All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Camacho

Quote from @Chris Seveney:

@Jonathan Camacho

I would start with owning your own home first so you understand the maintenance, care and cost of home ownership.

Where I disagree with you is thinking home prices will shoot up when rates come down - there is really not a huge correlation as they did not drop substantially when rates went up. The macro issue at play is people make X and can spend 28-38% of income on buying a home. If wages have not gone up significantly how can prices? While there may be a FOMO bump when they get to a certain point rates have dropped for like 9 straight weeks and homes continue to sit longer and have prices come down.

Sorry for being long winded but I recommend owning first

Hello Chris,

Than you for you thoughtful reply. I appreciate the input and I think it would definitely help to see ins and outs of maintaining a property. You make a good point about the rates, my concern is that here in San Diego prices and wages are so decoupled that it is really expensive to buy a house right now, although not impossible, and with good planning I can stay within my budget and not stretch, but any changes or FOMO from other people buying when rates go down would price me out of the market again. My intention was to buy for example during spring or winter of this year, or invest the money in properties out of state at any point considering any other market I can think of is cheaper that California (well you know maybe not NY or DC) since I can only either buy a house here or invest the money elsewhere but not both for now. Thank you again for your reply. I Should also mention we are a military family using a VA loan for our purchase and have about 100K for a downpayment, but also about 200K in stocks I could liquidate. Do you still think it makes more sense to buy here and then invest in other markets? or should I use the capital to hopefully buy a few other properties (I was planning on using the BRRRR method to buy distressed property in another state) and start a portfolio of cash-flow properties? I apologize for the very long reply but I see you are a top rated investor and contributor and I am just starting here and it is difficult to fully explain our situation, so the more insight I could get from you the better. Thank you again!

Quote from @Nicholas L.:

house hack locally

 Hello Nicholas, 

Thank you for your reply. I hav been thinking about that and although it might be a little difficult to do that with 2 kids I think that is definitely a possibility. Do you think It would be better to find a duplex or triplex? or buy a house with an ADU? I think price wise houses in this area are in the same range (a small duplex costs the same as a 3bed 2 bad with an ADU) I understand the types of loans I can get are different and we would be using a VA loan (wife is in the military) for our purchase. Thank you again for your reply.

Jonathan

Hello, 

I was hoping I can get some input from other people on whether or not I should invest in real state in my current situation. I was hoping I can tell you about myself and get some advice. My wife and I currently live in California and are renting a house here. We tried to buy our first home with a VA loan at the beginning of last year but got outbid every time and then rates started going up and we were priced out of the market. We are both professionals and make about 300K a year together. We had about 100K for a downpayment. After we didn't get a house and decided to sit on the sideline I started thinking about using the money we had (plus some that we have saved until now) and buy real state instead, long term rentals to be specific. I have been following BP for a while now, read some books on real state (local and out of state), and thought about my buy box. My question is, since we are renting, would it be better to buy a house now that rates are starting to come down? or should we go for it and make an investment purchase? considering that I think we would have to invest in out of state properties because California is just too expensive, and also, I believe we would have to buy something in this couple of months since when rates come down I believe prices will go up and we will get caught in bidding wars again. I should also mentioned that we have all of our paperwork in order, about 500 dollars a month in debt, and excellent credit scores.

Thank you in advance. I think I would mostly appreciate if I can get input on whether to put all our money to buy our primary residence and use that to buy real state, or just rent for now and use all of our money to buy real state.

Thank you, Jonathan