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02-10-2013, 07:42 AM
You can buy a new concrete poured home in Mexico for 10 to 20,000 (what I'm currently looking into)
You can buy a house in China in the countryside for 5,000. (5 Bedroom) (Chengdu/Hubei - Mainland in the cheaper provinces)
You can deck anything out to look really nice at IKEA.
You can rent a decent apartment in China for 200 dollars a month (2 bedroom)
You can rent a town house in Mexico for 250 dollars a month (2 bedroom)
You could live in Mexico or China for 2 years without working or only working when you want to. I did it on 3,000 at six month intervals for a few years during my 20s.
Contrast that to: you can make a down payment on a house in Canada that is old/ugly or has problems.
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02-10-2013, 09:22 AM
Maybe someone can explain the "mortgages are for suckers" statement a little better? I've seen it before and always wondered if that's true, especially with the current very low interest rates. I bought a large but beat up house in a good neighborhood for a steal right before the bottom fell out on the mortgage industry and the economy collapsed. I felt like a sucker then for sure, it happened a few months after I moved in.
The house was a nightmare, hadn't been taken care of for about 30 years and was a lot bigger than I thought it was. I would be at my job all day and come home to work on the house until midnight or one in the morning. The place was totally disgusting, which I didn't know until the day I moved in, it stunk like animals. I had to rip out rugs, clean and paint, fix walls and ceilings, tear shit out, redo the bathroom and kitchen, put in floors. I was a regular at Home Depot, sometimes 3 times a day. It took about 10 months of daily work for me to go through the whole house and get it so I could come home and not have to work on something every single day if I didn't want to. Then there were the water issues and plumbing leaks in the basement, the leaky gutters and the roof is still an issue but I've got the house very comfortable after 4 years.
When I rented it was $800 per month. My mortgage, with insurance and taxes included is just under $700. Without the taxes and insurance it's about $400. I plan on paying big chunks of the principal off as I get the funds now that I don't have to spend a ton fixing stuff. Above the mortgage I've spent about $13,000 fixing it up and $5000 of that was for a new fireplace and chimney repairs. Most of the projects I've done myself and I like doing home maintenance stuff but some people may not want to or be able to deal with all that, especially with a fixer upper when you have a day job.
I won't lie, some days it really sucked, but having the house has been a big character builder, like maintaining a car times 1000. It forced me out of being lazy and I realized I had the ability to work even harder and get much more done in a day than I thought I could. I've learned a ton of skills and built on others I had (plumbing, landscaping, carpentry, painting, electrical, flooring, roofing, drywall, etc). I suffered and toiled but I wake up every day in my own "castle". When I rented I didn't have to lift a finger, went out all the time, drank a shitload, went on cool vacations, ate out a ton and occasionally dragged bar whores home with zero game. Now It's dialed back a ton, I do projects and have a few beers but it's down from 100% of my time to about 15%.
The positive is that when I sell this place I will make a ton of money. I've lived here very cheap, it looks good on my credit, and I've learned skills and done projects like you wouldn't believe. I have a fuzzy idea of getting myself into a position of being location independent, selling the house and all my assets here and buying a sailboat or a condo somewhere in the Caribbean.
Without a mortgage I wouldn't have been able to do any of this. I'd still be paying someone else's mortgage off for them with no asset and wasting a lot of time and money with nothing to show for it.
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02-10-2013, 02:58 PM
Well that all makes sense but this thread is about INVESTING. Not personal use.
" I'M NOT A CHRONIC CUNT LICKER "
Canada, where the women wear pants and the men wear skinny jeans
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02-11-2013, 03:56 AM
How many of you are renters and how many are home owners
i have a feeling most are renters traveling staying one place to anotherwhile a house ties you down.
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02-11-2013, 12:21 PM
Have owned since 2003 and do not regret it one bit.
If I want to rent it out at some point I'll get way more than the mortgage is on it.
Another thing to remember is the cost of everything goes up over the years.
Except your mortgage.
Unless of course you get an ARM, which is nuts in my opinion. Especially with the cost of money the past 10 years or so.
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02-11-2013, 12:39 PM
Hotwheels, how often are you home? From a lot of your posts I get the impression that you travel for work and sleep in hotels more often than not.
Quote: (02-16-2014 01:05 PM)jariel Wrote:
Since chicks have decided they have the right to throw their pussies around like Joe Montana, I have the right to be Jerry Rice.
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02-11-2013, 12:45 PM
I've been home for most of the past month but the last 6 months or so of last year it was rare for me to be home. I wasn't on the road nearly as much when I bought it, yet I still have zero regrets.
I put it on Airbnb for a month just to test the market and if I rent it that way I should average 3x or more the mortgage over the summer months. One must remember I live in a tourist area however.
If I'm on the road a lot this summer, which I expect to be, I'll probably do that. Currently upgrading a few things in the house to both pull more rental income and make it more how I want it.
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02-11-2013, 12:52 PM
I'm thinking about building a new house next to my house slowly and moving into it and renting my other place out. In the end if I wanted to leave I could rent both of them out and travel. You're not going to make passive retirement income when you leave your rental after 20 years.
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02-12-2013, 03:11 AM
what is arm?
i think rental properties abroad are not as good as in the states
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02-12-2013, 03:13 AM
would you prefer a fixed rate mortgage or varianle rate.
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02-12-2013, 08:42 AM
Landlording is not really a passive income strategy. You can make it passive but that means scaling up your rentals to offset hiring other people to manage it.
I wouldn't trust management companies. They have ways of sucking money out of your pockets.
As an investment, I would pass Ali. I don't think it is conducive to your lifestyle.
Me, I am looking at equity lending. Something like Hard Money that I can charge a high interest rate and points. I think Atlanta would be killer for that since the foreclosure time frame is only 21 days.
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02-12-2013, 09:09 AM
Quote: (02-12-2013 03:11 AM)east and west Wrote:
what is arm?
i think rental properties abroad are not as good as in the states
ARM = Adjustable Rate Mortgage
It means you have an initial interest rate on your mortgage, but after a set period of time (say 3 years) the rate changes, based on another factor like the LIBOR.
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02-12-2013, 11:21 AM
why is arm bad most rates are variable nowadays
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02-12-2013, 11:26 AM
ARM or even interest only mortgages were useful strategies if you knew what you were doing and the market was going up. ARM's have low teaser rates that adjust upward once the fixed low interest term has passed. People were not prepared to make the higher payments as a result. None of these mortgage products are "bad" per se, provided you know exactly how they work and why you are using them, which unfortunately rules out many if not most people.
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02-14-2013, 07:02 AM
usuAlly arm has Lock in period eg 2 years where the rate is low. but after this period you are free to switch to another mortgage.