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I've seen people talking about how the average rent for a 1br in Boston is much higher than the mortgage for whatever house they own. Does that mean that I eventually want to buy a house instead, and that I'm wasting money by renting an apartment? Given what I've read in this thread, it doesn't really seem like just beelining for a house is a very good idea financially or for your personal life, but the fact that the money I spend now could be spent renting or paying mortgage on a bigger place bugs me. I do want to have my own house someday, but I don't see that being sensible for a good few years.
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Jun 9, 2017 21:53
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I'm looking at the NY calculator and trying to figure out at what point renting makes less sense than buying. I set the calculator to say this: which is roughly what my apartments have been monthly so far. Does that mean this is the equivalent home price I'm paying for infinitely, and that's the price of the house I might as well have bought?  I'm trying to wrap my head around how all this poo poo works, and it's not really sticking so far.
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Feb 14, 2020 23:12
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Inner Light posted:The rent vs buy decision has been complicated for me, and there are a number of ways to use the calculator. What I did: I think so? That's basically what I'm doing. But I don't think that's actually correct. Most apartments around my area are 2k~2.2k per month to rent. According to NYT, that is equivalent to a 15-year mortgage on a $710,000 house. That sounds wildly incorrect to me: $2200 / month * 12 months/year * 15 years = $396,000. Not even slightly close to $710k.
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Feb 14, 2020 23:42
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But my goal isn't to use the house as a financial vehicle or investment, it's to have a place to live in where I don't have to worry about constantly paying rent and not having to depend on dipshits to make repairs or let me keep just one cat. I've heard all sorts of horror stories about people using houses as a way to make money and then getting beefed circa 2008 (e.g. my parents, to an extent). If I'm just trying to live, am I opening myself up to that same bullshit?
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Feb 15, 2020 02:06
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Summit posted:When you use those rent vs buy calculators bear in mind they assume you’re investing your savings from renting into the market at 6-8% average gains. I’m not doing this at all. The savings are just chilling in a savings account in BOFA. Should I be buying stocks with them or something? quote:
Oh, definitely. I really like the idea of a place where I don’t have to depend on idiot landlords who can’t do proper maintenance or insulate a drat floor, or a place where I can have as many cats as I want. It’s just a very scary step.
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Feb 15, 2020 17:21
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LLSix posted:Where you put saving for your downpayment and investing in your house will move up or down in priority based on how much you want to own versus rent (renting/owning in many places works out about even in terms of financial viability so you do you). At least I have some amount of personal agency with owning, since I can just get things fixed and don’t have to lose out on 90% of the rental market because of my cat. quote:
My approach so far has been: - Contribute to 401k to the matching limit my employer provides, I have not done the math on how much this ends up being in the end - Pay off credit card bills immediately - Here, I used to contribute to my Roth IRA, but the stock markets are going to collapse or at least tank some time soon and I’m too smart to put my money in such a volatile vehicle like the stock market - Rest of money goes to BOFA savings account where nothing can touch it or take it away, because the world cannot be trusted to not suddenly dump tens of thousands of dollars in emergency costs on me for no good reason Probably one of the main reasons I’m not ready to buy yet.
