Home buying thread

It's not necessarily lying. I'm sure some (many?) of them are misreporting income. But there can be a lot of factors why people invest in real estate to their financial detriment. People see real estate as a safe place to store money as there is the impression hat it only ever goes up in value - which is largely true in metro areas. There's also a strong culture of home ownership in Australia - probably similar to the US, but very different from the attitude towards it in Asia for example.

But as was mentioned, it really is speculation. There is a lot of angst in the Australian real estate market for the last few years about how overheated it is, and the only people who are really benefiting from it are real estate agents. You can't make money from real estate in Sydney/ Melbourne, you can't get your money back, young families can't afford to buy property and are stuck renting or moving out into the middle of nowhere. Most of the property in expensive areas is owned by baby boomers who got in when houses cost $35k, and now they cost $2mil or more. Given all of the speculation in the market, all it would take is a 2.5-3% interest rate rise and there would be at least a small crash as the overleveraged investors have to dump their properties when they can't service the loans any more.

By some metrics Sydney is the second most expensive real estate market in the world (behind Hong Kong) and despite that there are 200,000 empty apartments/houses in the city. Primarily because of investors (mostly foreign/Chinese) who are bringing capital in and storing it in the safe real estate market. They don't even bother renting the properties out, it's just a safe place to store money.

Storing money in an overheated, yet somehow safe real estate market at a loss.... as opposed to what? A risky savings account? Legitimate cash does not have to be "parked" at a loss.

crocodiles eat your savings down there mate

Shrug, I'm not here to say whether they're good investments or not, I'm just saying a lot of people do it for a lot of reasons. Again, 2/3 of Australian rental properties are operating at a loss. Do you really think so many Australian investors are stupid? Of course they're not. Some of them might be just be stupid risk takers but in general there are good reasons why they do this.

I personally know a Taiwanese investor who owns 2 $1mil apartments and an 800k term deposit. He thinks the term deposit is a waste and he should probably buy another apartment but he really wants to stay at least slightly diversified. But in the markets he bought in I think the term deposit is probably producing the best return. There's a mystique around real estate.

If you're talking about Asian money, Chinese people buy real estate because it's the easiest way to get money out of China. Who cares if the property is losing money if the Australian Dollar is gaining against the Yuan. The West coast of the US has some of the same issues driving up prices.

Seattle Real Estate Sees Surge In Chinese Interest After Vancouver Enacts 15% Tax

Closing -- Lawyer's office or Registry of Deeds? I'm leaning towards the Registry of Deeds simply because there's been a couple of typographical oopses on the title paperwork already in the process and I'm having shit delivered the day after closing.**





** this was originally 4 days after closing which I did as a buffer in case the closing got moved which promptly got eaten up when the closing got moved.

Fair point. This is in Massachusetts which, as a non-state, already has many quirks all its own like registered versus unregistered land etc.

Law-wrangler is required in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

I grew up in the midwest and while I was aware of the distinctive difference between there and the gothamite land of NYC I did not fully appreciate the fundamental different nature of government in New England. This is, afterall, the 'nation' whose conservative republicans created Obamacare (then known as Romneycare). As much as America has become homogenized thanks to Wal-Mart and its ilk, there still exists some elementary differences that makes my head spin.

Just thought about locks (closing soon) and remembered the discussion from a dozen or two pages back. Does anyone have an experience with / opinions on Smart Locks? Was considering that as an option to simplify things when having house guests / etc.

I think anything other than purely mechanical deadbolt / latch counts as a smart lock. Definitely want something that has a mechanical component as the last thing you want is getting locked out of the house after the EMPs start bursting overhead (or like an ice storm)

a couple i know had their friends (who are architects) design their house. They built it and it's a few years old now --

and it has water damage all over the fucking place and they just had a structural engineer come in and tell them it need a major remodel.

i sense some future strain in that relationship.