bostonbubble.com

yesitsme2 · Joined: 11 May 2008 Posts: 1

Hi - here are the facts.

Can afford say $450K with 5% down.
Renting at $2150 (SFH) but need to move to better school district by fall (SFH). So we would be looking at paying monthly something in the low $3Ks on a mortgage+insurance+tax; renting around $2.5K if we went that way.
Unlikely to stay in MA more than two or three more years.

The plan:
Look for houses and for house rentals. Mostly Acton.
If we see a good price on a house, low-ball offer that follows the S&P/C-S index (i.e., 25% or 30% under '05 prices in the area). If they don't take it, whatever, move on. If nothing comes through, more seriously into rentals by July.

What say you?

You know what's really hilarious - the rent vs. own calculators you can find online won't let you put in a negative number for "home appreciation". I guess they are a little out of date.

Shoeshine · Joined: 10 Nov 2007 Posts: 38 Location: Greater Lowell MA

buying would be a terrible decision imho

why walk away from massachusetts
if u can run away

Laughing

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john p · Joined: 10 Mar 2006 Posts: 1820

I wouldn't buy if my threshold was only 2-3 years (regardless of the market), unless you think you're in an industry where your company would relocate you.

I think Boston is going to rebound before some of the other areas of the country. If you don't know where you're going to end up, flexibility is key because you don't want to be stuck.

balor123 · Joined: 08 Mar 2008 Posts: 1204

Move to Texas. No income tax. Houses are cheaper and newer. You can almost buy a house with a 20% downpayment here. Cars last longer. Less traffic. Utilities are cheaper. Jobs are plentiful and continually growing. No need to worry about real estate bubbles there.

CJ · Guest

balor123 · Joined: 08 Mar 2008 Posts: 1204

Several reasons. First, land taxes. Second, lower expenses. Third, higher sales tax (8%). Last, and most important, lots of oil money. Other states without income tax: New Hampshire and Alaska. Neither of those have the low cost of living and economy of Texas though.

Guest · Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 4:50 pm GMT Post subject:

OK, this thread has few enough replies that I don't need a Texas income tax thread-jack. Thanks.

Made an offer of 90% of current listing of a nice house that had been relisted down to 90% of what it was listed more than 300 days ago.

Was scoffed at. So I guess I'll wait a couple of months for all the bad April and May news to cause the next drop and de-scoffing process.

The goal is to get a house in the same price range it will bottom out at, so I will just keep not low-balling but "right" balling so to speak.

balor123 · Joined: 08 Mar 2008 Posts: 1204

I (and futures) think the local minima in housing prices here will be around August - October. Your lowball offers will get a lot more attention then because sellers will start panicking that their houses might have to last through the winter.

Guest · Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 7:14 pm GMT Post subject:

That's good advice. Problem is that we need to be in the new school district (moved in) by August...

Guest · Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 5:21 am GMT Post subject:

Seriously, Dude, you need to get the hell out of Massachusetts while the getting is good. Exclamation

Guest · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 3:18 pm GMT Post subject:

We rented in the school district we were interested in. It was just too stupid to buy. Continuing decline plus the foreclosure "surprise" coming in October plus MA seasonality means that by winter '09 next year we'd be in negative equity. Why walk into that?

The numbers worked out as I posted back in May - the house we are renting is worth about 2 times the house we were shopping for, and we will be paying about 70% of what we were planning on paying for mortgage+taxes+insurance. No, we are not building equity, but we wouldn't be anyways, because the house value would have declined faster than we could pay into it.