MGTOW living situation, rent or own?

[AFTParticipant 2726]

In Australia, property prices are absolutely ridiculously high. I’d love to live in America, where the property prices are reasonable, mortgage rates low, and the timing is good, coming out of the property bust, in 2008. Think about it, low prices, low fixed mortgage rates, its a no brainer, interest rates are due to go up eventually, house prices will too, I’d be taking advantage of the opportunity now. I’m glad I bought my place 15 years ago, it’s worth more than 4x as much now, but like I said Australia’s property prices are crazy expensive.
What about buying a place, renting it out till it pays itself off? Work out how long that would take, and live in it for free after. America really is the land of opportunity, you’ve just got to look at things in the right perspective.

When the war cemeteries are half full of the corpses of dead conscripted women, only then will women have earned the right to speak of equality. Sidecar “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” - Bob Dylan

[MithrilParticipant 17]

Here’s another idea and what I wish I had done.  17 years ago I bought a house.  Now I love my house, but I don’t really need it.  I bought it thinking it would make me more attractive to women by demonstrating I was responsible blah, blah, blah.  If I had to do it again, I’d buy a nice camper, you can get a 30 foot 4 season camper for about $45k.  Put it in a campground for $2500/year or a small lot and live out of that.  If I need to move, I can just hitch up to the camper and head out.

Imagine what my life would be like now if I had done that, I’d have saved over $1000/mo that I could have spent, invested, saved, plus all the other stuff like insurances and maintenance.

-Mithril

[Smitty the Great OneParticipant 1535]

I own my small house. It is very old (built 1896), and it was dirt cheap ($12,000). It is paid for, and it is all I need. I am also moving soon, so yeah, I’m gonna rent. A lot o this depends on whether you want to stay exactly where you are forever or not. The whole rent/own is an option that you have to decide which suits you best. I can go rent pretty much anywhere BECAUSE I own my own house. Strange how that works, but whatever. So, your options are rent or own, choose which suits your lifestyle best. Each has it’s advantage/disadvantage, choose the one for you.

Life is too long to play by someone elses rules....

[Smacktalk73Participant 296]

Smitty, I’ve done the same thing.  Live in the rust belt, paid $16k for a 3b 1ba foreclosure.   Put in low-end new everything — windows, floors, kitchen/bath all from Lowes sales, over the course of 6 months.  Now live without a mortgage or rent payment; total I have in it is about 30k. Even saving $500 a month rent this place will pay for itself in 5 years.

The best part is knowing that however much s~~~ hits the fan, I’m not homeless.  It’s like being able to crash at your parents’ house, but without the parents!

[VectorParticipant 178]

Thanks for the advice guys; I’ve decided I’m going to rent.  I just bought a new car, and need to build up my credit by making consistent on time payments on that loan.  Besides, why smother myself with an additional loan at this point?  My goal is to build my credit, while enjoying the cushion on having a few extra dollars saved instead of throwing ALL my savings into property and having 2 HUGE debts to worry about on my shoulders.  1 thing at a time.  Plus, even if I did decide to buy, I would have to stay at my parents for another couple years to save enough money for something at least decent (since we know how expensive these down payments are nowadays), and that ain’t happening!  I’ll be 35 years old soon for Christ sakes!  I need my absolute freedom without having to answer to anybody, be questioned on all my moves, or be distracted by my parents downstairs arguing all the f~~~ing time.  Another reason why I am now MGTOW.  While I rent, I’ll save as much as I can and consider investing as well.  When my credit is good enough down the road to not get hit with a ridiculous interest rate, then I’ll buy.

[KeymasterKeymaster]

You may surprise yourself…. its pretty easy to talk yourself out of this one.

PROPERTY TAXES and condo fees you are going to pay — EVEN AFTER YOU “OWN” a condo and it’s paid off.

You will find just these fees alone will cover a rent.
It’s disposable money you will never get back again too.

