Age 56 - Buy a small house or rent? (Austin, Bastrop: for sale, landlord)

[bossh0g]

Or as i suggested to some felon looking for a place to stay in another thread, buy an RV and rent some space.

You have to liquid to buy something. There may be hook ups closer to austin but if your willing to drive and hour each way its 275 a month here in marble falls RV Lot for Rent in Marble Falls, TX: (ID:121216) .

you could also buy cheap land somewhere and park it there. its a texan thing to do.

go offgrid, go solar, wind etc.. or you can spend the money for electric/water hook ups if avaliable.

[bossh0g]

this hook up is 5 minutes from austin but costs 590 a month Austin Texas RV Parks - Austin Lone Star - Carefree RV

[bossh0g]

there are others around but youll have to call for monthly prices, im only seeing prices for daily in austin and surrounding areas. i remember there was one down the street from abia headed west down ben white. before dennys

anyway cheers

[bossh0g]

the other option. buy some cheap land and build a tiny home or alternative home (shipping container, earthship, bags, cordword, beer bottles etc).

k... enough of my input.

[JH6]

I own a house in round rock that is 10 years old.

2 years ago I paid 121k.

Payment comes to $1035 with taxes and insurance rolled in.

House across the street sold for 154k and looks to be in poor condition.

I say buy a house, your payment will be the same, while rental units are going crazy.

If you eliminate PMI, it will be around $100 less per month.

[bossh0g]

Originally Posted by JH6

I own a house in round rock that is 10 years old.

2 years ago I paid 121k.

Payment comes to $1035 with taxes and insurance rolled in.

House across the street sold for 154k and looks to be in poor condition.

I say buy a house, your payment will be the same, while rental units are going crazy.

If you eliminate PMI, it will be around $100 less per month.

He's 56 and wants to retire in 10 years though.

If he bought some cheap land in leander/lago vista or elsewhere and built a cheap alternative style home or lived in an rv, how much could he save in 10 years as opposed to having a mortgage?

What if he also cut costs with alternative energy solutions and grew x amount of food himself in his spare time?

Seems he would probably be better off financially in 10 years living this way. He may be better offer emotionally, physically and spiritually as well.

Its a lifestyle choice for sure and it's not for everyone.

[bossh0g]

Plus, he said he lives fairly frugal. By making a lifestyle change, he could buy the same house in Round Rock with cash in ten years and have a hundreds of thousands left over - depending on how frugal he really is.

[thenewtexan]

Do you have to be right in Austin? You can actually find some great deals on a "small house" SOUTH of the city right off 35, be within reasonable commuting distance. If I were in your shoes, I would rent for a year, get a feel for the area, save a little more, and figure out what area suits you best, and then look to buy. If you plan to work for at least 10 more years, you will have a decent amount paid off of a 15 year mortgage, and based on the way it's going in Austin lately, some equity. I don't see how renting for 10 years will put you in a better position. You're only 56, not 100.

[Tralfaz]

Buy some land and stick a trailer on it, if/when you save up enough money you can build a proper house, I see a lot of that in western Bastrop Co. Just avoid any commute requiring I-35 or MoPac, I'd rather take roads with traffic lights than be jammed on those "highways".

[zapped]

The NY Times recently created a pretty good calculator to help with the rent-vs-buy question: http://nyti.ms/1han05C

I suspect most people (myself included) who own homes want to tell everyone that it's the best way to go, but a financial analysis can go either way. To build a case that owning is better than renting, you often have to make optimistic assumptions about the annual appreciation of your property that aren't sustainable. Although of course over the last 20 or so years in Austin all of us homeowners look like geniuses. As they say in the standard mutual fund prospectus, past history is not a predictor of future performance.

The home I built in 1992 appreciated about 2.5x by the time I sold in 2010 to by another house here in Austin, and it was paid off in the mid-2000s. Sounds great, but if you check the total return of a low-cost S&P500 index fund over the same interval, it appreciated about 2.7x. And the owner of a mutual fund who rented his home didn't pay 2.25% annual in local taxes, another 0.5% for homeowner's insurance, maybe another 1.0% annually for maintenance, and didn't spend hour after hour keeping up the landscaping. It's possible that the renter built up a bigger investment nest egg than I did over the same period.

OP, most people aren't as comfortable moving around to take advantage of personal or professional opportunities as you seem to be. It's likely in 10 years you'll feel the itch to move to a lower-cost area with similar amenities as we enjoy here in Austin but perhaps a milder summer climate and lower property taxes. Maybe it will be easier then to move on if you are finishing up a one-year lease rather than selling a home you own.

I'm not putting down home ownership but I don't think renting is an unreasonable option for anyone.