A conundrum
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This isn’t true in my experience at all. Either rent is cheap where you are or you’re looking at expensive houses or not for a 30 year period. The rate currently is around 6-9%. It would only be more expensive if the house is. No other hidden fees
Well in my very recent experience it is extremely, painfully, unavoidably true. That's why I said it. We just bought a house, 150k less than we qualified for, and our monthly payment is 33% higher than we were paying in rent. Rent is far from cheap, there's just no such thing as an inexpensive house unless you want one in a terrible neighborhood or an hour drive outside the city. In the first case, not only is it a bad idea just to live in these neighborhoods, the chances of making money on the resale are next to nil. The burbs option of course offers more for your money, but that comes with more maintenance, yardwork, housework, gas money, transit stress, etc. We worked with very knowledgeable, trustworthy realtor and mortgage brokers and there's simply no math in the current market that gets mortgage payments lower than the rent we were paying without buying a literal, active crack house.
And to claim there's no extra fees involved with buying and owning a home compared to renting is either utter delusion or repugnant gaslighting.
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Surely, this depends a lot on what market you’re in. If you’re in a very expensive area and need to take a big loan with a high fixed rate, I can see that being the case but renting the equivalent place would probably be extremely expensive too.
renting the equivalent place would probably be extremely expensive too.
Right, like I said, mortgage is not cheaper, certainly not half as cheap. The market I'm in is a metropolis, it contains every range of the market, it just depends how much gun violence you prefer.
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Sounds like it is not common where you are, consider yourself lucky. Where I live, all new houses are built with predatory rental water heaters. $50-100/month forever. You end up paying the purchase price many times over. Electric tankless heaters use an insane amount of electricity when they operate. Overall they are more efficient, but the wiring needed to supply it will greatly increase the price, often requiring a panel upgrade and possibly an upgrade in service to the house.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Rental water heaters are some weird Canadian scam.
My ~70 year old water heater failed 5 years ago. I drove to the nearest hardware store, paid $700 for a new one, and installed it myself.
Comparing efficiency between electric and gas is complete nonsense. You need to compare operating cost. In my market, with very high electric prices, it’s $60/yr for gas tank, and $1,100/yr for electric tankless.
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My issue wasn't getting pre-approved, it was being able to actually afford the mortgage amount I was pre-approved for. A lot of these companies don't give a damn if you can actually afford the mortgages they offer, because they know you'll either figure it out or go homeless trying.
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I hate the housing situation too but this is seriously a braindead take
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Banks do leverage mortgage debt. Essentially the same process, in turn.
wrote last edited by [email protected]But how do they lease your deposit to billionaires and crypto exchanges?
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I hate the housing situation too but this is seriously a braindead take
Braindead take? This is just the reality of the situation for a lot of people
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I'm not sure if you've really understood the dynamic.
Suppose you buy for $700k, pay off $50k, but then the market collapses and the property is only worth $600k.
You'll be $50k better off if you just stop paying and let the bank foreclose.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I seem to completely misunderstand the dynamic.
As I see it, you have paid $700k for the house with the bank's money (in this thread there is no deposit), bought back some of the house from the bank with $50k of your own money and then lost the house so you're out $50k with no house.
If the bank does pay out some of the value of the house to you based on equity, it's just going to be a smaller amount than $50k since the value of the house is lower and part of your repayment went to interest so you don't even get $50k worth of equity. This feels like a worse position to me.
Like the bank has lost money for sure, but we are not getting that are we?
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My issue wasn't getting pre-approved, it was being able to actually afford the mortgage amount I was pre-approved for. A lot of these companies don't give a damn if you can actually afford the mortgages they offer, because they know you'll either figure it out or go homeless trying.
We probably live in different countries, but where I live it's more like you can't get pre-approved for anything unless you either have a large amount of money saved up, or your salary is high enough that it's far beyond what you would reasonably need to get paid to afford the mortgage.
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I seem to completely misunderstand the dynamic.
As I see it, you have paid $700k for the house with the bank's money (in this thread there is no deposit), bought back some of the house from the bank with $50k of your own money and then lost the house so you're out $50k with no house.
