That sounds like a lot for rent…
I’m not convinced that housing is that great of an investment. Perhaps it is in some markets but not in all markets. It seems that some of you may be forgetting that if you took that equity in your home in cash, that could instead be invested elsewhere. Housing also is inflexible and risky. If you have to move after not too long, there’s high chance you lose money due to the transaction costs. Real estate markets can raise and fall a lot, they’re highly variant.
Mcat, I make sure they have a great time when they visit me. There will be repeat. 
I have just counted: We have moved 15 times in the past 32 years (in quite a many states.) Almost once every other years! No wonder we have not paid off our mortgage yet (it did not help that we refinanced several times even when we stayed put.)
Luckily, when our S was in school, we lived in two school districts only. We moved like gypsies every year or even multiple times a year, before our child was born. (I guess my S will likely move quite many times in the next 5 to 7 years, if what BDM, BlueDevilMike who was a CCer in the past, said before is right.)
When I myself grew up, I had moved 6 times before I graduated from college. Then maybe 7 times in the first half a decade after graduation. I had moved 13 times, before I was not 30 yo yet.
So, I have moved 15+13 = 28 times in my life. Ouch. No wonder I could not afford to stay at the same place for too long.
Somehow I feel that an adult in a certain range of ages, say, from 23 yo to 33 yo tends to move more frequently.
Note that the word “gypsies” actually refers to an ethnic group (Romany or Romani), and is sometimes considered derogatory, although some in the US do not know the ethnic meaning and use it to refer to any migrant.
Ouch. I just did something wrong here. Thanks for the correction. I apologize for my mistake here.
My family moved often when I was young as my dad moved up the ladder with his employer. I hated it, especially as I got older. DH and I have moved exactly once in 30 years of marriage. We bought our home BK, in a good neighborhood and a good school district - in Silicon Valley. It has far outpaced any other investment we’ve made and someday will likely provide $$ for DS and DD to make down payments on their homes. So, I’d say more blessing than burden.
Silicon Valley seems to be the place but I’ve heard from my cousin that her neighbor bought and owned 20 houses at one time and did go bankrupt during the housing bubble.
If you think you are going to move or your job is not safe , dont buy anything , renting is more flexible. The 12 years we were in Silicon Valley, we rented 4 years in three different places before settling to one area. We had several attempts at buying a house but none of that worked out. I liked more land and almost bought a house with half an acre, it’s almost my dream land(not dream home), but it didn’t happened. It’s fate. I ended buying a different place with smaller land because of the easier commute to my work place.
One if my friends owns 4 houses, two of them in California (one in Silicon Valley.) I think for all the houses he has bought, he kept them. That is, he has never sold any house he bought. (It is surprising that he could get mortgage loans for one house after another – he said he mostly relies on loans to buy houses. Who would loan so much money to him?!)
This is not so surprising to me until I am told that this friend’s household has always had one income which is just above average as he has never been a manager. Also, he has never been “working at the right place at the right time”, meaning that he happened to be at a company which gave him a significant number of shares in stock options. He did not invest much in stock market either. What is unknown is that how much he has paid for these houses.
But still, it is quite impressive for a single income family to own four houses and two of the houses are at major cities on the coast.
He is the most frugal person I have ever met though. $3 to $4 for a lunch meal (like a large slice of pizza) is already too expensive for him! All of his children attended public colleges (BS or BA degree only.) When his children bought their own houses, he did not need to help them financially either. All of his children got married only after their careers had been quite established so they mostly funded their own wedding.
Re: #67
It does not seem too surprising – houses bought with loans are highly leveraged, so the gains could be quite large (but so could the losses). Also, frugality can make a big difference in how much income one needs to live on. I.e. the frugal one is probably not going to be complaining about his/her budget being overstretched on an income of $200,000 per year.
First…how would you know this? Your son hasn’t even finished med school yet…never mind his residencies.
@mcat2 what would be affordable to you if you relocate…again? Would you sell the house you currently own and use the equity to buy another home? Would you rent again? How much do you want to spend on housing per month…and if you say $400, you need to have a significant down payment in many markets.
@mominva, I would love to do something like this (even though I don’t work in an ER), but I’m having trouble persuading my husband. He’s used to the space in a house and would have trouble confining his many hobbies to a single room in a condo. But I dream of no yard work, no snow removal, a smaller area to keep clean, and easier access to mass transit.
@thumper, $400/month housing cost.is unrealistically low for us considering the kind of cities we like to live. That kind of housing cost only exists in my pipe dream.
I think that, after we retire, $1200-$1300 a month may be our targeted range of housing expenses, hopefully still in the same city where our house is at but we are open to the idea of living in another city in the South West or in the Deep South (if I understand what it means by the Deep South by now. LOL) – but not in California. (Our house is leased more than that right now, due to the fact that there are more job opportunity in the city our house is at and the house is in a good school district in that city.)
We really love our house but we think we can not afford to live there – it is also too large for us. However, if we are unable to lease it or we hate to be a landlord in the future, we may move back to our house.
My S told us it is unlikely for him to move to where we may live in the South West. Ironically, he thinks the place where we are living now (bay area) is not bad but we know we will move out of this insanely expensive area after we retire.
Mcat, I sat next to a woman who owned a big house in South Carolina in a plane ride recently. When she retired she sold the house and is now renting an apartment in California. She just want to be with her family as she was getting older, 68, nothing mattered to her except to be close to her family and be surrounded by shops and restaurants of her liking,
I am totally open to the idea of renting an apartment. However, I think my wife does not like that idea. Actually, I am also open to the idea of moving to another lower COL country but I need to move there by myself because she is totally against this idea. So this is not an option.
“We really love our house but we think we can not afford to live there – it is also too large for us. However, if we are unable to lease it or we hate to be a landlord in the future, we may move back to our house.”
Why not just sell that house?
Mcat…aren’t you renting now? Is your wife that miserable? If so, when you retire, why wouldn’t you move back into your house? It’s at your price point, and presumably you bought it for a reason.
Or…sell the house if you don’t plan to live there…and use any equity you built towards purchase of a smaller, more manageable home for your retirement years.
Eventually I think we will sell it. It is hard to explain (to ourselves) why we still try to hold onto it.
Our tenants actually asked our real estate agent to ask us whether we are willing to sell it to them and we said no. (They maintained the yard so well that the house/yard was voted as the Yard of the Month recently! We have never met the tenants ourselves; we only know they are a family of four, and they do not have any pet.)
If you don’t plan to move back to that house…why wouldn’t you at least consider an offer from the current tenants?
We think we could save a couple of hundreds per month by renting a cheaper house/condo in a more rural area (near the same city or even near another city) while renting our better-located house to our current tenants (if they want to continue living there.)
Many families with school age kids love to live in the school district our house is at. (This was why we moved into that area years ago.)
Our mortgage has not been paid off. This is another factor. We also do not invest much (stocks, etc.) So owning a house may help fight the inflation in the long run.
The house is really too large for us – 3 full bathrooms and 5 bedrooms, and only two of us!
S pays a significant portion of his salary to housing costs, more than we are currently paying for us and D’s rent combined. Fortunately, his rental makes his part time job possible, which supplements his income nicely. We are glad we purchased our home and were able to pay off our mortgage before H retired.