Home buying thread

I want NYC to continue to destroy itself so city dwellers keep moving out to Long Island. My house is up 35% in 4 years. We gots the first LIRR express train stop into the city for rush hour. Best selling feature there is.

The house I bought this time last year is supposedly going to be finished in May of this year. This is from the original build estimate of 6-8 months so it will be almost a solid 18 months from getting under contract to completion. Due to the same thing everyone is experiencing. Labor and materials shortage. During this time the unfinished house gained a solid $100k in equity. Given this is the Austin area and things here seem to be way more insane than the rest of Texas but still.

This is in the Leander area of the Austin Metro. I am hoping to rent out my current house that I bought 6 years ago and its almost 3x my purchase price. I tell our social circle what I paid for a house in North Austin (even has an Austin zip code lol) and they find it unbelievable. It was only $190k.

LachiusTZ said:

Land here within 10 miles of town is already at 10k per acre.

And that's in a small town in southeast Missouri.

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$500 an acre or less 20 to 25 years ago in northern MO. 100 acres, a house, and two big ponds for 50K. Crazy times.

Due to the long delays in getting our house built the new interest rate is going to be 3.5% as opposed to 2.7% it would have been if they completed on time.

Rustled.

Lanx said:

wouldn't it have been locked in at 2.7?

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You can't lock that far in advance. 90 days is the max they will do if you pay a premium. We are already 1 year past being under contract.

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Blazin said:

Been a very slow start because of temps but starting to have more activity.

Power company was able to place my pole so I can now get to trenching the 600' down to the house.

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Starting to get stone in for the retention basins. Hoping we can get foundation pour in about two weeks.
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Ground is really muddy as it defrosts.

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What is the latest with your "difficult" neighbor?

Fogel said:

Sounds like you need to bring a slingshot and ball bearings with you on your next trip out

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He needs Eagly.

Closing date pushed back again until the end of June.

Might be over 18 months from purchase to completion at this rate!

Assuming the possibility that Fed moves this year will crater the stock market for a good chunk of the year, would it make more sense to pivot investments into real estate instead of the stock market?

My crypto returns have been anemic for the past few months, I had a few lucky stock trades where I made some money and the last month wiped out almost all my index fund gains. So I havent capitalized much on the boom that happened for the 2nd half of 2021.

The small town I live in is building a multi billion dollar factory a few miles from my house that will bring in 5,000 blue collar union jobs and we have a major military base a few miles away. Housing inventory is real tight here but you can still find 800-1400 sq ft homes from $60K-120K but they go under contract in 2-3 days. My realtor is pretty good though so I usually get a heads up in a day of a property hitting the market. I already have a preapproval letter for $150K to buy another house so I've been thinking about buying 1-2 homes every year as rentals and renting them out to workers and soldiers. I dont know what the max limit would be, but since they pay for themselves, I'm guessing I could go upwards to 10 rentals. I would put them all under a LLC and hire a property management company to deal with all the tenant issues. Rent prices here would be 25-50% higher than what the mortgage payment would be. Issue of rent moratoriums didn't affect KY that much and having some soldiers as tenants mitigates some of that risk I think. Real estate here appreciates at a decent clip. I am doing a refi on my house right now and my house was appraised at 5% more since I bought it 8 months ago, though I think that was a lowball. My mortgage company was expecting a 10% increase in appraisal.

I've talked to a lot of locals and people who owned rentals before. Everyone says its a good idea but I'm still wary because it feels too good to be true. I can't really think of any major drawback here.

What are some of the concerns or issues would you guys have with this? I never really dabbled in real estate but it seems like a safer long term bet.