Just need to vent...

There are pros and cons.

Rent keeps increasing. Right now, I have the cheapest rent in town. That's good because I am able to save a little, a little for emergencies and a little for retirement. And yes, I am within biking distance from work, so that's good. But our little trailer is too small for the 4 of us. And that's not just us feeling the squeeze, but also according to state law. Yet we stay all stuffed in this place because there is no other option.

If rent continues to increase we'll be forced to move. And not as in move to the next town, but more like as in move out of state, thousands of miles from where we are now. All new jobs, all new schools, completely different lifestyle, far from family, far from our current circle of friends, etc.

As a family that lives near more family, we'd rather have stability than freedom. And renting isn't entirely 100% freedom either. Landlords like making binding contracts that make it nearly impossible to move during mid-year of the contract. The last landlord I had took me to court because she wanted me to keep paying for rent another 11 months, and yeah, she got money out of me. It makes moving hard because both your rental agreement, and the rental agreement of the current tenant where you want to move to, both need to expire around the same date in order for it to happen.

There's also the question of what will happen when the wife and I are old enough to retire. Will our rent continue to get more expensive while we live off of a fixed income? It seems like we're going to have to work until we die to pay for someone else's mortgage.

 

All very weighty stuff.

I have the advantage of living both on free soil and in a very affordable state.
I also leveraged a paid gov'mint education (USN) into a job that pays union wages.
Note: By 'education' I'm talking about a TRADE (Electronics) instead of some 8-year degree in underwater basket weaving or Bavarian dance appreciation.
Most of my clan still resides in my beloved home state of Indiana, but my family is here in the deep South so I take lots of road trips to the home sod.

Far be it from me to give someone else life advice, because I've nearly wrecked mine more than once but it seems to me that your primary gig NOW is getting the kids successfully launched.
If staying where you are is core and key to that?
Well.....there you go.

@rent/leases.
I don't live in the least expensive state (Arkansassass) and you don't live in the most expensive one (Hawaii.)
HOWEVER (comma!!)
You're pretty close to the top ten by most metrics and I'm in the bottom five by all of them.
This gives me options that I have exercised in the past.
For example, I no longer live within a few hundred feet of the beach.

There are very expensive places to live in my state, and relatively cheap places to live in yours.


Anyway....
Good luck!

 

Perhaps you mean in your current area? Having just finished over 4,000 miles of travel through the south & back, seeing many very old single wide trailers, yeah it doesn't take much to own your very own abode, although it might not meet one's own particular preferences.

 

The problem is that the only reason to move somewhere else is simply to be able to try to afford a home. I don't see any other perks, benefits, advantages for the family by moving somewhere else, mostly just less perks, benefits, advantages.

"Hey kids and wifey! Daddy says we should move somewhere far from grandma, who really needs our care, but we will be far from her. And all our projects, friends and activities here, we're leaving them. And all because Daddy wants to say he owns a house. A house he won't actually own until he's 77 years old, but that's the plan."

Technically we own our trailer home, on leased property. But for starters, the value of the trailer has been going down, because it's an old trailer.

And, ironically, to get one right now with at least two normal sized bedrooms would be about what I could afford for a home with property (including selling this one). Adding lot rent on there kind of makes it more than what I should be affording.

Not to mention that right now a local lady still owns these, for which reason the lease is reasonable. But it is all too common for large investment firms to buy these properties up and jack up the rent. That's what is happening to another trailer park here, and the investment firm has made it clear that they want to jack up the lot rent sky high so that everyone there is forced to leave so they can instead build luxury housing on it, inspite of the fact that many are still paying for their trailer homes.

 

^ That's a very common problem (trailer parks) in Florida except in some cases many of the trailers are not very mobile, so the owners are forced to sell THEIR homes to the entity that owns not-their property. This means that the new owners get to collect rent on a turn-key home that they "purchased" (some would say STOLE) on the cheap.
Some trailer-park tenants are banding together to buy out their aging park owners before this happens to them.

Sometimes there aren't many advantages.

Think very carefully about the "pride of ownership."
EVEN IF you only pay $1 a year in property taxes, YOU don't actually own the property, real or otherwise

Next time you get a minute?
Read up on a Supreme Court Case:
Kelo v. City of New London - Wikipedia

Family is more important than a pile of bricks.....

 

Ironically one of the 2 top lowest property tax states, if not THE lowest - is Hawaii. It's just everything else is astronomically expensive - not just interstate travel.

 

^ Not sure about why that would be.
Usually, crazy lib states never met a tax that they didn't love!

It's probably a combination of the fact that leasehold ownership used to be more common, and either the gov'mint and/or ultra wealthy people own a disproportionate amount of the land - and we all KNOW how the ultra-wealthy love to pay their taxes!!!

 

Keep trying to get something. If you are 77 before the house is paid off, that’s a lot better than not having the house. Look for income property, live in one, things like that. Don’t give up. The owner lady will move on like you say, it will happen in your time frame.

 

Frustratingly, I'll keep looking. Mind you that I just threw out the 77 number. I'll be 52 here in a couple months. So, if I got a house this year on a 30-year loan, I'd be 82 years old by the time it's paid off. If I find it 4 years from now, I'd be 86 years old by that time.

Frustratingly, I'll keep looking. But, the odds of me actually owning my own house are pretty slim.

