Nobody called it a struggle, but the whole idea of "comfortable" living is stretched at 75K like he said. And for all the "you dont have to live in the city", if you went further out in Chicago in order to save on rent, you're looking at almost 2 hours of commuting each day via train and/or bus. So I don't know if that really fits with the pie in the sky theme of it all.
Re: Re: 11/1/13 WDT NSFW Oh, we think that way too. 88 new suburban house developments have been started in my city in the past five years. The amount of those houses that cost under $300,000 is zero. You can only buy a condo new for under three hundred, and a condo is like owning your own home without having any rights to it. I am not a Condo Guy. For me it's either house or house.
Re: Re: 11/1/13 WDT NSFW I watch Love It, or List It and I was convinced all Canadians lived in 900sq/ft semi-detached houses. Was I misled?
Not entirely, since I live in a semi-detached but its 30 years old. They were a big thing in the 80's here. Another fad of the past is quality, affordable new starter homes. That's the house ingrew up in. a three-bed bungalow that my parents bought for maybe $80, 000 brand new built in the early 80's. My place is completely finished, five bedroom and two full bath and was only 180 grand. My neighbourhood is in the furthest corner from downtown and is surrounded by ridiculously monstrous homes with Vatican fountains, 25-foot-tall windows and security check points. What utter fucking glamour. We haven't had a home invasion in this city in what, three years and you need to live in a gated community? Fuck off.
I recently started looking at houses here in Indiana (probably 45-60 min East of D26) I can get a 2200sq ft 4 BR, yes they are small, 2 bath tri level that has been remodeled in a decent older but still well kept subdivision on a corner lot for about 115,000 or around 700ish a month. 75K here would go pretty far but its not ballin'. It would be comfortable though.
In the city a three-person house can get by on $75k without assistance if they know at all how to budget. Toronto is ridiculous and probably costs ten fold of my city. Vancouver I think is the most, and Calgary but I think Calgary is worth the price, to say the least. Montreal I have no clue.
Montreal is cheaper to live in than Toronto. People forget this about Montreal, but large parts of the city are pretty fucking sketchy. Also, taxes are way higher. And there's also the creepy aspect that every sign you see - every single one - has had its language content carefully regulated by the government. And there are open discussions about crafting the values of society around white Catholic francophones whose families trace their roots back to the first settlers from France, immigrants and anglophones be damned.
And here I am thinking it was a just a party town with shitloads upon shitloads of organized crime. Oh, and McGill...the biggest university jackpot you can imagine.
Also, all public works projects are paid for twice. First, they pay the mafia, and then they actually pay to build the fucking things.
One of the key points that I want to highlight is that rent/mortgage is one of the major expenses people list no matter where you live, therefore freeing yourself from it is one of the best paths to financial security. Have had a lot of debates with friends regarding renting over buying, and looked at plenty of graphs and charts showing how purchasing property is false economy, in my opinion this is wrong. ¾ of all the wealthy people I know have got there at least partly through property. Mortgages have and end date, rent is forever. My advice, buy something as soon as you can, pay it off as fast as you can. And it looks like there are some great buys in the States at the moment.
Yeah, we tried using real estate and home ownership as means of wealth creation here. I don't know if you heard, but it worked out really well for us. The thing about mortgages is they cost a shit load of money. Taking out a 30 year mortgage involves paying almost double the cost of the house even at today's historically low interest rates. If you bought a house for the median price ($64,600) at the prevailing mortgage interest rate in 1980 (13.74%) and sold it upon the end of your 30 year mortgage in 2010, it nets out to approximately -$50,000. Even if you assume the average interest rate over that time span (9%), it works out to a profit of about $35,000, which sounds nice.... but amounts to an annual return in the 4% ballpark, barely outpacing inflation (between 3% and 3.5%).
Not to argue from authority, but there's a really smart guy who thinks otherwise: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/ho...rize-thinks-housing-terrible-investment/7240/ Money quote: "Historically, between 1890 and 1990, the actual rate of return on owning a home has been virtually non-existent". I'm not saying it's always a bad investment, but yours is a too-strong statement. Also, this is rad. Virtually go to Yale and study with Nobel winners: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/10/shillers-financial-markets-course/
Tell home equity is an investment to any poor soul who bought a house during the crash. Although I agree home equity is great, there's a huge difference between an investment and your primary residence. Investments are all about the ROI and when you live in that investment, there are more than a few conflicts of interest. You end up making improvements that YOU enjoy, not what the market prefers. You also can't exactly liquidate at the peak in the market. I understand people do use their primary resdiences as investments and upgrade every few years, but it's not thr ideal investment strategy for maximizing your ROI (which should be your only concern when investing).
Bit of cut and paste, but the bloke says it better than I could. And personally I've been playing with property both residential and commercial for 13 years and am far better off than friends who have been renting and dabbling in the share market.
That's only a reasonable comparison if you never, ever move, and if the market for your million-dollar home never collapses.
This assumes that real estate values are stable and/or grow over time. I agree with the majority of the post, but equity isnt necessarily a solid investment. You could rent for the past 10 years and come out further ahead than some homeowners who thought buying was the best choice.
It also completely ignores the effective of inflation, while arbitrarily saying that home prices will appreciate at a rate of 5%. And while there's the boom of having a hypothetical asset 25 years in the future, it requires having the available income, in this example, to spend $40,000 annually on housing costs. That's a pretty high threshold in order to reap the reward.
Not to mention the maintenance and taxes involved. As a rule of thumb, owning is a better strategy, but by no means is it always the best.
A girl Ive been hanging out went to the hospital today for a staph infection and come to find out, she has MRSA. Im reading a lot of conflicting info on it. Is this shit like herpes in that it's only contagious when it breaks out? Im guessing I need to end this quickly before I get it...