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Renting doesn't "throw money away"
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Guest
Guest





PostPosted: Wed May 10, 2006 6:22 pm GMT    Post subject: T-Bills - you are right Reply with quote

You are correct - I am making alternative plans to cover inflation. The most important thing with any investment is get out while you are ahead (profit) and never invest unless you know why- and have planned your exit price. I'm happy were I got out of Real Estate. Meanwhile our cash is portable - can be exchanged for alternative investments in minutes.

Your Parents home in Lexington is worth $700,000? What would some one be willing to Rent that home for? Is a house ever worth more than the cash it will generate from Rent?

What do your parents pay in Property Taxes and I bet Taxes have increased at double digit rates in the last 3 years. Rents have been flat for the last 3-4 years.
Very few homes are bought for Cash - the price of your parents is based on people qualifying for a mortgage. When the Mortgage markets tighten up - the price of your parents home will fall because fewer consumers will qualify for a mortgage - less money seeking an asset cause its value to drop - of cours I could be wrong.
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admin
Site Admin


Joined: 14 Jul 2005
Posts: 1826
Location: Greater Boston

PostPosted: Sun May 21, 2006 4:40 pm GMT    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
When you buy a house with a fixed mortgage, your costs are much better contained than the typical rent situation. My parents were paying 100.00 a month for their 700 K house in Lexington.


While your cost of financing may be more contained, your opportunity cost is much greater than it would be if renting. The "Guest" who posted in response touched on this (and made some other good points) when he pointed out that your parents could be generating revenue by renting out their place. The greater opportunity cost is probably in selling, though. If they sold and received $700K, they could easily and passively earn $35K per year in interest at a 5% rate, and probably more if they put time into investing it. If prices over the coming years flatline or fall, the opportunity cost will have been quite high.

So yes, buying using a fixed rate mortgage controls your financing costs, bust renting controls your opportunity cost, assuming your savings makes more than inflation (given that rents usually increase with inflation). You did mention that buying a house is a good hedge against inflation, and I think that is probably true if you buy at a time when prices are at historical norms with respect to incomes and rents, but that isn't the case at present. I Bonds may be a better hedge against inflation because they are explicitly indexed for inflation and earn a premium above it, so you are guaranteed to beat the government reported inflation numbers (before taxes). They are earning an anemic rate at present because reported inflation for the last 6 months was low, but my point is that I think they provide a better hedge against inflation at this time than buying real estate given that they aren't susceptible to pricing bubbles. Once prices revert to the mean, I would probably favor real estate as an inflationary hedge because of the greater tax advantages (although I Bonds do have some tax advantages as well).

- admin
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jswede1149
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 12:29 am GMT    Post subject: Reply with quote

I am actually looking to move to the area. We are getting suffocated here in Chicago and it is spreading through the midwest. Brand new condos an hour north (near Wisconsin) is $400k for the basic model.

We rent because housing prices jumped double and tripled in the last few years. We actually feel we will have a better chance to secure a place than here in Midwest.

Think about this before you are ready to run out of state.

BTW, are the "Bad" areas still bad (Dorchester, Roxbury, Chelsea)?
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AgentGrn



Joined: 28 Sep 2006
Posts: 82

PostPosted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 8:21 pm GMT    Post subject: Reply with quote

The bad areas are still bad ... they just have a fresh coat of paint on them. Smile
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Nhousing



Joined: 11 Apr 2007
Posts: 1

PostPosted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:02 pm GMT    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fellows, here's my concern, where are the future high paying jobs in Boston going to come from? From what I've heard, stalwart financial firms like Fidelity and Thompson are shrinking and moving jobs to cheaper locales. The biotech superstars like Genzyme and Biogen have an established R&D headcount and don't really add that many positions outside of a few specialists out of MIT/Whitehead.
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AgentGrn



Joined: 28 Sep 2006
Posts: 82

PostPosted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 2:39 am GMT    Post subject: Reply with quote

Recently, Fidelity announced a relocation for 300 call center employees out of their Marlboro, MA facility to North Carolina. They're also working on a huge office part in Smithfield, RI which is a spit over the border from MA on 146. That's nothing to say of their huge and newer facilities in Merrimack, NH.

That doesn't count any of the other huge companies that are either downsizing or relocating major parts of their business out of the state. It's either not possible to find the workers for some of the high-paying jobs, or it's just too much money to hire them because the costs of living here are high.

Nothing for nothing, this is a hole that the state and its communities dug for itself.
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JCK



Joined: 15 Feb 2007
Posts: 559

PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 9:01 pm GMT    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yet the Globe is reporting that office vacancy rates are down and commercial rents are up in Boston.

http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2007/04/boston_office_v_1.html
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john p



Joined: 10 Mar 2006
Posts: 1820

PostPosted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 2:31 pm GMT    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is CB Richard Ellis's report, what else are they going to say? The NAR said that residential real estate was going to go up 6.1% last year.

http://www.themoneyblogs.com/camortgage/my.blog/nar-2006-prediction-wrong.html

I'm not saying you're wrong, your posts usually make sense; it is just that some of the other things that the other posters cite make sense too.

My concern now is how the news publishers seem to think that they are just like a clearing house for information. I think as readers we expect news organizations have kicked the tires a bit. Last year I remember going to CNN.com and seeing headlines on the same day saying the opposite thing (market's going up, market's going down). It's like you wonder if someone steps back and looks at how in a way that is absurd. Sometimes they just report on what someone else’s says which means that they are just reporting what someone said and that there is no due diligence that they have vetted the work implied.

I think that if people are purposefully putting out disinformation, there ought to be a price to be paid for it. People think that it is just going to be sub-prime brokers that will pay the price but I don't think it is a good time to be messing around. When regular folk are being hurt by the confusion that people are trying to generate you'll find that there are stronger forces out there that will make them pay. People don't care very much about greedy people that overextended, but regular folks that are playing by the rules are off limits and if anyone is pumping disinformation which will hurt them, they ought to look out.
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