Soooooo 14 years to break even in the best-case scenario?
If you sank that $70k into an index fund with a 5% return (let’s say an average 6% returning fund with 1% in fees, which is ridiculous), you’d double your money in that same time.
If you don’t intend to live there now, you might be legitimately better off just investing in the market, and then outright buying a house when you’re able.
Houses can also go very very wrong in a hurry, so whatever you estimate in maintenance costs is probably too low.
My wife and I are now officially home owners! Moving day isn’t until Sept but we’re really excited. She’s the first of her family in a long time to own property so they’re super pumped to help out with landscaping and repairs.
I cleaned out the dryer exhaust tube! It wasn’t super clogged, but there was some packed lint at the exhaust flap that I wanted to clear before it got worse.
I have solved my problem with my indoor antenna, instead of having it lean against the air conditioner I reused an old over the door towel rack and placed it into the ajar window. Now I no longer need to worry about having it fall on me accidentally.
It definitely has that “shoeshine boy playing the stock market” vibe when everyone I know seems to be buying or upgrading to a bigger house. That said, basically all markets right now are looking very gamed and then gamed again. It’s unlikely that we will see negative interest rates on homes, so if you’re financially secure and it’s a long term investment low interest rates are low interest rates. Even if home prices crash, they should bump back up decisively on a 20 year term…
But I’m not doing it. I’m trying to maintain my ability to quickly and easily move in the case the market around me for work I want to do dries up.
It’s independent, right? Same debt but lower interest rate. If the debt turns out to be a bad idea, it’d be worse if it was also at a higher interest rate.
You can also do it again if it’s cost-effective. The proposed “adverse market refinance fee”—which was 0.5% when I looked last month—was supposed to start September 1 but was punted to December 1.
It would probably take around 2% on a 15-year fixed to get me to budge - I already locked in 2.5%, and realistically the closing costs on anything between that and 2% are just cutting the margin too thin to be worth it.
A good friend of mine is investing by becoming a landlord. They are buying a 3 family house and renovating the third, currently un-rented, floor. The couple has very good intentions and don’t want to be slum-lords. They don’t have kids, and have the capital, also 1 is an elected Democratic official in the town (1st term). But I really think it’s a bad idea right now, and I’m not sure how to express that without sounding like a crazy person.
Market rates were pushed lower by the fed which is why everyone who had the capital to buy or refinance was jumping in at the same time. I refinanced my 1 year old mortgage and knocked off 1.2% interest in the process taking off 400 dollars on my monthly payment between that and my lowered PMI from my house being assessed higher.
I think you’re right though that its better to wait with all the uncertainty right now before buying property.