My mom tried to sucker me into buy a condo when I was 18, 21, 25, 27, 29 , 32… . She even offered to help pay for it. Every time my answer was no and that’s because I knew she didn’t give a s~~~ about ownership or investment. She wanted to tie me down to a mortgage I couldn’t afford for the next 25 years. But in those 25 years, by refusing to do as she wanted, I travelled lots and and did better than I EVER would have if I lived 3 minutes away from her.

Goddam to think about committing to that……

I have a married friend with 2 kids and a $800K mortgage. “You have a nice life, Mike”, I said. He told me he needs to make at least $22K-$25K a month just to break even. The dude looks like a stress case , never laughs from the gut, and even thought 55 is a long way off , he is pretty sure he will be dead before then. His wife has no idea how he s~~~s his pants on a daily basis and is one pitch away from being unemployed, The guy looks 12 years older than me. And he’s one year younger.

Find a place you are content with, where writing a rent check won’t even scratch you. Maintenance and property taxes are already built in to that. Maybe even get something mot as nice and throw the extra money at your car every month.

Home ownership is basically FORCED SAVINGS. But if you can discipline yourself, you can save more than a home over 30 years.

In retrospect, the buying condo decision would have been SO STUPID for me back then.
Sit down with a calculator and pull the numbers. You’ll know what is right.

If you keep doing what you've always done... you're gonna keep getting what you always got.

[Anonymous 1]

I would like the OP for the thread and Keymaster for the advice. I was thinking the same thing as OP. I am currently renting, and I was thinking about buying a condo. The first posts didn’t totally talked me out of it, but Keymaster last post did it. I feel a lot less guilt for renting now. 🙂

There is a lot of great advices here too. Will try to go through all of them later.

Thank you guys for the posts and thanks the OP for the question. I am learning a lot from this.

Go team.

[chirParticipant]

Rent first.  While renting save money like mad.  While renting and saving money read up on mortgages, closing costs, tax benefits, school and property taxes.  You have to balance your morgage (rent) what you get back as a home owner in tax benefits and what you have to pay in property taxes.  There is also little things like:

The house Monthlies: Heat / electric, internet / cable TV (or not), food, water / sewer bill,  garbage collection, set aside some money for tax year end school and property taxes.

If you budget well you should have money left over to save / invest and money for entertainment.

Renting gives you time to understand how owning a home can be a long term investment or a f~~~ing boat anchor around your neck.  This is why women love homes.  It ties the man down like a 20 ton anchor.

It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, it is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning; it is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.

[Gen.OivanParticipant 88]

 

@hotnoob

I agree you can save a ton of money when you do all your home repairs yourself, I had a home I bought when the housing market crashed, paid 34,000 for in 2008, which is less than my parents paid for their home in the same area in 1987. I lived there for 6 years, replaced a garage wall that was rotting due to the poor install of the viynle siding. replaced the roof on the garage, I had to replace part of the driveway because of a tree root pushing it up, Tear down and rebuild the front porch, refinished the hard wood floors, laid down a laminate floor upstairs, replaced the counter top with a hand laid granite tile mosaic design, water proof the basement walls, installed a new furnace due to mine taking a crap in the middle of the winter, rewiring the house due to it not being to code, rebuilding the back patio because the sand substrate washed out from underneath it; that does not include my time doing other mundane house projects that are required to keep it updated.

After paying for the house, plus all the repairs and upgrades. When I sold the house last year I sold it for 39,900, which after paying the realtor and taxes left me with a 4000 profit. If I was to go back and itemize all the costs of everything I would definitely be in the red,  and that was with me doing all the work myself, I don’t know about you but I can save more than 4k in 6 years. Plus I prefer to spend my free time doing other things besides rebuilding and repairing a home.

@everyone

I am not knocking homeowners, and I don’t judge anyone for wanting to own a home they do have some nice perks but a lot of times there are as many stipulations of what you can’t do as there are in apartments.

