NFR How's the housing market where you live?

Non-fishing related
While @Shad and @jaredoconnor bring up interesting yet somewhat opposing POV, one really does not know the future. Each person needs to look at their own situation. Also talk with a CPA to understand if it makes sense to buy. Tax law and tax deductions for home interest have changed a lot recently and probably will continue to change in the future.

Average length of home ownership is 7 to 8 years. New jobs or transfers, family gets bigger are a couple of reasons for it. The longer one ownes a home, the more beneficial it becomes because one is paying proportionally less interest and more towards equity. IMHO one does not build as much wealth if they continue to move. Between paying state and federal taxes, real estate fees, capital gains, with each sale, it reduces down the amount realized vs staying in one home longer...

Just some food for thought...
 
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RCF said:
While @Shad and @jaredoconnor bring up interesting yet somewhat opposing POV, one really does not know the future. Each person needs to look at their own situation. Also talk with a CPA to understand if it makes sense to buy. Tax law and tax deductions for home interest have changed a lot recently and probably will continue to change in the future.

Average length of home ownership is 7 to 8 years. New jobs or transfers, family gets bigger are a couple of reasons for it. The longer one owes a home, the more beneficial it becomes because one is paying proportionally less interest and more towards equity. IMHO one does not build as much wealth if they continue to move. Between paying state and federal taxes, real estate fees, capital gains, with each sale, it reduces down the amount realized vs staying in one home longer...

Just some food for thought...
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I was very careful to say that it CAN be one of the best things to do. 😂
 
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Kyle Smith said:
She's gonna crash. I'll keep renting until that happens.
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Yep, just wait it out its unsustainable right now. My aging parents just liquidated their rental property(Oregon is not a good place to be a small time landlord) and another house in a family trust last year. Their agent said he set a record on the amount of showings at 1 open house. Both went 100s of thousands over asking.
 
When I started out investing in real estate it was much easier and more advantageous tax-wise than it is now. It has gotten a lot more technical with all the tax law changes. That is where getting some help from a tax professional is a better idea now more than ever.

Now with WA state trying to make capital gains (on many but not all investments) a tax at the state level - even uglier.
 
RCF said:
Housing price increases are great in Seattle. I love where our family lives. The ROI will be fantastic once we sell!

BUT the property tax increases associated with the higher home prices is a killer when on a fixed income. The property tax amount went from 20% of my SS when I retired to 60% of my SS and that is before the price increase coming in 2022.

Reminds me of what happened to all the Montana people being forced to sell their places in the 90's because they could not afford the property taxes.
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Apologies if this has already been suggested or if you know of it already but have you looked into the King County exemption for seniors? And yes, I know I'm opening myself up to get cancelled/blocked/banned/publicly flogged for making an assumption of your potential age, but you mentioned both retirement and SS, so I'm using my finely tuned deductive reasoning to make an assumption. But back to my point, my mom qualified and it saved her quite a bit on property taxes, which have spiraled out of control for her small Bellevue rambler. Apologies if any of this offends you. Here's a link to the King County program info: https://kingcounty.gov/depts/assess...s/assessor/documents/Exemptions/Brochure.ashx
 
They're not making anymore land...but they are making more people.

Don't know if that has anything to do with this or not.
😀
 
jaredoconnor said:
I was very careful to say that it CAN be one of the best things to do. 😂
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If you buy within your limits and shop wisely, a house is one of the safest ways to use leverage there is. It's the only place you can outlay 20% of the cost of an asset and get a return on 100% of the value at the same you use it with no outstanding deadline for a call, etc.

When we sold, my first inclination was to cash out of the real estate market and rent, optimizing for financial flexibility. My wife and I are both 30yr finance professionals (corporate, not investments) and she was formerly a CPA. We spent a significant amount of time on the analysis and could not make the numbers work for renting a house equivalent to what we would want to buy.

Sure there will be ups and downs but the long-term trend line for real estate prices near desirable places to live is strongly up and to the right. There is no reason to think that will change barring some cataclysm that will render the while situation moot. Waiting for a 'crash' feels like trying to time the stock market which doesn't usually work out for the amateur investor either.

My worry is for my kids with real estate prices outpacing earnings growth such that coming up with the downpayment and being able to cover the debt service on a starter house will be out of reach.
 
