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I helped a family member buy a move-in ready, gorgeous house on a huge lot for $500k last fall. Flawless house with no issues, well taken care of by original owner and everything sparkled.
A year later, a nearby house came up for sale (same floor plan, same sub-division, worse lot location, smaller lot). We went to take a look. It was shockingly bad rental house. Broken baseboards, holes in walls, mismatched horrible paint, paint line super uneven and badly done between wall and ceiling, worn cabinets, dirty carpets, stinky animal urine smell throughout the house. Backyard was used as an auto-repair area with junk car parts in portions of the yard.
Horrible horrrible. That stinky house is now under contract for $600k now.
I don't even know what to think any more. All I can say is, thank goodness I bought 3 amazing homes last year and half, that are now worth $400k more this year. Insane.
I'm not sure what sort of advice you are looking for.
This is a seller's market. A land rush to liquidate assets for investors who face an almost inevitable decline in the value of their portfolios as the administration either changes or stays the same and the pandemic either ramps up or seems to based on who wins the election and how fearful we are supposed to be. Add to that artificially low interest rates and rampant unemployment and you have a picture of a nation of people who are scrambling to own more house than was previously affordable or who want to collect a nice pile of cash to reinvest when values fall off the cliff (and thats almost certain to happen if the economy shuts down again.)
So make hay while the sun shines and fatten your stockpile of cash if you have homes to unload at an inflated price. Thats what we are doing. Not smart to continue landlording in some states with tons of Covid-19 protections in place. You will just pay for your tenants to live while the mortgage on your building is still due.
Location: Stuck on the East Coast, hoping to head West
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I cashed out of my house mid-pandemic once I realized it was a seller's market. I'm renting while I wait on the sidelines to see what happens. I'm in an incredibly tenant-friendly state. I happily rent here, but I'd never be a landlord here.
I don't know that I'll ever buy again, but I sure wouldn't buy in a seller's market.
The buyers seem to be in some kind of frenzy that I find both curious and alarming.
That's how the real estate market was going from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Then came the crash and home prices plummeted. People were getting foreclosed left and right or selling their homes for half what they paid for them. Took over a decade to get to where we are now and the bubble is getting bigger and bigger all over again.
fwiw
listed my house 10 days ago, in contract now... decided to bail out and rent for a few months and lock in some equity before what must be a serious correction...
hope it doesn't happen but it seems inevitable + if it closes I can pay off a bunch of debt;
another bonus is getting rid of a bunch of ''stuff''
I know where the OP is coming from. I have 4 rentals plus my own residence. I get "We Buy Houses" postcards constantly from flippers and speculators - since I have paid the mortgages down with cash-in refis over the past decade. They can determine by the deeds of trust that I have equity to haggle over if I needed to sell quickly.
I can only scan the listings now out of curiosity - it's unfathomable for me to take on a fresh 30 year mortgage at today's prices. I just can't grasp that "houses are really worth that".
But I can still remember buying my first home at 7.375% in 1999 and thinking I got a good deal on the interest rate, versus where rates were in the mid 1990s. Today's prices cannot be sustainable if rates come back to anything near that.
Location: Stuck on the East Coast, hoping to head West
4,640 posts, read 11,936,007 times
Reputation: 9885
Quote:
Originally Posted by SGMI
I know where the OP is coming from. I have 4 rentals plus my own residence. I get "We Buy Houses" postcards constantly from flippers and speculators - since I have paid the mortgages down with cash-in refis over the past decade. They can determine by the deeds of trust that I have equity to haggle over if I needed to sell quickly.
I can only scan the listings now out of curiosity - it's unfathomable for me to take on a fresh 30 year mortgage at today's prices. I just can't grasp that "houses are really worth that".
But I can still remember buying my first home at 7.375% in 1999 and thinking I got a good deal on the interest rate, versus where rates were in the mid 1990s. Today's prices cannot be sustainable if rates come back to anything near that.
I saw the effect of interest rates on my neighborhood last year. I *think* it was around summer when the interest rates went up and contracts went way down.
FWIW, I bought my first house in the early 90s and my interest rate was 6.5%.
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