Buy a home or keep renting?

E-Unit · 3 days

Don't give financial advice unless you can back it up with logic/facts. If someone follows your advice they could be leaving a ton on the table.

E-Unit · 3 days

You may not understand finance if you're making absolute statements like "I'd pay it off in 10 years" or "I'd put down 30%". Like I said, it's technically incorrect to pay off your mortgage early or pay more than 20% on your down payment if you can beat 4% elsewhere. Beating 4% isn't that hard. If you think the markets won't provide as much return going forward, that's a wild and uneducated guess that may cause you to miss out on a lot. I think it's true that housing prices won't do much beyond beating inflation (according to that super long term, inflation-adjusted chart of housing prices that's floating around), but you have no basis for your other statement other than unquantified "feelings". The fact is the market has historically gotten 9-10% since 1900, and even if that gets cut in half, you're STILL beating your housing interest rate because interest rates are so low right now.

99trumpets · 4 days

I said this in another reply, but the massive hole in your calculation is not adjusting the house's value for inflation.

Assume it's still worth exactly what I paid in principal, $300,000, 15 years later.

This is a ridiculous assumption to make. Assuming your home keeps up with inflation, it will be worth $100-160k more after 15 years.

Also...

I am realizing that the keys to making this work are going to be steady rental income, locking in a <4% interest rate, and truly being able to pay the place off quickly by socking lots of extra toward principal.

It's quite simple: if you can make more than your interest rate elsewhere, you should put the money there instead of paying down your principle. You're already assuming you can make 5%, so by that logic you should never be paying extra on your principal, and you should be going with a 30 year not a 15 year mortgage.

If interest rates were still like 15% like in the 80s then yes, you should be paying that house down ASAP... But not today...

99trumpets · 4 days

In your comparison of the two scenarios, you seem to be missing a few key things...

So in the end, contrast your options. By renting, you would have had a place to live for 30 years and have more almost a quarter of a million dollars. By buying, you would have a house worth who-knows how much (but hopefully worth more than the $611,000 you have spent on it) and no money in the bank.

It's reasonable to say that by renting you stay more liquid, both situationally and financially. This is a pro of renting. However, it's NOT reasonable to say that buying a house is a poor investment OVER A 30 YEAR PERIOD. You reference that chart of real estate prices over time, but keep in mind those are inflation-adjusted prices. We can pretty reasonably assume that the housing market will keep up with inflation, and likely surpass it -- but maybe not by much. If you assume that the housing market KEEPS UP WITH INFLATION (conservatively assume ~2%/yr), the house will be worth $543,408 after 30 years. Sure you won't have "cash in the bank" as you put it, but that is easily remedied by selling the house, because after all, it is an asset. In fact, you'd have around $540k in the bank compared to $220k if you had rented all along and invested the savings at 5%. This is assuming the money in your renting scenario wasn't already inflation adjusted.

If you are wondering whether it is a good investment, there are plenty of rent vs own calculators out there where you can plug in your numbers and have it tell you how long you need to stay in the home (at a minimum) for the home to be a better financial decision.

I think in the end it comes down to 1) lifestyle 2) can you afford it comfortably and 3) will you be there long enough for it to be a net positive decision?

E-Unit · 4 days

Solid advice. Don't ever buy a house unless you are nearly certain you'll still be living in it five years from now.

E-Unit · 4 days

Why are you in a rush to pay off a mortgage with rates this low? They should get a 30 year, and they'll always have the option to pay down the principle early should they really desire to. If they can get >4% return elsewhere, the money is better off invested somewhere.

I can't argue with the fact that they shouldn't get a house until they can AFFORD the 15 year, and also a full 20% down payment.

Im_ur_huckleberry · 4 days

These are very comfortable. The color on mine (light blue) have faded quite a bit where I sleep on them though. These probably need to be replaced more often to stay looking nice.

Inukami · 10 days

Look for Denons 30-40% off retail right now, because the new 2013 models are coming.

Acknown3 · 10 days

No advantage to a GPU then, if your APU/CPU can handily play blu-rays.
Great
I say GPU because you are outputting an HDMI signal to your receiver, which combines video and audio. Expensive sound cards are good at putting out analog audio streams directly to your receiver, which is great for music. For movies, in practice, unless you have a kick-ass soundcard with 7.1 analog outs (unlikely) and a receiver that accepts 7.1 analog ins (unlikely, unless you have a mid-to-high-end receiver), you're going to want your receiver to do the audio decoding. To accomplish this you need to pass the undecoded audio signal to your receiver on the HDMI signal. The video card / gpu is what's in charge of the HDMI output.
It's $1300 if you look hard enough. $2,100 is retail. I can't give you a recommendation for lower than that because I only know the price range I've been researching for myself, but AVSforum and AVforums will be able to give you a good answer.

