Real Estate in Secular Uptrend

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Are you sure about that? How come there is a lost decade in Japan?

Japan has 100 years.

Because Japan stopped innovating. America can suffer the same fate unless Silicon Valley gets its act together.

Same old misunderstanding real estate, totally wrong attitude.

Remember when my friend bought 750k Cupertino home, I felt too much mortgage money and rented for 5 years then I realized my mistake later. Their home value is more than 4 times.

There are many members here paid off mortgages in 10 to 15 years living loan free owned homes.

You are telling them they are wrong !

At the same time, my another friend has been renting last 25 years. Even though I showed him many good homes, he did not buy any home. Now, their family increased to 8 members still renting completely priced out bay area prices.

Now, he is trying to get a Lathrop homes, not able to get one.

The lesson learnt is early real estate holders are winner, renters are ever lasting losers.

Sometimes you just got to enjoy your life, do what you want rather than worry about a fictional zillow / redfin estimate… If you can afford and live a comfortable life, why bother?

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Life expectancy is also falling. Some of it is due to Covid but I bet this will be a common theme with rising obesity, serious medical conditions, genetic illness, mental problems, drug abuse, etc.

US is becoming a country of the sick. I bet most people in US won’t even survive without regular medication and hospital visits. It’s kind of insanity. It’s due to the poor diet, poor lifestyle, rat race, lack of physical exercise and healthcare industry propaganda.
Combine declining life expectancy with falling immigration and record low birth rates and you have a recipe of RE collapse.

My only hope for long term rental RE investments is we will become more and more renter’s nation over time, USD will be debased heavily in the future, and Bay Area will continue to have good long term fundamentals. But this will not prevent short term RE bubble to pop, which is almost guaranteed as long as Fed keeps its words.

because tomorrow is not guaranteed. you may lose a job, get unexpected medical expenses. Life can throw you any curve ball. You need your investments to protect you in those times !

Nothing is guarantied. you have to go with flow, evolve with the times. One who worries too much about things out of their control zone, can never get ahead… Do the basics right (in your control) and have the heart to tackle (in your control) whatever that may come (not in your control).

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Read Candide by Voltaire. Living in the macro world will make you miserable. Tend your own garden. That is why always use personal knowledge and vignettes on this forum. Info grabbed off the net is unreliable self echoing and generally a wase of time.

Living life in so much fear that you’ll never buy a home seems like a sure way to die young from all the stress.

Well, yes and no. Plenty of societies have degenerated into excess, moral turpitude, fascism, you name it. It’s OK to reject some change.
At the extreme the folks who killed Ann Frank went with the times and followed the law. The folks who hid her did neither.

I was mainly trying to address the fear of future that some have about things that they cannot control, and one has understand their spheres (control, influence, no control). Moral and societal is something different and as you said you need to stand-up for what you believe in when something is fundamentally broken :slight_smile:

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Isn’t buying a house at the wrong time and seeing its value go down the drain more stressful, than living free …

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To me, REinv and Real_dreams recollects the same old way buyinghouse blogged here.
It is funny to have reincarnations (not exactly same person though)!

It only matters if someone is forced to sell during the drop. Most people just keep living there and don’t worry about it. If you’re scared something will go down in value, then you’ll never buy anything. Over the long-term, buyers went and renters lose. Home ownership is the biggest contributor to the wealth gap.

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It’s hard to buy a house at the wrong time. The worst scenario I saw was when someone bought a house at the peak back in 2005. Value tumbled 80% to a bottom at 2011. But they held on and finally turned positive in 2021. So it did take 17 years to break even in the worst case scenario… but that’s probably an exceptional case which shouldn’t prevent you from making real estate investments.

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I removed most of my updates today, Good for the day, take it easy.

There were tons of perma bears in 2009, when we joined the Redfin forum. They were all wrong not only because they didn’t predict the crash but didn’t buy then at the best time to buy in my lifetime.
A friend just bought a huge house near Grass Valley. But keeping and renting out her $3m Los Gatos house… bears bulls… doesn’t matter to her. Just wants a life style change and house on a lake near Tahoe. At my age money is not the issue… enjoying life is more important.

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Are you suggesting that this is the best time to buy. Near all time high when Fed chair himself is saying the housing prices are in bubble territory.
Price crash hasn’t really happened yet, it has barely started to drop; buying now is like catching falling knives.

You’re predicting a 40% drop. How many times has it happened in the last 100 years? How did housing perform the last time we had high inflation? Mortgage rates hit 15% back then.

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Prices never dropped in the seventies and 80s. Financing just got very creative with wrap mortgages, owner financing, lease to own, contract of sale… now we lots of modern ideas on buying options. In reality it takes several years of a bad economy for prices to drop and then only on the margins because only 1% of houses sell every year.

Definitely not dropping 40% in Los Gatos. Actually pricing is illusive. She thinks her house is worth $4m and will rent for $7000/m. In reality Zillow says it’s worth $2.7m and will rent for $6000/m. So maybe in her mind she would have to take a 40% hit. All us vultures with cash would love a 50% price drop. But most like my Los Gatos friend don’t have to sell even if they move. The only sellers that will be hurt are those who have to sell and bought in the last two years. 99% will not be hurt, like my friend that paid $1,1m in 2002. And greedy buyers like me and re inv will be SOL. Can you imagine a 2200 3/2 in downtown Los Gatos built in 1990 going for 40% off of $2.7m… there would be 100 offers.

Crash? What Crash? Hard to happen when there are no sellers and still a glut of greedy buyers looking for a steal. Sellers want March prices and buyers want 40% off. Who will blink first. Only 3Ds with highly leveraged houses … pretty slim minority.

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