Down here in Florida I can get a 1000 sq ft apartment furnished with all the appliances including washer and dryer,  while also having access to a pool, rec center, tennis courts, basketball courts, gym, with waterfront lake views for 1000 a month. I can spend all the time I would spend doing home repairs actually doing things I enjoy, such as laying at the pool watching the females walk around in their bikini’s fishing, swimming, hiking, camping, going to the theme parks, playing video games, laying around in my recliner naked drinking that bottle of scotch instead of having to do some home repair I would really rather not.

 

Let’t talk about the economics of taking a mortgage out on a home

I am going to use the average sale price from october 2014 pulled from http://www.statisticbrain.com/home-sales-average-price/ and add the 3.6% increase predicted which brings the average price of a home in america to $181,921.

I went to Chase bank a did a calculated mortgage payment using the averages in america.

average house: $181,921

average house size is 2267 sq ft

average credit score: 707 myfico.com

down payment required @20%: $36,384  plus closing costs and points fees brings the total needed down at closing to : $43,125

the APR of the loan with an average score and down payment will be 3.85%

netting you a monthly payment of: $828.37

now over the course of 30 years you are going to have many repairs going that are going to be needed if we use the $1 per sq ft rule: $2200 or 183.33 per a month. This also does not include whether or not you decided to do “wanted home upgrades” such as kitchen cabinet replacement, and bathroom remodels.

I am not going to add utilities because you have to pay those no matter what, unless you add big ticket green energy items or the house comes with them.

 

so for a monthly payment we are looking at 828.37 + 183.33 =$1011.7

Now over the life of the loan of 30 years you are looking at a total of $364,212 which is slightly more than half of what the home costs.

So not looking or adding other variables of double paying your mortgage, re-finiancing, buying a less or more expensive house, bigger or smaller home and all the other extreme variables and with our economy the way that it has been historically (the building and bursting of economic bubbles) having to hope that in 30 years your home is worth what you paid(not the amount you borrowed). There is never any guarantee that your investment is going to grow, I don’t know why we devalue everything else that is used except a home, for some reason I cannot comprehend that we should pay more for a 3rd or 4th time lived in home. I just cannot see the value in it. plus like I said my leisure time is worth more than worrying about fixing all weekend long.

[нσтησσвParticipant 830]

@genoivan you are excluding the amount that you didn’t pay on rent.
You need to include that into your calculations…

And i have no idea where you get a house for $34k

I don’t get why it’s so hard for people here to grasp basic economics.

—

$181,921 – 20% = $145,537
Actual mortgage amount is $145,537

\w a payment of $833 & 3.6% interest, it would be paid off in 21 years.

$146k of principal.
$62k of interest.

A total of $208k paid over 21 years.
You added $183/mo for maintenance, which is $46k

Totals $254k

If you had the full $146k in cash, after 21 years, you would need to have $271k ( based on 3% inflation ) to have the same value.
As a result, You actually gain $17k by having a mortgage; excluding any other incomes / benefits.

If you were to have lived in this Home, you probably would have paid $1200-1500/mo in rent.
Over 21 years, that would add up to $302,400 in rent, of which you would have not one penny.

Include inflation, and that becomes $562,553.

So, by owning a house, you would not only make $17k, but you would also SAVE $562k, after 21 years.

—

Based on calgary prices;

Buy a $300k home, 20% down, $60k invested.

Mortage payment will be about $1000/mo \w 3% interest. 25 yr amort, about $500/mo in interest when starting off.
Condo / maint & taxes will be roughly $500/mo.

Total costs $1000/mo, and $500/mo “forced savings”

Rent it out for $1700-$2000/mo. Say you get the lesser, $1700/mo.
$200 profit in cash + $500 profit per month.

$700/mo * 12 = $8400 per year in profits.

Say the home went up in value by 3%. The home is now worth $9k more.
$309k; provided that you have no commission when selling you’d have made $17400 in profit that year.
Thus, why it’s best not to sell until the value has increased significantly.

Anywho; inflation is 3%. The mortgage does not increase with inflation;
So, 3% of 60k is $1.8k

$17400 – 1800 = 15600.
$8400 – 1800 = 6600.