Well it seems like almost anywhere in the west is in demand. I wonder where you start seeing things soften first. I'd volunteer Bozeman, even if it cost me a little dough.

My buddy is a water engineer for the city. He says at this rate of growth, we have about 15 years left of water supply. One of the projects they are looking at is to build a pipeline and pump water from Canyon Ferry back to Bozeman. That is maybe 60 miles or so?

So water flows from the hills down to the Gallatin, forms the Missouri and into Canyon Ferry. We then turn around and pump some of that same water back up to town. Ain't that something.
 
swimmy said:
Well it seems like almost anywhere in the west is in demand. I wonder where you start seeing things soften first. I'd volunteer Bozeman, even if it cost me a little dough.

My buddy is a water engineer for the city. He says at this rate of growth, we have about 15 years left of water supply. One of the projects they are looking at is to build a pipeline and pump water from Canyon Ferry back to Bozeman. That is maybe 60 miles or so?

So water flows from the hills down to the Gallatin, forms the Missouri and into Canyon Ferry. We then turn around and pump some of that same water back up to town. Ain't that something.
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I think your right. Towns like Bozeman will likely be a the first to soften. Curious if you think the market will solve this problem on its own? I personally could view this as an opportunity, not a problem. I could take advantage of it but I won’t. Do you think the average American with the same options feels the same? How about foreign investors? Maybe something should be done so are kids are not “screwed”’as you put it a few pages back. Maybe not. Either way, no skin off my back. Curious your thoughts.
 
I’m curious if places like Bozeman will soften. There sure are a lot of people with money that arent tied to an office anymore, looking for a fun place to work. Leisure is a lot of what's driving these relocations around the west, not jobs…
 
jasmillo said:
It’s funny. I remember chatting with my grandfather about his first house purchase back in the late 50’s. How he haggled over the last $500 because he did not want to go over 24k…or something ridiculous like that. 24k is like a quote to remodel a single bathroom these days…
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I should start making Corian countertops, and shower surrounds again. It's work I truly enjoyed but granite prices kind of killed Corian
 
jasmillo said:
I think your right. Towns like Bozeman will likely be a the first to soften. Curious if you think the market will solve this problem on its own? I personally could view this as an opportunity, not a problem. I could take advantage of it but I won’t. Do you think the average American with the same options feels the same? How about foreign investors? Maybe something should be done so are kids are not “screwed”’as you put it a few pages back. Maybe not. Either way, no skin off my back. Curious your thoughts.
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That's a lot of questions.
 
This kinda tells the story in MT.
nbcmontana.com

Report shows Montana has highest proportion of inbound moves in US

Ask anyone who’s been in Bozeman longer than 20 years and they'll tell you how the city has changed. “I remember when Bozeman just one exit had off of I-90,” Gallatin Association of Realtors board president Joanna Harper said. The number of people living in Bozeman increased by around 22,000 in...
nbcmontana.com nbcmontana.com

It's probably hard to believe but when I started my freshman year at MSU in 1967 the population of Bozeman was around 16,000.
I-90 was under construction but Hwy10 thru town was still the main drag.
 
Are home values really going up? Or is the value of the US Dollar continuing its long decline, which started in 2001. CSXR-1987.png
CSUS-USD-1975.png

When priced in gold, US home prices have not increased all that much since hitting bottom in 2011-2012. The great housing bubble of 2000-2006 was much much worse. Our problem is the degradation of the US Dollar via incredibly poor fiscal and monetary policy. We are living in an "everything/everywhere" asset bubble. Supposedly the FED is going to raise interest rates multiple times in 2022-2023. Now is a good time to review your financial portfolio, these situations never end well.
 
DimeBrite said:
Are home values really going up? Or is the value of the US Dollar continuing its long decline, which started in 2001. View attachment 4328
View attachment 4329

When priced in gold, US home prices have not increased all that much since hitting bottom in 2011-2012. The great housing bubble of 2000-2006 was much much worse. Our problem is the degradation of the US Dollar via incredibly poor fiscal and monetary policy. We are living in an "everything/everywhere" asset bubble. Supposedly the FED is going to raise interest rates multiple times in 2022-2023. Now is a good time to review your financial portfolio, these situations never end well.
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Interesting!
 
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