My first rogue thought is things are so fucked ATM that your move might be to buy a shitty duplex and rent out half of it. Business finance has so torqued that SBA(7a)s are better than conventional loans; you can't buy an apartment building with an SBA(7a) but you could buy a live/work space. you didn't know you wanted to make snowboards on the side, did you? My second rogue thought is that the paradigm is probably shifting. Much of Europe doesn't own and never did, it's not a part of how they live but then, they have a social safety net. Houses in Japan only last 30 years because Japanese cities were victims to fire, earthquakes and hurricanes so why get wrapped up around something that Curtiss LeMay is going to reduce to ashes anyway? Commercial leases in France are nothing like commercial leases in the US; they can kick you out whenever they want and you pretty much have to front the entire lease period as cash (no wonder the Cartiers sold the plants some pearls). I don't know what that looks like short term or long term but it will persist in being advantageous to own real estate. My third rogue thought is Zillow ate absolute shit trying to flip houses which is really funny because (1) fuck Zillow (2) no seriously, fuck Zillow (3) so much for your Zestimate bitchez. This only matters because all the single-family homes being snatched up by REITs are every bit as algo-fed as Zillow's bullshit. The system is due for a kick in the nuts. An investing anecdote: I've been using a thing called Autopilot because, thanks to my checkered financial past, I manage seven or eight scattered 401(k)s, SEPs, Simples and other random funds above and beyond my pension. I threw some money at Warren Buffett back when TD Ameritrade still existed, and then Schwab ate them, and that took forever, and Autopilot didn't work with Schwab. Then Autopilot worked with Schwab and I had to clear out what I had to readapt to what I didn't and in the process of doing that I took a long, hard look at everything I owned and you know what? Everything is doing well. This is one of those eras where you have to be a dipshit to lose money. Most people think it's because they're clever but fuck you NVidia has a three trillion dollar valuation even though they're out here saying dumb shit like we must strap a hundred thousand GPUs together to eliminate six-fingered memes and the market claps like a fuckin' walrus at Sea World. BUT Paying a percentage to a robot that can ape Warren Buffet or Nancy Pelosi or whoever 24 hours after they execute their trades? is doing REALLY well. Don't hate the playa hate the game, and the game is rigged, and I think there's a lot more protection for financial shenanigans in the stock market than there is in single family homes. Something like 5% of the country owns stock but everyone within US borders wants a roof over their heads. I don't care how malfeasant you are, the low-hanging fruit is housing not finance and if the Justice Department is already going after rental orcs, Trump ain't gonna fuk widdat without a reason.
ive been looking very casually at duplexes and triplexes recently and the odds and ends on market and definitely feel like im missing something. in the < $1.5 million range in seattle, on redfin, there’s: - twenty four homes listed total of which - five homes listed less than 30 days of the remaining nineteen - eighteen have been listed for more than 90 days - ten have been listed for more than 180 days im assuming something is pretty fucked with the houses, zoning, or they’re just way, way overpriced for what they are (i have no idea what im doing)
THING 1: nobody wants to be a landlord except people with enough money to buy an apartment building and in general, those are all REITs at this point. THING 2: most people can barely scrape together enough money to buy a place to live, let alone a place for others to live. The Warren Adler quote I love - "A man tells the world who he is four ways: his house, his wife, his car and his shoes" - is not favorable towards a d00d who shakes down his neighbors for money rather than blow his entire wad on a more-impressive single family home. THING 3: In general the people who bought duplexes for income were the strivers with small families who were trying to put down roots. Nobody under 40 wants to put down roots anymore. THING 4: If you're a REIT, you get better performance out of multi-family than you do out of individual homes. Check INVH vs Blackstone. THING 5: multi-family is pretty wretched right now because of rates. here's an apartment with a cap rate lower than current commercial mortgage rates. It's the only one listed right now in a 50 mile radius from me. I'm not saying there's a world full of bargains out there. I'm saying that you aren't competing with as many people as you think. I own an architecturally-significant mansion on two thirds of an acre within the greater metro designed by two Wikipedia architects. I paid a third what it's worth because the pricetag was outside of conforming loan territory, because nobody knew the heritage and because your average flipper didn't see anything but a weird footprint and deferred maintenance. So across five months and twelve open houses, mine was the only offer they got (and it was 20 percent less than their ask). Now granted. I first started looking at the real estate market in 2006. I've been keeping my powder dry for nearly two decades. And I'm in a world'o'hurt right now; water has been off for two weeks and the renovations seem endless. But objectively speaking I got a photon torpedo into the exhaust vent of the Death Star. It's going to be an incredible house that would be miles out of my budget if I had to buy it finished. I guess what I'm saying is that maybe you aren't missing something. Maybe everyone else is. MAYBE.
lol ive been thinking about the pelosi tracker and autopilot thing! im in schwab, fidelity, and some cds with goldman (oops)…so that could be a nice way tie everything together yeah somehow a friend bought a new build in madrona area where their first floor is zoned for mixed use? so shit i could go make snowboards over there, too? fun fact, they had to sue the builder for not laying the water bill before they closed on the place