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Being a renter for most of my life I would say..yes, it is. But only if you can afford it. My husband and I lost our first home in 2008. They should have never given us a loan. We spent his whole paycheck on mortgage payment and lived on my 9 bucks an hour check. I don't know what we were thinking. We lasted 15 months and had to short sell. My parents bailed us out in the end. SMH..
Anyways, we rented until earlier this year. Finally after 16 years we finally felt ready to buy again. We bought a nice 400k home and our mortgage payment is less than 15 % of our take home pay.
I'm on reddit a lot and im reading thru the Real estate forum and "first time home owner" forum. It's crazy what people will do to own a home. This one couple spent 60 % of their combined income on mortgage payment so they could have their " dream home". Then the wife apparently went on reddit and claimed she had buyers remorse. The replies she was getting was more supportive and that they will be "ok" and to get a room mate to help with mortgage payment. Lol. A few people said she made a huge mistake. Those posters got down voted quickly.
So in other words. OP, if you can afford it I think it's worth it as long as your are not house poor. It's nice to have your own space. Just stay away from anything that involves association fees.
Go on the Reddit REBubble sub. It's a real eye opener.
it has worked out for me.
But I've always bought homes I can afford, and not wound up with huge payments every month.
Some friends are still renting because they can't afford the house of their dreams, and don't want to settle for anything less. Prices keep rising around them, and their dream house is farther and further out of reach.
Oh man you reminded me ., the band I was touring with needed to wear a tux for a gig .
So we went shopping for ruffled shirts …..wow they were so expensive ….so we ended up going to a store in the local hood and found shirts dirt cheap .
We went out to eat after the show and as we were sitting down we were commenting about the score we made on the shirts for a fraction of the price .
Well I took the tux jacket off and everyone was hysterical laughing , the sleeve broke free from my drumming and fell off in the jacket , it wasn’t even attached anymore .
Oh man you reminded me ., the band I was touring with needed to wear a tux for a gig .
So we went shopping for ruffled shirts …..wow they were so expensive ….so we ended up going to a store in the local hood and found shirts dirt cheap .
We went out to eat after the show and as we were sitting down we were commenting about the score we made on the shirts for a fraction of the price .
Well I took the tux jacket off and everyone was hysterical laughing , the sleeve broke free from my drumming and fell off in the jacket , it wasn’t even attached anymore .
Oh ,wow was that funny .
So much for shopping around for the shirts.
I did have a ruffled tank top though
You have to make an assessment about the quality of the work, of course.
One thing I strongly suggest homeowners do is shop around for many contractors for any work that needs to get done.
I recently had a repair job done on one of my houses for 1/5th the price of what another contractor was asking for. Couldn't believe it.
Don't just take any offer. Shop around and haggle. Make them compete with one another. You will save money, guaranteed.
I experienced something similar some months ago. I was having problems with trespassers and thefts in the alley on the side of the house. Landlord did not want to pay for a gate to be installed as police suggested. Just a few months before Covid hit, I obtained a quote for roughly $400 + tax. Last Spring I obtained an updated quote. The price doubled. Contractor, who did seem fair, cited Covid as the culprit. I decided to get a few more quotes just to see what other contractors would want to do the same job. All of them were significantly higher. One of them quote more than double $800 plus the tax. The upshot is it is worth it to get more than 1-2 quotes. I would suggest getting quotes from the 5 most often used contractors and compare. Be careful not to go too cheaply, however, because you get what you pay for.
Is there any reason you wouldn't want to own your home *besides* locational instability? That's the main reasin I can think of for not wanting to.
Well if you are not asking anyone specifically,I hate chores , I hate maintenance , and most of all because of the rental situation in ny buying would have us giving up 18k in income a year .compared to renting .
Remember that 425k that will be in a condo or coop would no longer be providing us with a whole lot of income yearly anymore . Plus 1500 -1600 a month in hoa and taxes still have to be paid
It is no longer worth taking a mortgage with a conservative portfolio,
as there isn’t enough risk premium to use borrowed money to invest .
Sequence risk skyrockets in down markets with a mortgage ..take this year as an example …
Not only would we be down and taking a draw hit since actual balances determine our income but thousands would be going out in interest .
So to use a mortgage in retirement needs a risk premium worth it over just a safe treasury and our portfolios are pretty tame at this stage , although we had a daily swing recently of over 100k percentage wise at 35% equity there isn’t enough risk premium for using borrowed money .
The fact that money would be in apartment equity at this stage means nothing ..we are likely to die there
….in the mean time the income hit buying is crazy for us to take and means something
Very different situation in retirement when one has a lump sum that is generating income..
Last edited by mathjak107; 12-04-2022 at 11:25 AM..
Why or why not ? ……Wondering if it’s even worth it
For me, it's been worth it--especially as I am well-rooted in my adopted hometown and my mini-money pit is my forever home.
Even with all of the work that I've done and continue to do on the house, in the market in which I live (Pittsburgh), it's often less expensive to buy than it is to rent. Even in some of the worst neighborhoods I couldn't afford to rent a one bedroom apartment for what the PITI is on my small house in a decent (and desirable) neighborhood.
Sure, I have the costs of maintenance and upgrades to consider, but I also can do a lot that needs to be done on my own, shop around for others in terms of quality of work and price to do those things that I cannot, and not have to wait for a landlord or worse yet, a property management company to repair or replace things as needed.
Like Serious Conversation, my house was purchased before housing prices began to make their climb. Houses that are similar to mine in similar working to middle class neighborhoods are going for more than double for what I paid for my house several years ago regardless of condition.
Last edited by Formerly Known As Twenty; 12-04-2022 at 01:27 PM..
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