也谈买低价房 --和miat42

仔细拜读了miat42的几篇关于在低收入区买房的文章，深有同感，而且自今年初以来我也正是在做同样的事。至今我已买（抢）了8栋SFH，平均6W的买价加修理，月租平均1300多。所以非常同意他的观点，这是一次once in a lifetime opportunity。在上一次交易里，这些房子都是40-50w，现在竟下跌了80-90%。即使涨回过去的一半，也是5倍的appreciation。但我更看重的是cashflow，25-30%的cap rate好的难以想象。所以还得买下去。。。。

为了筹钱买这8栋房子（good deals need cash offer), 我拉出了所有的HEL，卖掉了工作十年以来所有的401K(I'll take 10% penalty, but who cares?)，并用光了所有的积蓄（bank balance only has about $2000 now)，现在只剩下一栋自住的房子，里面还有大约30w的equity，但已经从银行拉不出HEL了。从investment的角度看，我应该卖掉它，因为我每月要为它付$8000的PITI, 但是在我住的区租一个同样的房子只要$4000多。更何况30w拿出来换成5栋出租房，每月还有$6000多的income。但老婆孩子非常喜爱这栋房子和我们住的区，我也是在它身上有很多emotional attachment. 我本人也信奉you take care of your life and the life will take care of you，不是那种为挣钱不顾一切的人。在这个问题上想听听大家的意见。

[加国的枫叶红了]

good for you. thanks for sharing. i have the same tempatation now, however, the opportunities has been a little bit too late, but that is fine. thanks again.

[IntoTheWild]

回复lucky101的评论:

Thank you for your greeting. I'm doing so far so good, learned a lot in the past year, and more importantly I'm still, and actually more and more enjoying what I'm doing.

To update the status of the low-end housing market that I have been investing in, I was surprised to see how fast the market got stabilized and almost all those easy incredible deals have disappeared. During the half a year before I wrote this blog, I grabbed 8 as shown in this article. But in the next one year up to now, I only got 4. Of course, one important reason is I ran out of cash (I didn't sell my house and I'm still living in it happily), so I was more picky and greedy when I made the offer. But the market change is definitely a big reason. I have to admit that if the market kept as good as the upper half of 2009, I would have sold my house. The temptation is just too big to resist (people didn't do any wrong thing just because the temptation has never been fatally big enough, hehe). So far, I have managed to stay with my goal of rent-to-cost ratio larger than 2%, but I can feel it's harder and harder.

So while I'm keeping my eyes on this market, I'm thinking and exploring other markets. Keep posted.

[lucky101]

how is everything going now? I hope you are doing very well. I always admire people who has vision.