max225 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2019 5:52 pm
D Griff wrote: ↑Thu Oct 03, 2019 9:42 am
So we are going into this full bore now, working on getting a loan and looking at some
this weekend. A bit of backstory:
purchased a townhouse up in Northern County 'burbs back in 2014. I moved in in 2017 and was pretty
at living 20 miles from everything, and once she got a job in the city center, she agreed. It was sold in late 2018 and we moved into a one bedroom apartment. Fortunately the townhouse depreciated quite a bit under her ownershit and in a strike of real
luck, she got a nice chunk of change despite buying a house with zilch down. We have also managed to save a good bit and as such are in a decent spot down payment wise, we have about $70K we are OK with offloading for this purchase. Budget wise, we are trying to stay under $330K or so, could spend more but we'd like to maintain our lifestyle of travelling, track day bro-ing,
, avo toast, PSL...
Criteria:
-garage (my thing, this is a must)
-nice/open kitchen (her thing, this is a must)
-3+bed/2+bath
-in-town location not in the sticks/no epic commutes
-some kind of pleasant outdoor area to hang out in
-walking distance to a few things is a plus
-low maintenance is a plus
We are looking at a few things Saturday:
New build out walking distance to light rail which goes to downtown and some other cool 'hoods. She could also commute on the light rail but def wouldn't. Very close to my shithole office:
https://www.centex.com/homes/north-caro ... lsrc=aw.ds
Probably our favorite right now - 2017 townhome, can walk to a huge park with running, disc golf, etc. plus a bar, Starbux, etc:
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4008 ... 5531_zpid/
1960s ranch characteristic of Charlotte, quite nice but these places are getting pricey fast and they tend to be tiny and garageless:
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/711- ... 6783_zpid/
how far we got on this... but Townhomes are a
especially if the price points are comparable to SFHs, the townhomes usually have HOAs and appreciate far slower than single family homes...
Also if you can afford to get a place, I guess it doesn't make total sense to wait, but you can't look at it from a "payment" perspective. You're loading in 50-70k in CASH, that could be earning you interest... You're also loading up on taxes that. Home ownershit without appreciation is quite expensive.
Ex. 350k house.... 4% interest 15k a year in interest...
50k can earn you $1250 annually @ 2.5 % which is the current CD rate.
2% prop taxes 7k
that's 23.25k in SUNK costs... $1900 a month... so unless your house is appreciating you're LOSING 23k a year... so your house needs to appreciate by around 6% a year to break even. And I am not even talking about maintenance and repair which as a renter you're not responsible for.
I think a lot of people right now are buying into the sheeple mentality of GET RICH QUICK LOOK ALL HOUSES APPRECIATE 10-20% a year, the last 5 years were a fking anomaly, and all projections I have looked at are about 1-4% appreciation tops... So unless you HAVE TO HAVE IT NOW, wait... otherwise... good luck my friend.
Definitely agree on all points. From what I've noticed most people my age are in one of two camps:
1. Housing increases ridiculously in value at an insane rate! You're stupid not to buy a house and you'll never build wealth without it!
2. The housing increases in the past decade are fucking insane and we are about to experience a 2008 style
.
If I was a betting man, I'm thinking they stagnate a bit for a couple of years and then rise at a more normal rate of 3-5% annually. We passed on the townhouse thing for mainly the reasons you cite - seems like much higher risk plus additional sunk cost of ownershit in $150-350/month
fees. Interest/taxes on this house are less/month than rent and if anything gains in value in Charlotte, it should be this area. This city is growing like crazy.
It would kind of make more sense to continue renting IMO, but
really wants to own and had the main pile of cash, plus the place we are renting is not good for either of us and rentals have gone up like $300/month since last year.
Renting a place that isn't a one bed apartment and even had a driveway would be $2K/month or so...
this whole process has been not all that fun, look forward to just getting into the house and being done with it. It's interesting how much of a gamble it all feels like... but craps in LV is more fun.