There's an interactive device in this post which will tell you whether renting is smarter than buying at this time.
Realtors may try to disable it. (On the other hand, it's a NYSlimes interactive. Background calculations are invisible...)
In brief, if you're looking for a modest home and pay Wisconsin-level real-estate taxes, and you're not renting the Taj Mahal at this time...
You may be better off continuing to rent.
Hmmmmm.
I ran my own house in it. I had to triple the prop tax from the default. (My price paid is about 60% of its valuation, due to foreclosure.) The maintenance and repair costs seemed awfully low at .5% each. Taking a standard $200,000 home, that would be $1,000 a piece per year, give or take. A $20,000 roof would take up 3/4's of those dollars (amortorizing it over expected life), and you are looking at replacing that at minimum every 20 years. Of course, any landlord (or accountant who has a lot of landlord clients) would tell you that maintenance, repair, and remodeling are very difficult to recover.
ReplyDeleteI ran it, using my current appraised value and the current typical rent for the kind of apartment I had before I bought the house, and fiddling the tax rate until I got as closeas possible to this year's bill. It affirmed that I did a very good job buying. I wonder if I should try it again with the real 18-years-ago numbers and see if it urpses...........
ReplyDelete