Co-op owners: how much is your monthly maintenance?

[manimgarbage]

Mathjak, if you didn't buy that coop back in 87 what's the probability you would have thrown that 77k in the market and let it sit and grow till today? You seem financially literate so I'd say your odds would be higher than average. Truth is, the average joe wouldn't have made the right financial choice, as evident by some of this country's poor personal financial statistics. 1%, if that. That's why I dislike projection such as "if this, if that" not knocking you personally just speaking generally.

[mathjak107]

Originally Posted by manimgarbage

Mathjak, if you didn't buy that coop back in 87 what's the probability you would have thrown that 77k in the market and let it sit and grow till today? You seem financially literate so I'd say your odds would be higher than average. Truth is, the average joe wouldn't have made the right financial choice, as evident by some of this country's poor personal financial statistics. 1%, if that. That's why I dislike projection such as "if this, if that" not knocking you personally just speaking generally.

very likely . i use the same newsletter and portfolio today as i did back then ...

my goal in life was never to go back to the nyc housing project i grew up in . no way was raising my own family back there going to be an option .. i have been religious about my investing as well as making sure by hook or by crook i had money to invest .

so not being poor was very very high on my list and i can be like a pit bull when i am passionate about something ....


today 25-40% of all residential real estate is all cash deals . so you have loads of people , especially older people with options open to them . the resources we may have varies at different stages of our lives .. you have inheritance , lawsuits , all kinds of cash buyout offers for things , the sale of property and business's , as well as growing your own money at different stages taking place where now there is cash and options where there were none .

the fact we sold our house back in 2002 and rented and bought in to a lucrative real estate deal was life changing for us .

that real estate was all sold off over the years and today what we got from that deal , generates a 6 figure income in retirement .

no way had we kept our house would we be in the position we are today ...

so everything we do has an opportunity cost to it .. not everyone though has the ability , desire or knowledge though to take advantage of other opportunities .

we have lots of young professional couples in our building . they all rent because they are taking the money they would plow in to homes and buying practices and business's which can be far far more lucrative then buying a home instead ....

homes will come later after the business's are flourishing if they want , just like we have that option if we want . but so far investing returns while renting outweigh any cost saving buying .

[eddiep83]

Originally Posted by mathjak107

it can be cheaper but every situation is different .

take our kew gardens co-op we bought in 1987 .. we paid about 77k ... today it is about 200k with 675 a month maintenance .

77k put in the fidelity insight growth model which i have been following since 1987 is worth 2.62 million .

today you can subtract out all the decades of rent and taxes and buy quite a few of those apartments with the difference . .

the fact my ex wife lives in it for 675 a month and market rent is 1800 dollars makes it look like it is a steal to own . but alas everything has a cost . in this case she would had a lot more money from our divorce had we not owned it and rented and invested elsewhere . .

so had we had the resources back then to choose buying for 77k or renting and investing else where , elsewhere would have turned out fabulous .

but had we not had the resources to lump sum in , well that is a different situation .

a mortgage would change the equation too doubling the cost when interest is figured , so there is no one size fits all outcome .

77k in 1987 for a KG coop seems EXTREMELY expensive. I know JH coops at that time were selling for around 20k or even less, and I believe manhattan coops were under 100k as well at that time.


Was that the height of the market or something for KG?

[mathjak107]

Originally Posted by eddiep83

77k in 1987 for a KG coop seems EXTREMELY expensive. I know JH coops at that time were selling for around 20k or even less, and I believe manhattan coops were under 100k as well at that time.


Was that the height of the market or something for KG?

that was the going price ... we sold our kew garden hills co-op in 1987 for 95k ... that was a 2 bedroom 2 fare zone . we paid 27k 3 years earlier as an insider when the building went co-op ... we bought the kew garden one as a rental property . but that was the price . it is by the queens court house and is a one fare zone .

but keep in mind after the stock market crash in 1987 real estate plunged . by 1989 our apartment fell to 55k ... the house we had went from 230k to 169k ... so real estate got hit hard here .
of course if i didn't tell the story i wouldn't even remember it happened .

[city living]

Originally Posted by Tencent

This is why I scratched my head when the other article said there is ANY POINT in which buying becomes cheaper than renting in NYC area...

I am a millenial and I bought something with my husband in 2012 almost 2013. I knew the area very well. I watched the market intensely for two years before I purchased. We ended up buying a unit that the owner had a hard time selling and it looked like crap. It sold for at least 40K less than other units in the building at the time and she was desperate to sell because she had already relocated out of state. I saw an opportunity that others overlooked. Yeah, it wasn't a "trendy" area but it was a very nice area---very safe, very stable and had a train line running through it.

For many years I watched every penny---literally, tracked every cent spent on an excel file. I buy what I want but I am not a big spender comparatively to other people. I don't have crazy student loans because I went to a city school. I have a full-time job and a per diem position. I was hustling to move up in my field and make that money when I can because my field has a shortage.

The entire time my mortgage and maintenance combined was cheaper than renting---by at least $400/month. Fast forward to selling less than seven years later. Fixed it up a bit as we went along. Sold it, made a decent profit and now looking to buy a home. Now I am renting and my expenses are higher temporarily while we look for the next place. I could buy a two bedroom coop and if I put down a decent d/p, I could make my monthly expenses less, with the idea that I will be getting that money back when I sell down the line. But I'd rather transition to the house and go back to a coop maybe when I retire.

I agree it's tough out there and pretty disappointing. I keep saying, "Well, if I save this much more, I can bump my budget to $X amount!" By the time I get there, the prices already went up to the next threshold. Honestly I would move if my husband could get a job easily elsewhere and if he didn't have his elderly mother to worry about. But, I keep on keeping on and just keep trucking along for now. Life is good.