Buying investment property in Vancuver area

[thefoxx]

Originally Posted by Tony1790

As opposed to a delusional "Realtor, builder, lender *****?? Whichever you are, you need help.

In any regard the posts up to date have been factual and pretty level headed, but along you came and started throwing out insults and talking down to people.

If you are so sure that buying $400k homes that are a half hour to 1 hour drive away from Portland is such a great investment, go buy all of them. Have fun trying to get enough rent to cover those beasts or reselling them in an era of rapidly declining finance sourcing.

Every hear of CA, that jackass remark is pissing me off to no end. The only way those idiots are able to buy those homes are with 100% financing, no money down, no doc loans. And as of mid month March 2007, the amount of lenders that are willing to make those idiotic loans is drying up rapidly.

So have fun "Mr. Investor", most investors that I know are going into a cash position to take advantage of the upcoming dramatic increase of foreclosures that will take place as the ARMS start to reset.

Ah well, we all make our bets, and generally speaking things have been civil, but when a Realtor comes online ands starts stinking the place up, things just go down hill fast

Tony

Tony;
Thanks for your effort. I am very happy to read your comments. I am a very strong RE Investor through out the country and have been for over 35 years. I have purchased real estate in high priced markets and low priced markets and have always made money. It appears to be you are a novice in the world of RE Investing. Let me help you! Cash flow basis of RE Investing has been a long standing practice how ever it is only a very small part of the investment game. Passive income is the winning part of the game and for that you need apperciation. There is not one successful investor, and I am not talking about the weekend player who has comtributed to the sub prime market problem that would agree to your comments or concerns. RE Estate Investment has always been a risk and no one who is not prepared should play the game. With great gains there are possible great losses. Real Investors love the game and that is why we play! For over four years te real estate market has grown and wil continue to do so long after your fear. P.S. I am not a REALTOR I am a very rich and successful investor with all the freedom one could ever have! This week my dilema was how many new sports cars I want to purchase. I have decided (3)!! I take possession today. It's a great day!

[tewhann]

While there are some very successful real estate investors, no doubt, here's the scoop for us average folks (who are often taken advantage of by said successful investors).

Check out the following article:

http://patrick.net/housing/crash.html

And, from the Wall Street Journal:

The Wall Street Journal

March 12, 2007

YOUR MONEY MATTERS

Nest Egg
Why Your Home Isn't the Investment You Think It Is
Too many people rely on their home as their primary savings strategy. That's a mistake.
By DAVID CROOK
March 12, 2007; Page R1

Planning your retirement? Don't bet the house on it.

Your home means a lot of things to you, most of them good. Your home gives comfort and protection to you and your family, and it could well embody all your material hopes and dreams.

But houses have become much more than just places to live. Your home is probably your biggest asset, and the price you could ask for it today is almost certainly much higher than what you paid for it back whenever.

As a result, houses have become substitute credit cards, as profligate owners borrow their equity to finance everything from cars to vacations. Among thriftier owners, the equity they have built up in the family home has become a vital part of retirement planning -- a "fourth leg" of the now-unstable "company pension/personal savings/Social Security" stool that was long the model for a financially secure old age.

Unfortunately for both groups, however, houses are not very good investments. For the grasshoppers, there's nothing quite as stupid as paying off your 2002 trip to Orlando in 2032, when you finally settle up your refinanced "cash out" 30-year mortgage. And for the ants, economic studies have demonstrated over and over that houses (1) cost more than most people make when they sell and (2) rarely match the long-term returns of stocks or other investments.

And that's doubly true today, with much of the U.S. well into a real-estate recession. It's unlikely that homeowners in once-booming areas will see a return of skyrocketing prices anytime soon.

"Real-estate investments suffer serious and sometimes prolonged downturns," writes economist W. Van Harlow in a new study of home equity and retirement from the Fidelity Research Institute in Boston. "A real-estate 'bust' could be quite damaging to an investor nearing retirement who relied too heavily on home equity."

It may be late for a lot of homeowners to read this, but here it goes anyway: It's risky and bad planning to have too much of your net worth in your principal residence. No prudent stock-market player would put 60% or 70% of a portfolio in just one stock, but millions will hold that much or more of their total net worth in just one house.

Food for thought:
• If you bought a house in Los Angeles in 1990, just as the real-estate market turned downward, you would have had to wait a decade for your home's value to return to what you paid.

• If you bought in Rochester, N.Y., in 1980, you would have seen only a mediocre 4% annual growth for the next 25 years.

• If you bought in Dallas in 1986, as the oil boom went bust, your home wouldn't have appreciated at all before 1998.



THERE'S MORE TO THE ARTICLE, BUT I SELF EDITED B/C I WAS EDITED ON ANOTHER FORUM FOR APPARENT COPYRIGHT ISSUES. OOPS. BELOW IS THE LINK FOR THE FULL ARTICLE

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117329581356629863.html

[StealthRabbit]

If I had it to do over... I would definately not put much merit in the investment potential of a primary residence UNLESS you are doing the every 2 yr $500k tax-free exemption (or a relative part of that.). Unfortunately it turns into a game of inflation, as you always need a place to lay your head, and I don't see too many homes priced like my first one ($16,000). I thought those monthly payments of $128.84 were gonna kill me! Then there was the $8.00 gas bill ! Good grief, how's a person supposed to get by?

In retrospect I would stick with a few prime commercial joints, and the passive income would be paying my beach house rent or house payments. (And I would definately not have been working past age 35; I live very cheap, and my 50 mpg 'sports car' cost me $35 at the auction; less than the cost of a tank of petrol !). However, I have got tremendous leverage out of the cheap financing availed to primary residences. I even have some 5.25% commercial financing good for a few more yrs. Hope it comes down before I need to re-fi, if not, I will 'self-fund' and consider it part of my 'income portfolio'.

Meanwhile, back to the beach ...