Acknown3 · 11 days

Confirmed, after going on Amazon and doing the usual filters.

Acknown3 · 11 days

Decide up front if you need to play newer games on this machine. If not, make sure your HTPC has an APU. Some of the AMD ones are great. These combine the GPU and CPU into one chip, and are plenty powerful enough for blu-ray, way lower power consumption and also run cooler (and thus in my opinion, are more stable).
Screw the TV tuner. If you're enough of a techie to buy an HTPC, you're enough of a techie to set up Sickbeard and Usenet with XBMC, a combination which blows cable out of the water in terms of user experience.
If you want to take advantage of the high-def sound formats on a blu-ray and bitstream the raw sound signal to your receiver for decoding, make sure your GPU or APU supports this. It's not a given that it will.
Someone mentioned that Denon receivers are on clearance now in prep for the 2013 models. This is true, and there are some great deals to be had right now 40% off MSRP. Make sure the one you get has the Audyssey XT32 room correction chip (like the AVR-4311CI), which in many cases will help your system sound way better, depending on the room. Research XT32 and you will find tons of people on AVSforum and AVforums singing their praises. This is one of the top reasons to get a Denon (or an Onkyo).

atomic_hombre · 11 days

My baseball coach in high school actually promoted peeing in the shower, if you do it on your feet, because urea is antimicrobial and it can help cure/prevent athlete's foot. Some quick Googling seems to have busted this myth (not enough urea, not enough time in contact with the foot), but to be honest, does anyone really care? It was a rationalization anyway. There are plenty more where that came from!

I_have_no_spoon · 12 days

For that price range you can get a receiver with proper room correction. Look for Denons or Onkyos with Audyssey XT32 or also the Anthem MRX 500/700. Pioneer's MCACC algorithm is decent too but doesn't take into account subwoofers for some odd reason.

DesertRain · 16 days

For my purposes, I don't need all of the 1gbps, but I know I need more than 100mbps. I will be streaming blu-ray discs from a media server to various locations in the house. I've been told that 100mbps won't cut it.

whattodowhattodosigh · 18 days

I said someone who doesn't know what TC is.

whattodowhattodosigh · 19 days

Read what I said again. I'm not saying that there aren't brilliant .NET programmers out there or even that HTML5 is better. But there's something to be said for being up to speed on the latest developments in your industry, even if you've chosen to specialize in C++ or .NET. Would you go to a doctor that hadn't picked up a research paper in ten years? Hell no. They may be great at what they do but you can't expect them to form all the connections that someone more informed would. Their toolset is incomplete.

There's plenty of work for people like that in academia and big corporate, but I'm simply saying that the type of individual who is best positioned to thrive in a startup (read: a company where agility is valued highly and people have to wear more than one hat) is the type of person who is at least AWARE of what the heck is going on in their industry so they can form those connections.

At my company (can't really call ourselves a startup as we've been around for 4 years), one question that always gets asked to entry-level candidates in the interviewing process is what sites do they get their news from online. Now, blogs on the whole are by no means a great or reliable resource, but it's a red flag when somebody who is in tech doesn't read any tech news at all. It shows a lack of passion.

whattodowhattodosigh · 19 days

I was at a business plan competition recently at my school, and it seems that the professors in these programs must be perpetuating a lot of this bullshit. Whenever a team would put up their financials slide, my eyes rolled all the way back into my head. Everyone seems to expect hockey-stick revenue in just a few years using "conservative" estimates.

whattodowhattodosigh · 19 days

Pithy remarks aside, the truth is if they don't at least know what TC is, they probably also don't know what node.js, html5, github, reddit, or Chrome are. They probably exist in a Microsoft bubble.

PoseidonsDick · 21 days

Also make sure you research your Crossfit gym first... They are only as good as the trainers.

DrJulianBashir · 1 month

My parents always have issues on their Comcast cable where Showtime drops in and out. The picture will freeze for 5-10 seconds and then kick back in. They say it ONLY happens on Showtime. Could this have something to do with DRM?

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