly see him and check shows up on first or second of the mth) 75$ less than market a mth for 3 yrs is still less than the 5k I have into it to fix it up. So housing prices do vary widely across the country, I remember looking at houses in Larami, Wy when I was at WyoTech, I laughed cause everything was so cheap there. Also for the massive rent vs own debate, it depends on what u want and what u need. Small ass apt's here are going for $800 a mth and have 2 bedrooms and 1 bath in them. I can't live like that with a 2 yr old and her and I there lol I also want land for a pole barn, can't do that renting either(in most places) Also I want a house where I don't have neighbors and so on and so forth. It's all relative to what u want. The biggest part of any of it is being honest and realistic about what u can afford to do versus what u want to do. Need versus want are two very different things. I could literally flip burgers at McD's and keep my house, if I had to(key part of that phrase "had to"), but I want lots more for myself and my son and my gf. It goes back to what you want and what you can realistically afford
I just bought a 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2 cars garage, 2 decks, a balcony, 500 sq ft mancave house for 86k...Im in MN....
That makes more sense lol But I don't wanna go to MN lol Might make it out there in July for the Car Craft summer nationals Has housing stayed the same in your area or gone up and down with the times?
MN isnt that bad, like everywhere its gone down...but its really weird. A house could be 197k and right next door a house could be 90k......but realky it deoends which city you live in....the Car show you referring, State Fair grounds?
I commute by train. Funny enough, that calculation works out. I commute about 2 hours door to door each day to NYC, and so does the wife. It is about 50 miles each way. The only things missing from this calculation is: - Wear and Tear on a car or two in this case - The $16 in tolls for the tunnel to the city each day - The parking in NYC ($12 an hour if your lucky. Maybe $60 a day in some places) So I guess I make out on the commute. Ahh the American dream, commuting 4 hours a day to afford your house. Ahh, love it! It is all relative. My property alone is value at $167,000. So the house itself is valued at $133,000. To put it in perspective, I recently got a whole bunch of quotes on things, which actually made me want to buy a new house: - Finish Basement: $25K with a bathroom - Replace Deck (it's old): $8K - Replace Fence in back (needs replacing): $2K - Put in Central AC and change 15 year old boiler: $30K - Put in Recessed lights: $2K - New Kitchen: $20K - Finish off the floors: $3K - Make the porch nice: $2K So to get our house to the point where we would love it, based on contractors quotes (and these are negotiated) would cost me roughly $92K. Realistically, I am not talking about top of the line everything. I am talking pretty standard stuff. The thing is, the people who are going to do this work also have taxes anywhere from 7K (if lucky) to 21K (depending where they live). With huge mortgages on their own places. So the price to do the work skyrockets, because it is all relative. Maybe I should do what my company does, outsource. Maybe I should employee some people from AL and have them do the work for me in a month. Pay for the rent ($1,500) and the work. I would probably save $50K doing that. Yup, I hear you. I can afford the new house. I just did the math. But what I want to do may be unrealistic for Americans now a days. This is what I would want to do: - Save enough money to pay for both of my kids college eductaion in full. I am estimating $250K on that. - Save enough money to be able to retire at, let's say 67. Hoping to live to at least 90 (we'll see) So that would be 23 years of life, at let's say $300,000 a year counting for inflation. So that would be $7,150,000. I do have 33 years to make that happen. But not sure how the fuck me and my wife would ever save up $216,666 per year when we don't ever come close to that. Not to mention, our 401Ks don't touch any where close to what the interest would be needed to accomplish that. Based off of realistic figures, we would need to save and invest according $80K a year to even get close to that at lets say a conservative 8% gain per year. So reality tells me, I will work till I die. Sarcastic Singing O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! .... Ahhhhh the American Dream.....
As a renter all of my bills come out to about $1400 a month. This includes my rent, electric/gas heat, cable/internet/phone, car insurance, cell phone, groceries, and gas with a few extra dollars left over for a few TFs here and there. Mind you I literally have around $15-$20 left over a month once my bills are paid because I'm also paying child support for three kids which knocks my paychecks down to around 30% less than it should be. So even if I WANTED to own a home I'd never be able to do so. Thankfully I've already owned one though and know what a pain in the ass it is so I've got no interest in doing so again unless I hit it big on lotto.
If you knew what you knew now before you got married huh? LOL. Ignorance is bliss, and knowledge is wasted on the old isn't it?
You've got that right brother. It took me years after the divorce to finally get to where I'm actually on my own two feet without any help and I gotta tell ya it feels good walking into my apartment when I get home every night knowing I can actually afford it.
I dunno if I'd call myself lucky...we could have afforded a home but in our area people just kept making crazy offers on homes and drove the prices waaaay out of our (and any other same person's) range, it didn't take long at all for an average home here to go from 200-300K to nearly a MILLION DOLLARS in my home town! When the home prices crashed I've found that I have very little sympathy...except that with so many people having lost their homes the rents are now going sky high. We were planning on moving to be closer to the store, but apartments that were $1500 / month a year ago are now $2600 / month...it would be cheaper to buy a home, but we don't have the down, especially after buying the business...
I've been kinda lucky to buy at right times. I bought my 1st house in 2002 about a year before prices started going up. Price was 320,000. At the peak (around 2006-2007) the home was valued at 550,000 (should have sold but who knew). It's now valued at 370,000 but still higher than what I paid for it. Wanting an upgrade I decided to buy a 2nd home in 2011 since price and interest rate makes it a good time to buy. But not a good time to sell so I still have my 1st home and renting it. The rent basically covers mortgage for that house so it's all good since equity slowly increases through payment and through value of house increase eventually. Basically buying a home is a long term investment. In any market, even a bad market, if you keep the house for at least 10 years you will make some money off of it. Obviously more money if you bought low and less money if you bought high. If you bought in 2007 though it will take you much longer to make money since that was probably the worst year in history to buy a house. The housing bubble ruined a lot of people financially so I can see why a lot of people feel so bitter about buying houses now. But if you can afford it, buying a house is better than renting if you plan to stay in the home for a long time. Unfortunately for a lot of people, they saw the housing boom (and saw it too late) and bought homes at high prices thinking it would go up in price even more and hope to sell within 2 years.
There are definitely days when I wish I was a renter again. I get child support, that goes straight to the childcare centre and I don't see it. It is what it is and thankfully I am managing to get by. Deleted some stuff due to revealing a bit too much of my personal life, lol.
Ugh! Far too much! For eg where I live (Adelaide) it's by far NOT the most expensive city here and still a 'modest' mortgage is around the 350-500k mark. My own house was 475K with 15% down payment and with recent interest hikes I am paying around $2,100 per month. Without going into how much I earn I am paying a percentage of my income that I am 'officially' (according to various surveys and studies by welfare groups etc) in 'housing stress'. Child care costs me $375 per week, per child...however I get $180 of that back in government subsidies and then I get 50% of the remaining out of pocket reimbursed as a rebate every quarter (3 months). I end up paying something like $195 a week for two children in care. I get $780 in child support (government says I could get more,but.....he needs to eat and live too so we have a private agreement and he pays less, but does have the kids every other weekend and one day during the week and fully supports all their needs during that time).
Apples aren't oranges, but dollars are dollars. I would like to live in Australia, but I can't afford to because of the location. If you can't afford a $400K house, you can't suddenly magically afford it because NJ is more expensive. RELOCATE.
