Quote:
Originally Posted by speeder
Investing in CA. RE for a place other than to live in has been a game for people with more of a stomach for risk than me the last few years. Just when I think it can't possibly go up any more, it jumps another 20% annually.
I understand the global forces that are fueling this boom but I'm not willing to bet my $$ on when it will lose steam. The prices in Venice, CA. or the SF Bay Area have been absolutely defying gravity for years now. I've noticed the same thing but with much milder rates of appreciation in other desirable places such as Seattle and Portland. It just keeps going up.
It's crazy to read the date stamps and comments from the beginning of this thread until now.
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We rent. My ex still has our house and she's in good shape. In retrospect we should have kept my wife's tiny house in Highland Park that she bought at the peak of the market in '06 but we figured it wasn't going to come back quickly. And now HP is a totally hot area.
I"m renting in Santa Monica because it makes my commute short and relatively painless. And it is a nice area. No way I'd buy here - $1.5M minimum to get a small house. And at my age, I'm never going to pay it off, and not clear that I'd get much equity even given what the market may do.
The reality is that you're only renting anyway. If you're purchasing later in life, "owning" a house is a benefit to your kids, much less so to you. At least when I run the numbers that's how it comes out. The myth of the "American Dream" and the pressure to "own your home" is strong, but making less sense for many these days.