也談買低價房 --和miat42

仔細拜讀了miat42的幾篇關於在低收入區買房的文章，深有同感，而且自今年初以來我也正是在做同樣的事。至今我已買（搶）了8棟SFH，平均6W的買價加修理，月租平均1300多。所以非常同意他的觀點，這是一次once in a lifetime opportunity。在上一次交易裏，這些房子都是40-50w，現在竟下跌了80-90%。即使漲回過去的一半，也是5倍的appreciation。但我更看重的是cashflow，25-30%的cap rate好的難以想象。所以還得買下去。。。。

為了籌錢買這8棟房子（good deals need cash offer), 我拉出了所有的HEL，賣掉了工作十年以來所有的401K(I'll take 10% penalty, but who cares?)，並用光了所有的積蓄（bank balance only has about $2000 now)，現在隻剩下一棟自住的房子，裏麵還有大約30w的equity，但已經從銀行拉不出HEL了。從investment的角度看，我應該賣掉它，因為我每月要為它付$8000的PITI, 但是在我住的區租一個同樣的房子隻要$4000多。更何況30w拿出來換成5棟出租房，每月還有$6000多的income。但老婆孩子非常喜愛這棟房子和我們住的區，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，不是那種為掙錢不顧一切的人。在這個問題上想聽聽大家的意見。

[加國的楓葉紅了]

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]

回複lucky101的評論:

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.