i heard the other day that the house at the end of the street went for a ridiculous amount of money. it was my old lady neighbor so i thought perhaps she was mistaken about the amount. but now someone else told me that while i wasn't looking real estate prices have gone coo coo and my house is probably worth twice what i paid not even two years ago!!

i am guessing this is very localized... do you use real estate as an investment?
or as personal security and a roof over your head? or saving every nickel just to get into ownership?
is your market hot? cool? i guess in comparison to other markets we were undervalued. i still think it's nuts.

The housing market is insane here right now.....I sure wouldn't like to be a first home buyer right now.....
How I see real estate ..my own home - roof over head, security, mine ...Investment properties - pure money making with no emotional ties

there was and still is a high surge in condo/townhome/loft construction in chicago despite the market cooling and prices dropping. i hope in the near future when everything is done with i'll be in a position to take advantage of it.

prices have been on a steady rise here since we bought our place 10 years ago, it's now doubled it's value, and it cost us WAY too much in the first place.

Ocean said:

what do you have? are you the bitch landlady to somebody out there?!?

heybaby said:

does the future mean when the boys are grown or before then? the romantic in me always wanted a loft in some old reno'd factory building

emm said:

I have a 4 bed with pool as a investment property and no ...it is always maintained ...what I meant was I choose the house based on price and predicted increase or renovator potential (eg profit to be made)

ZombieKitten said:

that's what i think for people buying now! how on earth do you afford it? i guess you just have to trust that you will be able to pay off the mortgage because the property value keeps appreciating.

emm said:

it is driving first home buyers further out into the burbs and further into debt. The interest rates have been pretty low all this time too, and banks are lending a LOT - they have a lot to gain if you can't pay your mortgage!

We paid ours off last year

emm said:

hopefully before they are grown. i love lofts and townhomes. i want a alot of space or a basement to do my work in

ZombieKitten said:

exactly, I think this whole housing market is going to blow-up in everyones faces.
And I think the banks set it up this way. Banks and politicians, etc. etc.
Just like Katrina, the Bridge in Minn., they are going to make the housing market go bust.
Then they have an excuse for large corporations to privatise evey piece of gods green earth.

ZombieKitten said:

..we still have a long way to go

my friend told me her brother in law is building a $600,000 house.
i thought what? that's insane! but maybe i see what happened...
that $600 would have been 300 last year?? i dunno.

not like he can afford that anyway, stupid fuck. what is wrong with living within your means now adays?

Many Americans -- and other citizens, I'm sure -- fail to grasp how industries are tied to their living beyond their means. Car notes to new cars whose value depreciates rapidly, buying homes they can't afford simply because they were "approved."

The people fueling the subprime market implosion in America are paying a high price, indeed.

I have a long, long way to go before we can cash in on the equity in our home.

If I sold right now, I'd probably walk away with about $50K.

...but unless I moved out to the Arizona desert that wouldn't get me very far...especially since it would be taxed like hell unless it was all used to buy another home.

Calligraphy said:

Too true. Foreclosures are at a record high in Michigan.
Many people didn't seem to think adjustable mortgages could adjust higher.

Calligraphy said:

not just in America, this whole keeping up with the Joneses business I got a couch off the nature strip - I have friends, heavily in debt, who wouldn't dream of doing that, they would rather buy it even though they couldn't afford it, just to look like they can.

It frightens me; I have a tough time believing there are that many people who can afford to live in our neighborhood. We've been here 8 years, the house has almost tripled...but our incomes sure haven't (in other words, moving & staying in the same neighborhood would require some serious adjusting).

I just assume that these young couples moving into these $500,000 homes are opening meth labs in their basements to cover the mortgage.,,

The price level in central Stockholm is insane, but as soon as you get a couple of kilometres outside it's much more affordable. It's still not a good investor's market though, partly because the rent levels are strictly regulated and the cap rates are often negative. Also, it's not part of the culture to sublet houses, so there's not really a market for it. Only condos are subletted to any signficant extent.

I'm actually thinking of investing in Canada. There's plenty of fantastic property in Prince Rupert for example, right by the ocean. At the very least I would be looking for cap rates around 6-8% so that it would cover both the 3% inflation rate and the mortgage. It's not impossible to find. I just looked at a nice duplex with a 13% cap rate.

retina said:

i was going to show you an article talking about the very thing you were thinking would happen. macleans, "the mayor's latest plan to fix vancouver's drug problem draws fire"

in the end, all the arguments over the downtown eastside's intractable drug problem may be moot. the city core has run out of room. after years of overight, vancouver developers are drooling over thd downtown eyesore and its 125 undervalued, century old flop houses. frenzied pre olympic redevelopment is driving up land values and rents in the neighbourhood, threatening to displace thousands of low income residents - which may push the drug problem out of sight.

emm said:

Don't spread the word on that too much.