 

You get that 30 year loan and pay half the payment every two weeks. Instead of age 82 payoff your done 6 years sooner at 76.

Regardless, when you buy a home it's very likely to be worth twice as much in 20 years. The payoff would be just over 1/2 of the purchase price. You have built equity of almost 150% of your purchase price which can be accessed with a reverse mortgage while you continue to live there as you age.

 

Additionally it shouldn't be a concern that any future home is not paid off in 30 years because your equity can be gifted through trust or will to one of your kids.
.

 

You don’t want to live under a landlord at 82 though, at their discretion as to rent, so even now at 52 time is on your side.

 

Interesting about paying half payments and paying it off sooner. I don't quite follow what that means though. If payments are $2,000 per month, them pay $1,000 two weeks early and another $1,000 when the bill is due?? Why wouldn't getting ahead a month not do the same thing? This is confusing.

As far as price of home, last I checked, at the current mortgage rate, plus taxes, insurance, etc. I'd also pay double what the house is worth, at least in 30 years. So, it would be like saving every dollar, except I'd have a free place to live.

Well, that would mean I'd need to make a major change soon.

The absolute cheapest place I can find right now that has two bedrooms and is close enough for me to continue working at my current job (under 90 miles away) is a 1979, $240,000, 800 sqft. condo. Zillow estimates the total monthly cost to be $1,782 with no HOA figured in. Since it is under an HOA, I'd have to figure that into the price too. One HOA here charges $800 per month last I heard, so we could say maybe $70 or $80 per month for the HOA here, putting us at around $1,850. And this condo has resistive electric heat, which is way more expensive than my current place that has natural gas. From what I've seen, it would likely be on average some three times the price of my current natural gas heated place, so around $160 per month (maybe more) on average instead of $80 per month average. So, over $2,000 per month, not including water, trash or sewer.

Compared to my average income of around $3,200 per month on average after taxes and deductions, that would leave me with around $1,000 to $1,200 per month for food, transportation, phone, and any extras like internet, as well as whatever to save for any sort of emergency (like to pay for our high deductible on our healthcare plan) or to save for retirement. Doable?

Mind you, this condo has no yard, garage, nor storage shed: Not even a common area for tenants. Just the stairs that run along the outside down to the two parking spots.

The next cheapest place anywhere near here is $345,000, beyond what any lender would even lend me.

I've looked into duplexes and such. One guy want's $800,000 for sort of a triplex. But the place looks like it needs to be bulldozed. From there I just can't find anything that isn't a couple million or more. I ran the numbers on one 12-unit complex, and it should work. But what if something goes wrong that all 12 units need fixed?

The only other option would be to move far away and look for a place where I can get a job that can afford a more affordable home, likely outside of Colorado.

 

if you pay every 2 weeks, that isn't twice a month, it is 26 times a year

 

Getting ahead a month is also good if you can. The pay-half-twice-as-often strategy is just an easy one to remember and works well. Anything that reduces the amount of money you are paying interest on or the amount of time you're paying interest on it is to your benefit.

Amortization calculators are widely available online that you can use to play with what-if you make some change or other to your payment pattern and see what happens to the bottom line.

I once finished a year with an extra $8000 in savings I didn't have plans for, and a moment with the amortization calculator showed if I just dropped it right then on my mortgage, my total interest paid over the life of the loan would be $11k less.

That also isn't the sort of thing where you say "ok, $11k minus $8k you paid put you $3k ahead." No, because using $8k of asset to retire $8k of liability is a zero-dollar balance-sheet change; the $11k it saved me in interest was all real.

(If you wanted, you could compare it to the amount I could have earned by investing the $8k some other way: the so-called "opportunity cost". But the interest rate on my mortgage wasn't too far below the typical long-term return of stocks, and unlike stocks, it was a sure thing.)

 

Paying half every two weeks means an extra principal only payment every year. 24 of them since you are fully paid off in 24 years. You then have eliminated the last 6x12 (72) payments.

The reality is every place you rent you are paying somebody else's mortgage, taxes and insurance. Plus home maintenance, all buried in a rent payment. None of which builds equity (value) for you. Buy your own place and you have a better place to live, you have a fixed mortgage principal and interest payment plus you get a homeowner's exemption (reduction) on property taxes. In most states you get another exemption at 65 years old while some states freeze your taxes at the rate paid at age 65.

To me the security it gives you in retirement makes it worth working more, moving or whatever it takes. Most of us found it tight the first five years and easier as income slowly rises and the base mortgage stayed stable.

 

Maybe at some point. But I have known quite a few that did have that mindset, that they should do whatever it takes to own a home. Now a lot of them are divorced and their kids hate them. And as a result, they had to sell their house and are now starting all over again, plus having to pay child support.

There's more to life than just securing one's financial future. Balancing all of it isn't easy.

And mind you that when many of you had a hard first-five-years, properties weren't as expensive and limited as they are today. It looks more like having to do it all, move to a part of the country I have no desire to live at, work two jobs, accept a sub-optimal house, and keep working hard for likely much more than the first five years.

I get the idea. That might happen someday. But right now, just getting into a place would be a struggle. When looking at all house expenses, the cheapest place around here, which isn't a great place, would be close to half our income before taxes, limiting us to around $1,000 per month for most of our other expenses, including car ownership and food.

 

and you can always get a reverse mortgage if needed