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Feb 15, 2020 17:58
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I'm not 100% committed to buying yet (though I'd love to if the time and place is right), so it's fine if I'm not explicitly saving for a down payment. But the stock market is capitalism, and capitalism is not to be trusted. If you need a single sheep to survive by the time you turn 55, you don't keep that sheep next to an extremely hungry wolf. But fine. I maxed out my IRA contributions for 2019 and 2020, now. I just hope this truly, truly holds. LLSix posted:The current personal contribution to your 401k for the 2020 fiscal year is $19,500. This is the amount you want to be contributing. Last I heard, the conventional wisdom is to contribute to your 401k up to and no further than the point where your employer will match it. Is that no longer the case? Is the idea that the % of 401k saving should be whatever % gets me to $19,500 or the current year's limit now? This is getting off-topic, anyway. I do want to own someday, but not in the fuckin' metro Boston area. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Feb 15, 2020 |
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Feb 15, 2020 18:17
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silence_kit posted:If you don't have a lot of savings, this is kind of all that you can do for your savings plan, but if you do have a lot of savings (> 3-6 months of your expenses) it probably isn't a great idea to put all of your savings in a savings account. Savings account interest rates don't beat inflation, so by putting all of your savings in a savings account, you are effectively slowly losing money. Fine. Then the question is where the rest of it goes. quote:Unfortunately, to be able to effectively save for retirement, you will have to accept some risk. I think you are exaggerating the risk though--maybe you spend a lot of time browsing the C-SPAM forum on this site? yeah bitch.  quote:For most people, if they can afford to do it, it really makes sense for them to put as much money in tax-advantaged/tax-deferred government savings accounts like IRAs & 401ks as they can and to invest that money in index funds. What, like just putting most of the rest of your savings in a non-IRA Vanguard account and buying as much VFFVX as you can with it? quote:If you are ideologically opposed to investing for your retirement, then don't do it. I am ideologically opposed to people's well-being in their later years being dependent on an opaque, intentionally-confusing financial structure that has been demonstrably proven to be disadvantageous on the whole to anyone who doesn't pull the strings. LLSix posted:Is it better to pay cash for a house if you can, or should you take out a mortgage and bet on average returns being higher than what you lose to the mortgage? Who wants a completely uninformed opinion? Cause I got one! Cash. People fall over themselves to cater to people who can pay cash. Cash gives you an advantage over people who only say they could have the money over time, because you can instead prove that you have the money right now, and that lets you skip lines, gets you top bid on houses, gets you white glove service from realtors, etc. Maybe the financial part of it doesn't quite work out, but the up-front bonuses are clear. Tricky Ed posted:Leaving aside the philosophy discussion, your medium-term savings should at least be in a high-yield savings account at like 1.8% and not in BofA making 0.05%. Should I leave BOFA and go somewhere else? ntan1 posted:Buying is a 15-30 year investment that has financial advantages even in a good case 10% YoY scenario (no inflation considered) when considering compound interest of stocks. This sounds like putting all your eggs in one basket to me.
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Feb 15, 2020 20:26
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Now that I've adjusted my income to max my 401k contrib, started budgeting for max IRAs, have a chunk of change in VFIAX, and cashed out my company stock...I think I'll wait for my annual work review, check out apartments here and there, deal with the adjusted paychecks for a while, and see if the time is right to start considering buying property. That said, the problem with that is that I'm not very keen on staying in the Boston area. Commuting here sucks, which means you have to be close to the city - but the closer you are to the city, the more expensive rent and house prices get.  I'm not a fuckin' millionaire. I got a lot to think about and figure out before committing to a house, but I don't know what yet.
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Mar 6, 2020 01:33
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AndrewP posted:It's cold as hell in Boston, move somewhere warmer IMO Tampa have no job
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Mar 6, 2020 02:19
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H110Hawk posted:We have our very own Boston slumlord RIGHT IN THIS THREAD! Hey, I'm already telling my parents I don't want to be part of their scheme! 
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Mar 6, 2020 02:20
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Wait, what’s the difference between this and the other thread?
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Mar 6, 2020 13:36
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Johnny Truant posted:Like, the dude tried to open that person's door and he just IMMEDIATELY fired off a shot? That's hosed up. Hadlock posted:Texas
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Dec 11, 2020 23:30
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I actually have a question about mortgages. Is there an advantage to paying it off sooner rather than later? Say, if you can front a large chunk of it up-front, or pay it off within 10 years instead of 20? Or is it basically the same as paying it off over a long period of time?
