Location, Location, Location

Bay Area Owners,

Aaah yes, location, location, location

Same old weakness of argument: “earned” vs “wealth”.

Growth in the value of one’s personal residence may equal growth in wealth, but it isn’t disposable earnings. You’d have to sell to recognize the “earnings” and, you’d have to replace it because you’ll need to live somewhere.

Borrowing against it, is a wealth decreaser.

More importantly,fairness and equality are not the same. A fact often ignored by the headline grabbing press as well as the envious public.

Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

Home ownership in Singapore is over 90%.

Since most homes are over S$1 million, most Singaporeans are millionaire, yay!

Btw, over 50% of pay is towards housing mortgage, so we wear simply, and eat simply.

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I know, I know, I know… but wife thinks I am crazy to want to move back to her homeland essentially. I say, why not? Or, live between here and there. It’s doable. All it takes is ca$h, right?

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I agree with her. Malaysian government is corrupt. If stay in Singapore, then ok.

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Oh, well, maybe one day Steph you might make it big…

http://www.eurweb.com/2017/08/steph-curry-loses-money-in-booming-bay-area-real-estate-market/#

“Poor” Steph, his ex-WC home is actually pretty close to my WC rental. I bought it hoping to leverage his star power, little did I know he was selling it for good. My property should be pretty solid though, it’s a mere fraction of the cost of his home. :slight_smile:

Walnut Creek is nice. I would live there if my wife didn’t mind the commuting or can do BART. What is there to not like? Good weather, low crime and large homes with yards to bbq in. I do hate hitting the traffic when you go through the Caldecott though…

That tunnel is the worst thing ever…

I hear a lot of Asians have moved to WC lately…

Yes, they moved there for the cheap bargains. Good schools with over 900 API, large homes over 2000sf, selling for just around $1M!!! What is not to like???

Any good potential for rental or merely for homestead?

Good for homestead. Not much room for rental!!! Although I did purchase mine as a rental but it’s just barely breaking even. No cash flow at all!!!

So long can easily rent out, I’m ok. Cashflow would be positive pretty fast because of Prop 13 :slight_smile: but may be not now, people have problems absorbing yearly rent increases. Cap rate of my SV rental moves from less than 3% to nearly 5% over a period of 5 years because can increase rent faster than property tax increase, unlike Austin, cap rate stay about the same. Going forward, more or less have to keep rent steady or even drop, too much competition and potential tenants are unable to absorb any more rent increases. Anecdotally, a few neighbors are renting out their houses and rent in cheaper neighborhoods like San Jose.

It took me two weeks to rent it out I think. So it wasn’t bad. Better cash flow than San Jose. If you put 35% down, San Jose still negative, but Walnut Creek can break even.

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At most, prop 13 can increase your cap rate by 1.25% if your purchase price becomes negligible. It has this ceiling