If the bank does pay out some of the value of the house to you based on equity, it's just going to be a smaller amount than $50k since the value of the house is lower and part of your repayment went to interest so you don't even get $50k worth of equity. This feels like a worse position to me.
Like the bank has lost money for sure, but we are not getting that are we?
You're overthinking it.
The loan history is not relevant. The $50k you paid is gone. Sunk costs fallacy and all that.
A mortgage isn't a complicated shared equity situation.
You owe the bank $650k and if you don't pay they will take the house worth $600k.
Obviously if you default there will be legal problems and you're still on the hook for the last $50k and so on, but there's no incentive to keep paying. Like if you declare bankruptcy then you don't have to pay the $50k and you can start saving for a deposit on your next house for when the exclusion period expires.
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Bad take. In my situation it went from us paying $1900 in rent to paying $4500 in mortgage.
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Braindead take? This is just the reality of the situation for a lot of people
Mortgage payments are almost never lower than rent unless you are seriously downgrading
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My issue wasn't getting pre-approved, it was being able to actually afford the mortgage amount I was pre-approved for. A lot of these companies don't give a damn if you can actually afford the mortgages they offer, because they know you'll either figure it out or go homeless trying.
Fudging the numbers a bit, but let's say I'm paying $3000/mo for a mortgage. Brokers tell me I can afford $10,000/mo.
I cannot afford $10,000/mo.
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Mortgage payments are almost never lower than rent unless you are seriously downgrading
Given the figures are in pound sterling, quite often in the UK the mortgage payments are signficiantly lower than renting, 100% makes sense when in the context of the British housing market.
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Bad take. In my situation it went from us paying $1900 in rent to paying $4500 in mortgage.
Well you made a choice. Either you knew you could make the payments for the price range you bought into, or you didn't read the repayments figures on any of the documents the bank sent you and made a massive decision uninformed.
I pay 20% more for my mortgage than I did on my rent, but the house is also better, I can easily afford it, and I made that choice willingly and I'm happy with that arrangement.
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We probably live in different countries, but where I live it's more like you can't get pre-approved for anything unless you either have a large amount of money saved up, or your salary is high enough that it's far beyond what you would reasonably need to get paid to afford the mortgage.
You live in Germany don't you
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I'm not sure if you've really understood the dynamic.
Suppose you buy for $700k, pay off $50k, but then the market collapses and the property is only worth $600k.
You'll be $50k better off if you just stop paying and let the bank foreclose.
You’ll be $50k better off if you just stop paying and let the bank foreclose.
And do what? Live under a bridge? You would still have to buy a new house. Are you going to find similar house at $600k easily? Are interest rates still low despite market collapse? Will banks lend you money if just foreclosed?
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Well you made a choice. Either you knew you could make the payments for the price range you bought into, or you didn't read the repayments figures on any of the documents the bank sent you and made a massive decision uninformed.
I pay 20% more for my mortgage than I did on my rent, but the house is also better, I can easily afford it, and I made that choice willingly and I'm happy with that arrangement.
wrote last edited by [email protected]The bad take I was referring to was OP claiming the mortgage payment would be lower than the rent payment. In the US this is almost never the case. Edit: we have fixed rate mortgages in the US. My payment will only go up because of taxes or insurance.
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Mortgage payments are almost never lower than rent unless you are seriously downgrading
I bought my first apartment because it was like €500 per month cheaper than renting a similar place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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You’ll be $50k better off if you just stop paying and let the bank foreclose.
And do what? Live under a bridge? You would still have to buy a new house. Are you going to find similar house at $600k easily? Are interest rates still low despite market collapse? Will banks lend you money if just foreclosed?
Don't be daft.
I'm not providing advice regarding what someone ought to do when they find themselves in negative equity.
I'm explaining the requirement for buyers to start with a reasonable amount of equity.
Once an owner falls into negative equity, they have an incentive to default on the loan. Yes there will be consequences, but the fact remains they will he weighing those consequences against the financial incentive to default.
The "better off" in my comment is an impartial objective calculation.