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Dec 12, 2020 00:06
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Motronic posted:This is a much more complicated topic that has been and is currently being covered at length in the long term investment thread. Yup, realized that just now  COVID both delayed and accelerated my plans to consider home ownership, oddly enough. Spending more time at home means that I’m realizing the shortcomings of renting my apartment and relying on landlords, and becoming more comfortable with remote work/WFH. But, it’s also given me a good reason to stay in my state (it didn’t gently caress up its COVID response quite as hard as the rest) and highlighted how desperately companies want local butts in chairs. Either way, I do feel the need to “graduate” from renting. Since I’ve become comfortable with saving for retirement, and have the best opportunity in a long time to justify a move to better housing options, I might be laying down roots for real if the calculus works out in ownership’s favor. Lots of research to do first, though. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Dec 12, 2020 |
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Dec 12, 2020 15:52
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I was confused for a second until I realized I confused appraisals with inspections in my head. 
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Dec 15, 2020 19:09
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Hadlock posted:It varies by city, but "buy" neighborhoods/condo buildings tend to be a lot nicer places to live than "rent" areas. Your neighbors tend not to be under 25, play loud music at 3am etc. The city tends to take better care of "buy" areas, as owner occupied units tend to vote more often than not. My quality of life jumped dramatically when I got out of the rental game, I'm not going back to renting ever. The quality of life improvements are worth the cost of admission. The finishes on my house are a lot nicer than any rental I ever had. The bolded is why I’m considering buying. Apartments in the Greater Boston Area are, quite honestly, generally for students who are unlikely to live in the area for more than a year or two. Rentals here have no incentive to keep utilities or construction acceptable, if even legal under housing laws (ask me about bad landlords). I want to live somewhere where I don’t get basement dust blown in my face during the winter and don’t get ignored when I complain about it (again, ask me about that  ), and in Massachusetts, that means buying. Capitalism is basically here to stay and it only values property owners and the wealthy. If I want to be happy, I have no choice but to buy.(Supposedly renting selection improves the further out from Boston you go, but not by much. And of course, I could move to a different state, but as a tech worker I’m heavily tied to being near population centers.) Maybe in the future I will start a discussion on my current situation and what my next option is, but for now, I’m just listening and reading. tater_salad posted:I don't enjoy not having a guy to call to fix poo poo when it breaks and having him show up in 1 hr and have no bill after. Except when you try to call a guy to fix poo poo, have to do it twice and send emails to two different people to get a response, they don’t show up for a couple days, then when they get here, do a minimum effort job that doesn’t actually fix the core issue and when you ask the landlords to fix said core issue they shrug you off. Also the guy tracked mud everywhere. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Dec 16, 2020 |
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Dec 16, 2020 15:53
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My big caveat is “can I maintain employment in software engineering for the next 15-20 years”, and that seems likely, but not a sure thing, because I’ll be hosed if I put my faith in the tech industry  Also, my parents desperately want to help me buy, which changes the calculus a bit. I’d prefer they help my siblings first, honestly, cause if I can’t handle buying on my own, it wasn’t a good idea in the first place.
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Dec 16, 2020 16:16
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Point taken.
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Dec 16, 2020 16:54
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I’ve been idly looking at the housing selection in Massachusetts while I’m also watching for apartment rentals, and wow  . I’m gonna be honest, I don’t feel comfortable ever buying property in Massachusetts, if not the entire northeast. If I ever do buy, it’ll probably be after I retire and have no more friends to visit.What is it that makes New England such a difficult market? Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Feb 25, 2021 |
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Feb 25, 2021 17:08
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Frankly I’m fine with renting for the rest of my life, if I can find a place to rent that both allows cats, has good construction, and isn’t landlorded by absentee dickheads. Unfortunately, in Massachusetts, #2 and #3 are balls hard to find. But I’m complaining again, I’ll handle the rest from here.
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Feb 25, 2021 17:31
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The older I get, the less city living becomes worthwhile for me. I have a car, I don’t go out clubbing or partying, and I don’t need to be around people all the time. Still, I kinda want to at least take advantage of the city to meet people, but boy am I a fuckin shutin so maybe ~5 years into city life without much of a social network means I should just move on.
