re: #354 allegro

I won’t buy property again because I learned a big lesson being a homeowner. I’d always been taught that buying a home was an investment for the future what with the equity and all. I sold my home several years before the meltdown and had quite a lot of equity in it but when I stepped back and took a look at it, I saw a huge net loss over the years. The costs of maintenance, replacing the roof, HVAC, pool repairs, new fences, on and on vastly exceeded any “profits” at the time of sales.

If you want a home to enjoy, that’s great. As an investment? I think that’s a pile of crap we’ve been fed.

Depends on when you get in and out of the market really. I have a friend who bought a house in 1998 and sold it 5 years later for nearly double what he paid. He was pretty lucky, but turned out to be a hell of an investment for him.