15.6k/60k = 126% return.

If you exclude gains through property value.
6.6k/60k = 111% return.

The longer you have the property, the lower your interest becomes.

When you rent, 100% of what you spend as a renter is lost.

Hint; you can avoid commission, by using your assets/equity to get another mortgage for another place.

But whatever; the more people that rent, the better it is for me 😛

My Goal: To Leave Society.

[Beware the LamiaeSpectator 89]

Beware the Lamiae wrote:

You have to pay wherever you live, may as well have something to show for it in the end!

нσтησσв wrote:

When you rent, 100% of what you spend as a renter is lost.

I came off brash a bit earlier. Sorry. But these are the facts brother, quoted above. It just doesn’t get more simple.

I think your decision to rent was a mistake but I understand totally. I didn’t make enough or have the opportunity to  live alone until I was 26. The frustration and need for my own space was a nightmare so I get that you needed a way out, had one and took it.

2 years from now I promise you’ll have the same negative emotions over renting. In two years I’d paid $10,000 to rent and had nothing to show for it. That could have been $10,000 into equity on a 70K condo.

Granted, it takes several thousand saved to get into a condo (closing costs, down payment, moving costs, etc etc…) But if you can save about 10 grand and get a finance, or if your’e incredibly lucky and know someone who owns several and would sell you one, do it. If you rent for 15 years, that’s literally net loss, about $50,000 you threw away (and that’s backing out all the HOA costs, utilities and property taxes)

Vector wrote:

I just bought a new car

I hope like hell you mean pre owned care instead of new. And I hope like hell you paid less than 5K

That’s two terrible mistakes; Renting is throwing money away, buying a depreciating car is throwing money away. I drive a scooter bro, it hauls ass and I pay less than $200 a year in gas, insurance and maintenance combined. I could commute 40+ miles a day with it if I had to.

I hope you understand the gravity of your decisions brother. I’d take that car back ASAP, drive it on the lot, leave the keys, take whatever loss or credit hit they give you, you’ll be saving yourself a lot of money.

Credit is also bulls~~~, don’t buy into the meme that you need to make good credit. That’s all consumer bulls~~~ for women. Men buy and own their s~~~, we don’t need or care about credit. Credit is like online reviews, they aren’t an accurate reflection of a persons paying ability.

[sidecarParticipant 35874]

Seems to me the man in this article has about the right idea:

http://www.sunset.com/home/architecture-design/mobile-homes-design

Eliminate expenses.  Save money.  Buy unincorporated land.  Pay cash.  Buy Airstream.  Pay cash.  Build garage.  Buy motorcycles to fill garage.  No money wasted on rent or interest and only minimal money wasted on property taxes and permits.

[BeerParticipant 11832]

Keymaster wrote:

You may surprise yourself…. its pretty easy to talk yourself out of this one. PROPERTY TAXES and condo fees you are going to pay — EVEN AFTER YOU “OWN” a condo and it’s paid off. You will find just these fees alone will cover a rent.

My experience has been quite the opposite…I’m paying a 410 dollar mortgage at the moment, which includes taxes, and 220 dollars for condo fees, which includes insurance, so I’m living in my condo for 630 dollars a month…part of which is going straight towards building equity.  The girl across the hall that moved in over the winter is paying 800 dollars a month rent for pretty much the same sized unit.  I’m saving 170 a month and haven’t even paid it off yet lol.  Once I pay it off I’ll be living here for about 350 a month, and rent isn’t going to drop anytime soon.

But the big pay off is when I move out…I have the option to either sell it and get some money back, where as renting all this time would have meant I had 0 equity, or I can hold on to it and keep it for a rental property.  The 350 a month is all a tax write off, so I can a 4200 dollar a year tax write off, and I could get 800 a month rent, so potential for 9600 a year in rental income.  Even if it sits empty for 2 months a year, I could still be making 4-5k a year off it…not too bad for a bit of passive income.

Keymaster wrote:

Sit down with a calculator and pull the numbers. You’ll know what is right.

