House of the Day: 489 16th Street
It’s not really our cup of tea, but someone’s obviously put a lot of effort into renovating this three-story brick townhouse at 489 16th Street in Windsor Terrace. The look is a little too “new condo trapped inside old house” for us. That said, everything’s new and the location, just a block from the park,…
It’s not really our cup of tea, but someone’s obviously put a lot of effort into renovating this three-story brick townhouse at 489 16th Street in Windsor Terrace. The look is a little too “new condo trapped inside old house” for us. That said, everything’s new and the location, just a block from the park, is very nice. The house was purchased for $925,000 back in 2005 and is now asking $1,595,000. What do you make of it?
489 16th Street [Corcoran] GMAP P*Shark
Standard advice is people within five years of or at retirement age should have their nest egg in treasury bills and cash (insured accounts). Though you can lose money doing this when interest rates are very low.
WOW….brickoven is getting really delusional about himself.
Lechacal – I’m catching up after my seder and saw the good news! You may not be reading this anymore so I’ll try to catch you on some other thread but: congrats!!! Really, nothing could things in perspective more… Great news – Mazel Tov!
denton, we are sure you realize “conservative” is a relative term but to be clear in the past decade of massive economic gains tons of folks considered being in blue chip stocks like Citi, GE, etc & index funds to be quite conservative. As MM has correctly stated above the amount of folks saving in cash and T bills were at the absolute minimum when it came to 401K and pension plans. Anyways no need crying over spilled milk we were just making a counter argument to 11217’s anecdotal “evidence” from her accountant….Ah like the great William Osler once said anecdotal evidence is NOT evidence at all just an incidental finding.
11217 –
Jeesh, who woulda thought asking for some basic info would cause all of that?
I wasn’t expecting you to name him on the blog, sorry, shoulda made that clear. You can drop me a line at my username at gmail, if you want. And I understand if he’s not taking people. I don’t really even need his services right now, but I may in the future. Thanks.
BH – the rent/buy equation for many is not about “it’s always better to rent” or vice versa, but rather that there has to be a rational relationship to the rent/buy costs at any given moment. That’s what the Case-Schiller metric is all about. When it gets as out of whack as it did in NYC, that’s one sign that the sales market is too high. I fully believe in home ownership, having owned for many years. But I cashed out when the market was looking unsustainably high, and I’m not going to get back in until it returns to rational levels (which were not so long ago – certainly 10 years ago they were more rational). In the meantime, I believe strongly that now is a better time to be renting. Why lock in a purchase price that is still much too high when I know that this time next year, it will be less? And because rents are also soft, and given my budget range, the price cuts I’m certain will come will more than offset “lost” money paid in rent, foregone in tax credits, etc.
In the rent vs. buy comparison, I don’t think you can look at just the first year, i.e. the argument “why buy something when you could rent something equivalent for the same price”. When you buy, to some extent you’re locking in you cost for housing for the long term. Your mortgage payment, ex real estate taxes + property insurance, will stay the same for the next 30 years. After 30 years, it will go to $0. If you rent, your cost of housing almost certainly increase every year for 30 years. At 3% inflation, $3,000 per month today will be $4,000+ in 10 years. At 5% inflation, it will be nearly $5,000 in ten years.
Give me a break denton. Pre-crash, many people thought you could be “conservatively” invested with a mix of equities in high quality blue chip companies and well-rated bonds. (I bet you could count on one hand the financial advisors who would have recommended only cash and T-bills). Trust me, you can definitely be down 35% with such a blend.
Also, if you read my original post about destruction of wealth for older generation, I was referring specifically to my family and the families of friends I know. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve been hearing from friends about their parents woes. Sure, I’m sure the 40% of Americans not invested in the stock market may not be fretting over their stock portfolio, but I bet you they feel the economic pain in other ways (unemployment, job security, etc). One reason this economic mess is to difficult to dig ourselves out of is precisely because things are so interrelated, so even people not directly invested in the stock market or having money in the banks in question are affected by the overall problems hurting our economy. I just came back from a seder with a bunch of finance types, and while they think the comparisons to the Great Depression are overblown, they also take this severe recession very seriously, and predict (as do most sources) that recovery will be very slow and painful for many.