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comment by snoodog
snoodog  ·  2527 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A Question of Neighborhoods and Waverunners

Im not super sure what you are asking but here is my perspective on home ownership:

If you are buying into a house realize that #1 is not really an investment and you will probably end up paying significantly more than your monthly payment to get it the way you like. Between gardening, repairs and upgrades its easy to get carried away.

Real estate is regional. Whats happening in Seattle and LA isnt the same as whats happening in other places, you got to evaluate your local market.

First understand where you are locally relative to historic norms, have house prices in your area skyrocked or stayed level. That will help you understand what your risk is. If you are up 100% over the last 5 years your risk is high, if the market hasn’t moved more than 10-15% its probably lower risk.

Understand your local government and zoning plan. Is your city running a huge deficit? Are they burning money like no tomorrow on services of dubious value(Seattle)? Are they planning to build any large structures or change zoning near you? Most cities have 5-25 year plans and they are available online or from city hall. How is the tax policy? Is it so bad that everyone is moving one city over to avoid it?

Understand your own risks: How is your job? What happens if you lost it? Can you rent the house if you move? You take a 8-10% hit every time you move can you afford that? Do you live in a recourse or non recourse state (this has huge implications on your risk profile)?

One of the things that the guys at "Strong Towns" recommend is buying into a town/area that has existed before WW2. City planning was a lot better back then and sprawl wasn’t a huge problem. Areas of that era are significantly more walk able, and there is less infrastructure cost per person due to smart planning, unfortunately its hard to find areas like that with good schools so that might not be an option for you.

If you are actually crazy enough to buy into a house as an investment then you might as well just go all in. Basically a 10% market move against you will wipe you out even at 20% down payment so make sure you live in an non-recourse state and put in as little money as possible for down payment buy into a hot market and pray. A hot market will crash eventually so you just gotta be quick to sell when things turn and gain at least 10% to break even, but you could potentially gain huge amounts on your 3% investment.

  

We live in a Non HOA area there are good things and bad things with that. The good thing is that I can keep bees, chickens, do maintenance on my car, skip a week mowing my lawn, paint my house a color I like and not pay any monthly fees. The downside is that I have a neighbor down the block that never mows her lawn and parks her Audi on the lawn. I have another neighbor that has a near abandoned van parked in the driveway stuffed with garbage, and our next door neighbor had a blackberry bush the size of a small shed growing right next to our fence.

In my view the freedom to not pay fees and be left alone is worth it. The really egregious things the city will fine you for and if I really wanted to piss off my neighbors I could report them to the city for illegally parking on the lawn/abandoned vehicles.

None of those things really make the neighborhood feel unsafe though. The unsafe feeling that we do get is from any abandoned/empty houses and any areas where loitering is happening. There is a house a mile or so from us that is vacant awaiting demolition and crack heads end up squatting there. That feels unsafe and any areas where people loiter like the 7-11 where hobos hang out or the Fed-Myers near subsidized housing. Walk the neighborhood at night/dusk a few times and you will get a get a good idea of how safe or not it is.