But this is all that matters really…real estate is so different from area to area.  Plus never buy unless you plan on staying someone for at least 5 years.  After you factor in closing costs, realtors commission when you sell, any money you might put in for improvements during the time you do live there, and extra hassle…buying really isn’t worth it for a short term residence.

[Cipher HighwindParticipant 1144]

I spoke against renting, but that should not be construed as an endorsement of owning real estate.

Houses cost roughly 2%/yr just to maintain. This is an average figure assuming the amortisation of repairs and replacements over the course of their useful lives. In 2010, the median house sold for $221’800 (census.gov). 0,87% is the median tax rate (tax-rates.org), therefore one must pay $1’929 just to own said house each year.

Altogether, one is paying
$6’366
to maintain a house, and to avoid having it seized by the local mafia.

Furthermore, house prices are propped up by 0% interest rates and exceptionally favourable tax treatment, including the mortgage tax deduction. The Case-Shiller index would have to retreat to about 80 for real estate to be good value for money.

Effective 1 June, I will be living here. The only cost I will incur that is remotely related to housing will be a storage unit.

[Jackson1888Participant 111]

Smitty, & Smack I am with you all the way.

I personally think that homes in that range $12,000-$20,000 are the way to go. I make no bones about it. Even if you are making $400,000 per year, you should still spend as little as possible on transportation and housing.

Cipher: the math doesn’t lie does it? Housing is a f~~~ing endless pit of waste. People forget the costs associated with home ownership. Repairs, maintenance and replacements and deferred maintenance. If you don’t keep those repairs up the entire house could become condemned and will have to be demolished. Thereby you will lose the entire value of the improvements.

The math doesn’t work. The less you spend on the home the better off you’ll be in the long run.

I’m looking into moving into a trailer in the middle of f~~~ing nowere. LOL

The only way to beat the housing scam is to buy an extremely cheap house with CASH and keep your maintenance costs low. (however that is done)

Also, don’t live in an extremely cold climate. Heating costs in Massachusetts can be $800 per month.

 

 

[BeerParticipant 11832]

I can’t wait to get a house, hopefully in the next year lol.  I don’t care if it is more expensive than the alternatives…I want a multi bay garage for toys, a grill right outside my back door on a nice, private deck instead of down the hall and across a parking lot in a common area, and a decent sized fenced in yard for the dog.  I don’t want to hear neighbors through walls anymore, have to worry about being that obnoxious loud neighbor, or have karma kick me in the nuts and f~~~ me with a s~~~ty parking spot every time I get home from grocery shopping and have to carry stuff in.  The way I look at it, its not an investment, its a luxury…kinda like opting to buy a sports car instead of a camry.

[Anonymous 9]

RENT

easy.

[Jackson1888Participant 111]

You are better off living at home. Look at me. I’m 37 years old and looking to buy a $12,000 Trailer in the middle of nowere. I guarentee you’d get more pussy then I would.

I am in a position where other people’s opinions are like debating whether or not someone has an asshole.

I DO NOT want to be respected. I do not want to be noticed. And I damn sure do not want women to want me.

I’ve totally changed. I am into living for myself.

Trailers are awesome. They are cheap. You pay almost no property taxes.

If you were to get an apartment where I live in So Cal you would never get any pussy. If you live at home…you’ve already proven you can get pussy.

I don’t think you’ll get MORE or less pussy by living in your own apartment. Not at all.

Stop judging yourself by whether or not you are independant. Nobody is independant. You still are forced to wear clothes, drive down the street, observe the same Laws as everyone else. Stop living for the future. Be in the here and now. If money is a problem for you then make best with what you have. If you have no money, do not let society dictate how you feel about yourself.

Let yourself be FREED. MGTOW

[Jackson1888Participant 111]

I guarentee I get less pussy then 95% of the guys on this site but I also can guarentee I make more money then at least 50% of them.

I don’t let it get me down.

[Jackson1888Participant 111]

What is a pussy worth? Absolutely nothing…

[Author]

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