Buying a home is kinda like getting peer pressured to drink when you’re a teenager. You go with the flow and start to do stupid things.
I have more than enough fingers and toes to go around for people I know who made the dumb decision to buy a home, and the decision ultimately turned out poorly. For them, home ownership ended up in foreclosure, walking away, or selling their home at a steep loss.
Why do people do dumb things? Is it in our DNA? Monkey see, monkey do? Why must Americans own a home when they can’t afford it?
And people seem to have a penchant for punishment. I see some of these very same people buying up the latest condos, telling me it’s worth so and so millions now, just watch. The San Francisco real estate market is booming! It’s so hot right now. They’re counting their money, believing in riches, and I’m like, “Wait, you are the same person who just foreclosed on your home last year!” Gawd, some people are so stoopid.
I’m ready to sell my place and people keep asking me what I’m going to buy next. Why? Why would we buy a home (a home that’s not necessary for a 2-person household) when we pay $1,700 in rent and don’t have a single water, gas, electric, HOA, or property tax bill?
If I plug $1,700 rent into any of the rent vs buy calculators, not a single one will tell me to buy. It’s just not logical.
Put me firmly in the camp of believing real estate to be a bad investment. Then again, I live in what was once the # 3 foreclosure market in the US. We’re just now starting to rebound and being ‘upside down’ in your mortgage sucks, especially when you did NOT go out and buy a house you couldn’t afford or even pay a really inflated price for your house to begin with. Our market just crashed so hard and fast that suddenly my assessed value was half of what we owed on it. Good times.
I should add, we still live in and pay for the house so I’m hoping that it will rebound to where we can at least break even at some point.
Lindsey, you are one of the few responsible Americans fulfilling your home obligations. What drives me nuts is all the people who’ve been paying on-time, never missed a payment, responsible citizens, who cannot even refi! Where is the justice in that?