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My friend always says that renting is throwing away money. She suggests buying a condo/coop. From the replies I'm reading in this thread, it seems like the maintenance feex plus the payment maybe more than the cost of renting an apartment.
I do agree with those who say that timing is key. My familylived in a 4 family apt in park slope in the 70's. I wish they would have bought it. I'm sure it's worth probably a million by now.
If anyone can help, I would appreciate it. My wife and I are in a bind as to whether we want to buy a house or a coop in queens. We have a budget of about 500k, and we can pretty much buy any coop we want in queens with that price. The houses are of a slimmer picking. We currently live in a coop building which we both love but feel like would outgrow eventually. There is a huge 3 bedroom coop in our current building for sale which is bigger than most houses we saw. Is a coop a better investment than a single family house? We were thinking of purchasing a single family house somewhere near Forest Park.
private homes have typically appreciated more than co-ops but its more a life style choice.
do you want to be responsible for all your own maintaince and repairs? i know i dont so if anything i would prefer a co-op.
if i was going to be a snow bird i would not want a private home either.
co-ops can have issues so all is not golden but it really boils down to how much time or money you want to devote to your cost of housing.
Last edited by mathjak107; 12-24-2012 at 03:42 AM..
do you want to be responsible for all your own maintaince and repairs? i know i dont so if anything i would prefer a co-op.
I'm in a co-op. I do small things around the house myself but leave the heavy-duty stuff to the professionals. I lived in a house growing up and I hated cleaning, raking leaves and shoveling snow. Now I don't have to rake or shovel (except to get my car out), and cleaning an entire apartment is much less work than cleaning an entire house. More time for me to enjoy my beer.
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"The man who sleeps on the floor, can never fall out of bed." -Martin Lawrence
thats how i feel at this stage. i dont want to devote anytime to home maintaince. been there . done that and now that im getting ready to retire i dont want to worry about a thing.
I'm in a co-op. I do small things around the house myself but leave the heavy-duty stuff to the professionals. I lived in a house growing up and I hated cleaning, raking leaves and shoveling snow. Now I don't have to rake or shovel (except to get my car out), and cleaning an entire apartment is much less work than cleaning an entire house. More time for me to enjoy my beer.
You can do that with a house too. I pay people to rake the leaves, sometimes to shovel (if it's light my wife and I do it ourselves, if it's heavy someone will show up looking for cash for shoveling). Not really much different than in a condo, except I pay for that stuff ala carte instead of it being wrapped up in a maintenance fee. And the guys with the shovels show up a lot sooner than they did in the condo.
I personally have no interest in staying in the city when it comes to wanting to buy a house, for that my family will more than likely move to Chicago where it makes more sense and is much more affordable, but that doesn't mean home ownership is always the best idea.
Take Chicago for example, now is a good time to buy a house in that city, but when you look at past records of home sales during the housing boom you will see people bought places that were valued $200K+ than what they are now. So the best advice is long term home ownership if the value of the home isn't over inflated and an actual house is going to hold its value better than a condo will.
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