Similar size newer construction building about a mile from you with a lot of “amenities”, over $1600/mo. Don’t complain too much bruh. I wish I was paying a mortgage instead.
Dude, not complaining at all. I am going to hang onto this apartment until I absolutely have to move. It’s amazing.
Whatever, Armando, you’re such a whiny little bitch.
Ow ow ow, I was drinking coffee.
I’m not oblivious to this. However, the tax deduction is effectively gone now since they doubled the standard deduction. I can’t itemize and save money now. Once i get divorced I could, since i’ll be in a different filing status, but this year it is a non-factor.
My house did double in value. I paid $312k in 2010 and we’re going to sell for $700k+, god willing. I’m an edge case, though, most people aren’t gonna get this kind of gain. They didn’t buy their house at the bottom of the housing market crash like I did. Most people didn’t see an empty lot across the street turn into Assembly Row with an Imax and Lego Land. Wynn didn’t decide to build a casino in their neighborhood. I hit the fucking jackpot with this property, I am not a normal case.
Btw I’m very much expecting another financial collapse, so after that maybe I’ll buy a house again. I want to unload mine before it happens.
FWIW, as someone who was stuck renting for longer than I wished, I was just trying to point out some of the good parts of home ownership and what made the grass look real nice and green on your side for years. I totally get not wanting to deal with home maintenance. Putting a cost analysis aside, peace of mind is very often worth extra money to me.
I don’t know. Lower income, but even lower home values might make this more than a wash. Average home price in my home town of Spokane, WA is $200k, which is more than 3x less than where I live now. Salaries, OTOH, are not 3x lower. Commutes in many mid-size or small cities are relatively tame, even if you live in rural areas, simply because rural areas aren’t that far out; my brother lives in a huge house on a lake 20 minutes from town. Any mid-sized city and its environs will have high speed internet. Latest FCC report suggests even that more 60% of rural areas have 25Mbps or greater landline and that 90% have either that or 10Mbps mobile.
I haven’t tried recently, and maybe I’m totally wrong, but it’s hard for me to believe that someone with a technical degree doing a nationwide job search with no constraints couldn’t find something in a less urban area where your take-home pay after housing wouldn’t be higher and you’d be closer to rural living if that’s what you want. I understand there are constraints: I live in a high cost area because my kids are here, and originally because it’s where my ex could find work (as an academic in a specialized field.) You might have local family and friends or deep ties to an area or something. But America is a big country. Technical unemployment is very low. There must be opportunity somewhere.
As the author of the Center for Rural Affairs report explains, broadband providers are required to file Form 477 twice yearly to summarize the census blocks they serve. In order to list a census block as “served,” providers must offer service to at least one household in the block (which may contain between 600 and 3,000 people) or must state that the block could be served without “an extraordinary commitment of resources,” according to the report.
“The resulting misinformation is especially acute in rural areas, where a census block may encompass hundreds of square miles,” the author states, adding that there are more than 3,200 census blocks that are larger than the District of Columbia and eight that are larger than the entire state of Connecticut.
“Because homes and businesses are spread widely throughout these blocks, the accuracy of Form 477 data can be very weak,” the author says.
The data the FCC used is self reported by the telecoms subject to regulation. Their data is flawed because they are using census blocks in rural areas that mean if one person in a giant set of rural land has 25 Mbps, that area is “covered” which is an extremely easy way to juice the numbers in your favor.
Microsoft Joins in rebutting the FCC’s report
In researching broadband availability, Microsoft learned that “the problem is bigger than we thought it was,” Smith said today.
While the FCC says 25 million Americans lack access to broadband, including at least 19 million in rural counties, Microsoft said it has reviewed other data suggesting those numbers are much higher. According to Microsoft’s estimate, 162.8 million people do not use broadband. It’s important to note that just because a person doesn’t use broadband doesn’t mean he or she can’t get it. But even after taking that into account, Smith’s comments suggest the FCC data substantially overerestimates broadband availability.
The GAO also jumped in on the inaccuracy of the FCC data
A good example of how telecom companies were able to use census blocks to make it appear more people have coverage than they actually do.
