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Your government wants to further infringe on the rights of property owners, as if rent control wasn't already bad enough. Blue state.
Our government passed a law that says no city can disallow short-term (Airbnb, etc.) rentals. And to my knowledge, there is no rent control here. Red state.
Red state or not, AirBnB is a problem in many places. Vacation rentals end up pricing local people out of the market and they have to move away. These are people who have lived and worked in the area for their entire lives and are basically excluded from their own community by people who buy houses as an investment, to rent out, and often don't even live in the community. It has happened in two places I have lived - the Columbia River Gorge, and Hawaii. The latter is really bad because those investing not only don't live here, they are mostly not even US citizens. My community (and I) welcomes laws that favor the locals rather than the out-of-state investors.
Great post. While rental property can be great provided you get good renters, it can also be a nightmare. I think it is more difficult now as renters have more rights and they know how much they can get away with.
I recall going to real estate investing seminars 30 years ago and the presenters painted a rosy picture but as you said in your post, I am not sure they ever did what they were pitching.
With each of our previous apartment complexes, my family lived on-site. We were owner-occupied. Since I spent most of my time deployed underwater, my wife stayed at home and managed the tenants. I think it changes the dynamics with tenants when you live on-site. It makes a HUGE difference with city inspectors when they learn that you live in the building.
It's a fraught topic, with no comprehensive solution. But a common theme, sometimes expressed with a pinch of cynicism, sometimes with personal regret, is that the accumulation of resources tends to accelerate in one's 50s and 60s. Early retirement is "expensive" because we forego those high-accumulation years. This is especially so, in defined-benefit retirement plans. It pays more to finish late, than to start early. Folks who diddled-around in their 20s and 30s, then "woke up" and worked a 25-year stint from say age 45 to 70, would thereby be in better shape than the jackrabbits who started with a lucrative job at age 20, and retired at 45.
And as others have said, it is prudent to save aggressively, whether or not outright retirement becomes realizable at 40 or 45 or 50 or whatnot. So doing, one could test-drive a tentative retirement to assess both the financial and lifestyle consequences, hopefully (the key point being "hopefully") being able to return to the workforce, if the experiment fails. But this very same prudence, even if backed by the advantages of good health, eschewal of costly indulgences and so forth, isn't a guarantee. Well, nothing is! ... tritely but truly.
I think we're all just talking among ourselves now. The OP stormed out days ago. Ah, for the certitude of youth.
I've seen it before. When some people are confronted with the hard reality that early retirement is expensive and is generally not in the cards for the vast majority of people they become upset.
I imagine a sort of person who is rather spoiled who instead of getting a good education and finding a career (rather than just a job) dropped the ball and settled for something that they found distasteful. They probably spend much of their day pining over the notion of "being able to never work again". Perhaps, they convince themselves they are the victim of a great injustice because they are actually required to earn a living. Maybe they imagine themselves lying on the beach all day--doing nothing at all.
One person here who is now deceased found a way to retire quite early. That person was Robyn55. She accumulated millions through her law practice and through investing. As I recall, Robyn retired in her mid-forties. However, the difference between her and the average person I see here pining for early retirement was quite remarkable. Robyn was extremely cerebral and operated her own law firm in a specialty area for a number of years. She had a spouse who was quite successful too. They had a plan. The plan made sense. They stuck to it. What she did is simply beyond the ability of most people. It was beyond me. I'm almost sixty and I won't be retiring for a few years yet.
I'm not impressed by most of these "early retirement types" that come along here. Many are lazy. Many want to cut corners. Many see society as being obligated to make early retirement feasible for them. Its not how life works.
I've seen it before. When some people are confronted with the hard reality that early retirement is expensive and is generally not in the cards for the vast majority of people they become upset.
I'm not impressed by most of these "early retirement types" that come along here. Many are lazy. Many want to cut corners. Many see society as being obligated to make early retirement feasible for them. Its not how life works.
Wow. Okay. A whole lot of judgy judging going on. Lazy? Cutting corners?
You realize early retirement is anyone under the age of 60? I'd say anyone who is managing their financial plan and portfolio to set themselves up for a comfortable retirement AND looking at how to accelerate their plan is the opposite of lazy. It takes some focus and prioritizing to make it happen earlier.
And, for those who are playing along, notice how the 'R' word triggered this outrage. i.e. "How dare someone young "retire" before they're supposed to! That word is a huge trigger for a lot of people. It's why I think a different word is important to use because the reality is most people who leave their workplace actually pivot to something else where they spend their time and attention.
Someone who has the nest egg in place already to support their yearly expenses for as long as their retirement horizon is projected to last can retire. It's a math equation, not value judgement. Whether they should or even want to retire early than someone else thinks they should is another matter, and that's for them to decide, not Internet posters.
Last edited by lottamoxie; 06-25-2019 at 02:27 PM..
lottamoxie, you seemed to have missed the OP's story. She and her husband have the idea that she can cash out her modest 401k so they can then put a downpayment on rental units. At that point they think they should be able to kick back and be set for life. The money will just keep rolling in.
Ha ha ha ha ..if only it was that simple and trouble free.
With one stroke of the pen our governor just stabbed landlords in the heart changing the entire profit and loss structure they thought they had.
What ever you thought your deal was it was changed in mid stream.
We are likely one deal away from walking away from what we have left since we refuse to subsidize our tenants once rents hit negative ....that is 2 million in market value that is basically becoming totally useless to us.... so we have a potential deal for cents on the dollar but so far no contract.
The tenants and their children living in the apartments have succession rights. The way our package worked out we got these free
Last edited by mathjak107; 06-25-2019 at 02:57 PM..
lottamoxie, you seemed to have missed the OP's story. She and her husband have the idea that she can cash out her modest 401k so they can then put a downpayment on rental units. At that point they think they should be able to kick back and be set for life. The money will just keep rolling in.
If there isn't a sustainable nest egg and plan in place they won't be set, simple as that.
We were starting to read the handwriting on the same wall in our CA rental. The new rules they were making were making it hard to operate, and with RE prices as they are there, we just sold our rental and did a 1031 to a local vacation area rental. It's been a learning experience because it's a whole different thing than long term. The crazy regulations will drive the small time LL right out of the game and only the big corporate rental companies will be left.
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