I love those old houses. What street are you on?

Gee Half a Millon to get to live next door to a Crack House that 's a deal. You barely want to drive thru venice a high noon, I could not even imagine coming home after midnight.

Hey, I hear Electric Avenue's jumpin. :D

Doesn't Otto have some big nasty mongrels guarding the gates?

This talk of housing costs and renting is timely for me because I'm looking at buying a house with a rentalble apartment within. With the same monthy investment, I compared 3 scenarios:
-live in an apartment and invest money in the market
-buy an apartment and put money in the market (about half of the first scenario)
-buy a house and rent the separate portion to afford the mortgage; wero money in the market

Assuming I made no errors in my calculations, all 3 have about the same present value after about 3 years. After 5 years, the house scenario is a bit better than the rest. Anything after 10 years it's significantly better than the other two.

This exercise has piqued my interest somewhat in rental investment properties. Does anyone have a useful spreadsheet for peforming various analysis?

Matt, I have three Excel spreadsheets for analyzing rental real estate. Email me, and I can return via email.

I do believe you are correct regarding the value of rental real estate over time. Generally, I've found the first 1-3 years of a rental are break-even deals. Afterwards, the appreciation, increase in rents, and decrease in maintenance costs will start to pad your profits.
Jürgen

http://finance.yahoo.com/etf/browser/mkt?c=etf_sr&f=0

I know nothing about these index funds. You can short these funds. Buyer beware.
Jurgen