Search results

My assumption is more carefully stated in the spreadsheet, that "Property, rent, and cash savings all appreciate at the same rate of total return." This is not necessarily the risk free rate; I do not invest my cash risk free. While real estate as an investment does quite well over the long run...

For all its flaws, Windows has application compatibility that is untouched by any other operating system. If your primary goal is to run Windows binaries, then there's really no reason to run anything but Windows. Wine, the simulated Windows execution environment for Linux, is a tempermental...

If you are looking for compiled packages, I have to wonder if you're really using the right distribution. I use Gentoo despite its many flaws, precisely because of the benefits I get by compiling from sources. If you're not compiling from source, Gentoo really has absolutely nothing going for...

Did anyone look through my spreadsheet? There are people here with much more experience in real estate and I'd like your feedback. I can't help but notice that the real estate bulls got mighty quiet! Martin

I don't think it's really all that important which distribution you use. I use Gentoo, because it was the first distribution to support AMD64 natively, and it is the most flexible in terms of upgrading and installing individual packages. On the other hand, there are some aspects of Gentoo which...

:) Actually, I don't. I'm not a trend follower. I do know the importance of transaction costs and liquidity! Martin

Sure. I'd be very interested in any feedback. You can twiddle cell B8 to see the effect of holding for a different amount of time. With this example the crossover point for a 30 year fixed mortgage is actually 25 years out. However, rates are a little lower today than when I made this...

Yes, intentionally so. I have no desire to incorporate an assumption that all the evidence tells me will not persist in the long run. Sure, it could happen. I don't mind waiting. Martin

But I live where I live. For personal reasons, that's more important to me than owning a house or becoming a landlord. That's why I haven't said any such thing. I was quite careful not to generalize to all real estate markets in the US. I might have been a little loose once or twice but...

That's because you were selling the house, not renting it. As you said, your buyers were comparing it against what they can afford. But they also have alternatives, and they are also comparing those alternatives against what they can afford. They look at the rental down the street, they look at...

Virtually all first time home buyers are already renters. When they choose to buy a house they are inherently comparing what they're renting today with what they're buying tomorrow. For that matter, you can barely open the real estate section of the paper without finding an article comparing...

OldTrader, Interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing your experience. I personally have nothing against buy and hold investing in real estate or anything else. When I see sufficiently attractive valuations, I have no problem tying up capital in a long term position. I just find it interesting...

I actually did run the numbers on a 30 year fixed mortgage for a property in the SF Bay Area, assuming that both home prices and rents stay constant in terms of 2005 dollars. I accounted for taxes, tax breaks, transaction costs, maintainance, insurance, everything. At 10 and 15 years the renter...

One thing that I find curious about this and other real estate threads is all the so called traders advocating buying and holding real estate as an investment. It's ironic given all the derision that buy and hold investors typically get around here. Personally, the main reason I don't want to...

I stand corrected. With that said, I think Hydroblunt was commenting on current real estate valuation. There is a subtle distinction here that I overlooked. Today, it is in fact more expensive to buy than to rent in many areas of the country. That is likely to be true even if you keep the...

No duh. I don't think anyone in any of the real estate threads has either said or implied that renting is cheaper than buying in the long run. Martin

Heh. Martin

Steve, if you'd read my post, you'd understand that houses in the Bay Area are less affordable than they were in 2000. How does that sit with your theory? By my calculations, the total cost of ownership of a $600,000 house bought in 2000 with 30 year fixed notes at 8% is $1,381k. That house...

Steve, if there was more demand for housing in the Bay Area, and less supply, you would expect rents to go up along with the price of houses. However, while house prices have gone up, rent has gone down. In other words, the demand for home ownership far exceeds the demand for a place to live...

Well of course. Price is the equilibrium of supply and demand. That is a tautology. I am asking how and why. The only explanation you offer is interest rates. I've done the numbers for housing prices in the SF Bay Area, and I have found that less than one third of the change in housing...