Essentially, the thinking is land lords are rich, get their wealth from rent-seeking and hence should be able to withstand/ deserve financial losses. Same goes with developers. In reality, there are many that went bankrupt and nobody care.
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Apparently, he didn’t need to buy since he rents it for $500 by taking care of the apartments. So is like working. I guess he got paid by government for his war service which pay for the $500 rent plus other expenses.
Hanera I get what your saying…
i guess my thought process has always been buy something lock in a mortgage to protect yourself as you age against rising rents. He had opportunities to buy when houses were well under <50K in parts of the bay area. I know interest rates were quite high at one time in the 70’s-80s but it’s still possible his mortgage would have been ~500 a month. To me he was a bit short sighted on this one since he has a daughter I’m just assuming he was a family guy at one point in life. Meaning had some sort of a regular job.
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Many people are still debating on rent vs purchase. Some people seems to buy into renting is better. For me, buy owner-occupied house once you can do it regardless of macro conditions.
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Good idea to buy your house if you can afford, no point to continue guessing about the market. When you buy a car, you expect it to go down in value. When you buy a house to live in, do not study too hard on where the price will go.
Surprisingly home price is going up this year and houses are selling fast
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The economy is good unemployment is going down…Prices will go up
elt1 - you forgot your favorite BA variable - limited inventory! Cheers
And these stories should end every one of those debates. Rent vs. buy debate is only ok as long as you are capable of buying at this very moment. If you have $1B in the bank and want to have that debate and decided to rent, feel free. If you don’t even have a down payment, you are freaking screwed already–you need to buy because things aren’t going to get better.
After graduating, I thought I would be doomed to rent forever. Salary too low, after expenses and helping my parent, no savings to talk about. Life works in mysterious way, after five years when I am getting married, economy went into recession, able to buy a condo with combined paycheck.
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Saving money takes real discipline and focus (on the end prize). Buying a place (SFH or condo yes) can be done if you really want it.
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Here’s the thing. If you really can’t do it, but tried, at least you tried. There are people living in poverty who may or may not ever buy a house. That’s life, and those people are probably getting subsidized rent/section 8/food stamps anyways.
But if you’re having that rent vs. own debate, you can probably buy something, somewhere even if it’s a drive, but you decided not to, and when you end up at 92 kicked out, then it’s your own d*mn fault for deciding to rent.
And believe me, if I’m living out of my minivan at 65 because we don’t have a place by then, I’m not going to gripe about rent control. I know exactly who to blame it on and the choices that led there.
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I am a product of folks who came to this great country of ours with nothing. Nothing. Sure, the confines of Chinatown helped my family transition over but you can imagine the blatant in your face distain/discrimination we faced right outside that area and especially in the work force. I get it, if you can’t hang with the natives, well, you get the most tough and lowest paying jobs there are. My ancestors did them. My grandmother labored on the SF docks on shrimp boats. She was a tough old bird but without her toughness and drive, I am not here today. I grew up in really a 2.5 bedroom flat with 1 bathroom with 7 occupants. Do the math. I lost my Dad in high school. He was not old by any stretch of the imagination. And, I bet some folks had it even tougher than I did and still managed to do pretty well in life. So, I probably won’t be as sympathetic as others may be on the subject for good reason. It is what it is.
He should do what my grandfather did. At 90 he stopped sending in tax returns. At 95 he was dead before they could audit him.
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Now that puts a new twist on “the only thing sure in life is death and taxes”!
I wish I could like that post 20 times.
Here, have one of min…you owe me:slight_smile:
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