What We Lost In Real Estate
It’s a tough real estate market nowadays in this horrible economic situation we have found ourselves in. Home prices have plunged throughout the country and are still falling in places. For those who bought when the market was overvalued a few years ago, times are especially tough. Mortgages were given to any Tom, Dick or Harry and they had ridiculous terms which left those mortgage holders in a bad way.
I live in California, where the prices of homes five years ago was way above the assessed value and people routinely had buyers with fat checkbooks knocking down their door to get into homes. Unfortunately, I had just moved to Los Angeles, and I needed a place to live. Going with the conventional wisdom of buying is better than renting, I bought property.
This mindset put my wife and I into a condo that we could not nearly afford. When we applied for the mortgage we were sure we would be denied but when they said yes, we just figured they were smarter than us. Well, the mortgage was an interest only and so we were not building equity. When my wife got pregnant again, she decided to leave her job and full-time salary with it. We were setting and had set ourselves up for trouble. As things got worse and bills piled up, we found ourselves on decrepit furniture with home space heaters to warm us.
As everyone knew it would, the housing market took a dive and prices dropped along with the economy’s deflation. Our condo was worth much less than what we paid, although our mortgage was still the same amount. We couldn’t survive in our current situation and we couldn’t make money selling our house if anyone even agreed to buy it. So, after filing bankruptcy we attempted a short sale.
Now we are in a rental and much better off but we learned many valuable lessons. If I had it to do all over again, here is what I would do.
I would buy an income property, something that I could put a renter in that would cover my mortgage. I would buy a slight fixer-upper and spruce it up with some cheap home decor accents and maybe a coat of paint. But, most importantly, I would buy something below my price range, taking the renter into consideration and get a mortgage that earned equity and had a good rate either fixed or with a long arm.
The last thing I would want is the worry of a mortgage month to month that I couldn’t cover. The only thing I would want is a home with real value that anyone could see and I would be able to hang onto it long enough to make it a really great resale property, whatever the economy threw our way.
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