You can just connect the people in the rural areas that live right next to the freeway, and that covers the thousands of other people living on the county roads in the hundreds of miles in the rest of that block. It is very inaccurate. (they also allow the telecoms to claim availability if they say they would extend to an area, but nobody has asked)
I would be highly suspect of any report coming out of Ajit Pai’s FCC.
Seriously. He’s a Verizon partisan who was able to get in charge of the commission that’s supposed to regulate them.
Sure, Ajit Pai is a piece of shit. But here’s a report from the FCC in 2015, showing 47% of rural customers with 25Mbps. And here’s the 2016 report that shows this number at 61%. I mean it looks like, based on the other info you provided, that you’re right and that the FCC is over-reporting, but if so, it did it during Obama’s presidency too and has little to do with the director.
That said, I traveled a bunch through the Sierras this summer, staying in tiny towns or isolated cabins out in the woods. There was never a place I couldn’t watch Netflix on the provided WiFi. Also, this doesn’t invalidate my larger point. My brother, living on a lake, surrounded by trees 20 minutes from Spokane, has enough bandwidth on his cable connection to run two 4k streams simultaneously. This will be true near any city of modest size anywhere in the country. And just because there are plenty of rural places that lack broadband doesn’t mean they all do. If you need high speed internet to do your work, there are lots of places with low housing prices and a more rural milieu that have it.
This really depends on the market. For high cost of living place (e.g. SF Bay Area) landlords are running a negative cash flow on their properties for many years and depending on rent increases and price appreciation to make money over the medium to long term.
In other markets, it is actually cheaper to buy vs rent and that advantage will only increase over time. During 2010-2012 I bought 5 and sold two properties in Las Vegas, the average price was about $100K. Mortgage, HOA fees, taxes, insurance were in $550-650 range and rents were $850-900. Once I finally found a decent property manager (who takes 10%) they were marginally cash flow positive, thrown in tax benefits and they were definitely money makers. Today they have doubled to about $220K, (roughly the prices back in 2006-7 before the crash) rents have increased also now $1100-1200. However, if I was buying them today with higher interest rates, my cost would $1,200-$1,300 and I’d be losing money.
These same place (3-4 bedroom/2 bath, 15-year-old houses in lower-middle-class neighborhood with mediocre schools) would be 800-900k in Hawaii, and $1 million to 1.2 million in the Bay Area, costs would also increase by 4-5x. However, rents would barely triple $3,500-$4,000 and you’d be forking out a lot of money each month to keep the property.
TL: DR If you live in a place where it’s nearly as cheap to buy as it is to rent. you foolish not buy if you can come up with even a 5-10% down. Since there are many programs for 1st homeowners.
It is definitely a crap shot for HCOL places, you have to bet that prices will continue to rise at inflation+. The one lesson everyone should have learned from the great recession is that housing prices like the stock market can go down.
Which is kind of stupid given that of all the jobs in the world where telecommuting should work, that’s probably the top of the list.
I bought my rental property with cash so the interest rates are not a factor. And I bought it as a new build so maintenance costs are a bit lower. I have a property manager who takes a chunk, but my return on the money I have tied up in the property has been right around 4%, so I’m pretty happy with it as an investment.
This is the area I live in. if you remove property taxes/insurance my mortgage is almost exactly what I paid renting. We could have gone smaller too, but we could afford a larger place with room to grow. But that is only recently, rents in our area went up quite a lot in the last 5 years (has slowed somewhat recently due to a massive amount of new rental units being built) We were paying nearly 1300 a month for a two bedroom loft single bathroom. It was spacious at over 1000 sq ft, but it was a unit over 25 years old. Some of the new rental buildings in the area? 1800-1900 for that much space. (which is MORE than my entire mortage/tax/insurance payments)
Every area differs, but it is getting crazy out there.
The problem is the widespread adoption of neoliberalism. It’s Capitalism baby.
“Our entire lives are framed around becoming cheaper and more efficient economic instruments for capital. That, taken to an extreme, has pretty corrosive effects on society, particularly young people.”
I think that’s the problem in a nutshell. We’re being bred to be constantly more efficient cogs in a capitalist machine, in constant competition with each other. Not good.
Yuuuuuup.
… Not sure if that is sarcasm or agreement :D