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Apr 12, 2021 19:21
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What I know for sure is that treating houses like an investment vehicle hosed a lot of people over and I think I’ll pass on doing the same. A house is a place to live first.
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Apr 12, 2021 23:20
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All I know is that I’ll only ever buy if I can also be assured of WFH opportunities wherever I’m employed, cause I’m sick of thinking about the commute/price tradeoff dance.
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Apr 15, 2021 15:39
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Want more E/N posts about Pollyanna's parents and their terrible house-buying decisions? 'Course ya do! They're still hellbent on playing the Boston real estate market as a way to transfer wealth to their children. Current scheme is to take out a loan for $2M, buy a triple decker, rent the bottom floor to me for like $3000/mo, and rent the top two to...somebody. In exchange for a full time job, paying double rent and running real estate/logistic errands on the side - after they die, I get the building. Here's the problem: this would lock me in to a very specific living situation for fifteen to twenty loving years. No chance of moving if the management company my parents hire are incompetent, no chance of leaving if I'm sick of college kids throwing parties above me every weekend, no chance of bailing if I don't want to side hustle as a realtor and deputy landlord, no chance of noping out if I decide that my money and my life is better spent camping in a truck in Colorado. Not without royally pissing them off and getting nothing for my trouble. This is a raw loving deal for me and a terrible plan for my parents. My parents end up $2M in the hole and I'm locked into a stupidly expensive apartment, limited job options, and  for over a decade. The "you're paying into your own home" idea does not hold when there's 0% chance of this plan not faceplanting horribly....But literally none of this matters cause apparently my parents don't have enough money right now to stay afloat without my mother continuing to work for another 5-7 years despite both her and my dad being retirement age. If you don't have enough money to retire at 58~59 years old, why are you borrowing money to buy prime Boston real estate? Anveo posted:Ofc, an hour after close my realtor does a walk-through and says he smells gas and thinks there is a leak. I call Xcel, head over, and sure enough there is a small leak, owner probably had some IoT poo poo connected to a line and didn't screw it fully back in. Or it's been like that and the sellers will believe their move to Florida was the cure for minor headaches and the reason for my good fortune. Aren't you supposed to get houses inspected for poo poo like this before you buy them?
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May 28, 2021 15:21
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I’m allergic to loans, really. I don’t trust them. But yeah, if there’s an asset, it’s fine. In that case, I’m the only one who’s really in a bad position so that actually makes it worse. There’s no way to explain their specific plan that doesn’t involve a confluence of “I want to get tax writeoffs by acting as a business” and “I don’t think my kid’s career will survive long term”. They could just help me with a down payment on a house, but then I wouldn’t get passive income from renting the place out, and they wouldn’t be able to write any losses off on their taxes. I’m taking this poo poo over again, sorry. Suffice to say that I simply don’t have confidence in the plan and leave it at that. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 15:43 on May 28, 2021 |
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May 28, 2021 15:31
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Fascinating and kinda scary to think about, if the house’s detectors didn’t catch it either. Glad you found it!
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May 28, 2021 15:49
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H110Hawk posted:Nothing in your house alarms on a gas leak except you. That's why we odorize natural gas, and why it is imperative to take immediate action if you smell it where you shouldn't. You will become nose blind to it rapidly and then you won't notice it until you leave for potentially hours and then return. Is that not what a carbon monoxide detector pulls double duty on? I left a pot simmering for 2 hours once and I tripped the CO detector.
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May 29, 2021 01:03
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PageMaster posted:CO detectors do not normally detect natural gas leaks nor other explosive gases; you can buy special ones that do, but most do not inherently. Got it. H110Hawk posted:That's tripping because your stove is letting off more CO than it should as a product of combustion of natural gas. Open a window when you cook so you don't kill yourself. And get your stove serviced, are your flames solid deep blue? (Pollynote: yeh) Now if you left the burner valve open and unlit that would be natural gas alarming. Makes sense, this apartment’s a chode and the landlords refuse to furnish it with anything newer than 1989. It’s probably dying.
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May 29, 2021 01:15
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Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh welp they don’t call it Slummerville for nothing!! Will do.
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May 29, 2021 01:21
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On Terra Firma seems to be taking this personally, and honestly they’re just proving our point. The grand majority of people involved in this are morons, even if a few know what they’re doing, and on a purely statistical basis, potential buyers need to hedge their bets. They have no way of knowing if they can’t trust someone without interviewing the poo poo out of them, and no one has that kinda time. Just cause you have some modicum of competence doesn’t mean everyone else does. It’s not everyone else’s fault that they’re wary, it’s your moron coworkers’. Don’t take it personally, but do realize the realities of the field you work in.
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Jun 2, 2021 13:58
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Just a smorgasbord of stupid.
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Jun 2, 2021 21:46
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Parents keep sending me properties in the Greater Boston area and all I can think of while I pull them up is “do they think I want to rent a lovely and overly expensive 1br in a crumbling building with 3-4 other people in the middle of a rapidly gentrifying city until my 50s?”. I’m gonna have to have a long talk with them over the weekend about what they really want to accomplish, because I’ll be hosed if I spend every year until my retirement in a slum sharing apartments with college kids. also they 100% don’t have the money to buy any of these multimillion dollar properties 
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Jun 4, 2021 15:04
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That’s all well and good but I’m not interested in playing the real estate market. I want a nice little place to myself where I have all the amenities and utilities I need, I want maintenance to be simple and as reasonable as is possible for home ownership, and I don’t want to deal with other tenants and keeping the place afloat. That’s it. No loving bullshit, no garbage, nice and simple. I am not so greedy as to try and make millions off of Boston real estate. Apparently my parents are.
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Jun 4, 2021 15:36
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I’d trust Motronic with anything house related honestly.
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Jun 4, 2021 17:03
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I don’t know why it took me so long, but I just realized a 20% down on a $600,000 house is $120,000 out of pocket. 
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Jun 7, 2021 03:17
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:you don't NEED to put 20% down It sounds like it makes it a more compelling offer for the sellers, though, so it might be worth it.
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Jun 7, 2021 15:23
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kw0134 posted:and you'll be outbid by some jerks with an all cash offer anyway That’s a lot of loving cash  God, the inequality in housing is absolutely dire and I don’t see how it can get any better. Insurrectum posted:It's pretty low on the list though, 20% down just makes it less likely that financing is going to be the factor that kills the deal. Anything with financing involved, whether 5% down or 20%, suffers from the same issues of dealing with a lender (FHA is another story). Good to know. I find it unlikely that I’ll be buying anything more complex than a condo by the time I’m like 50, in the Greater Boston area anyway.
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Jun 7, 2021 15:31
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Queen Victorian posted:My favorite example is a doctor couple who bought a house across from my coworker to rent out and have no loving clue what they are doing but are too cheap to pay anyone who does, and this extends to not wanting to hire a kid to take care of the yard, which means the property is overgrown and full of weeds that have spread to everyone else's yards. Also shoddy DIY work, so the house is falling even further into ruin (and it was kind of a dump to begin with). Whole neighborhood hates these people's guts for contributing to blight and dumping crappy annoying tenants on them. Maybe not a good idea to "invest" in property you have no idea how to improve or manage. Hope this dude isn't a cheapshit/noob/rear end in a top hat. You are from the future and your coworker is my parents’ neighbor and I’m gonna need you to tell us all about what happens in the next 10 years. Glumwheels posted:We’ll we didn’t get it, some rear end in a top hat really over bid on the house and it went for 1.3M. Nothing is making sense anymore in terms of pricing, size of the house etc. Its too crazy, I think we’re going to reassess and maybe stop the search. It’s just not worth it if the prices keep inflating exponentially. Maybe summer will Improve things but I’m not seeing it and at this rate what will be the baseline? 
Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Jun 8, 2021 |
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Jun 8, 2021 01:39
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e:dp
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Jun 8, 2021 01:40
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