She died of cancer and was still young to me. And here husband still has the house.

James

If I was single I would try to find a small house to make a sweet pad out of. I know there was some small houses around here at different times that were cheap. They could be $450 a month if you had a long mortgage. Going that way and investing money would work. I know that isn't possible everywhere.

James

I SAID it's $1200/month fucking total. Do you understand what that means? Plus, I get closer to $900 with a $2,000/year property tax and insurance. Whatever, I've owned two residences, one was a house and the other was a condo... I bought the condo for about $60k and my payment was more than $700 without the property tax. Don't talk to me like I'm a kid or something. There isn't anywhere in this country that you can buy a $100,000 house, put no money down and pay $536/month...that's just stupid. Regardless, I'm done, I have my point of view and you all have yours. To be honest, I just like to argue but I honestly believe what I'm saying...if you keep to the criteria that is...

I'm sure there are many ways to work this scenario but I don't believe that it's any more the norm than my situation. It's all good amigo. Call me in 30 years and we'll see where we sit...

Oh, you said fucking total? Got it.

Now that we've got the obvious out of the way, I was just trying to understand where the other $700 came from when compared to the renter.

Ok, so $530 mortgage, $50 insurance. And $320/month in taxes? :?:

Condos have association fees, too. They can be substantial and probably helped boost your payment over $700/month. Because there's no way you were paying that on a $60k loan unless you bought it in the 80's with double-digit interest rates.

Stop acting like one. :P All I pointed out was a miscalculation causing a major skew in your comparison.

That's the payment on a 100k loan at 5%. That may not be ALL you have to pay to live in a house, but I can assure you taxes and insurance aren't going to more than double the payment to $1200.

As long as you leave out all the facts? Got it.

I was gonna say something...........$1,200/mo on a $100K house? What kind of credit rating did you have that got you those rates? :lol: Or was this back in the 70's/early 80's :lol:

Dude... you're right, I don't know what I was thinking. It's much better to buy a house, even if you're single. I was looking at it totally wrong and my figures were way off! Oh well, you win some and you lose some.

80s for the house.

That's actually not what I was trying to tell you.

That's all I was trying to tell you.

Brutal time to buy a house. You must've been doing something right to even qualify, though.

Um, actually, that's right, if you have a 5% mortgage. However, if you put zero down and buy a 100k house, you're probably looking at somewhere between 6 and 6.5%. If you want to figure things on the high side, that would put the payment at $632 over a 30 year mortgage. http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/...alculator.aspx
Now, let's add in taxes at $2k per year (which is about 1k too high for my area, but whatever) and you're payment is now $799. Add outrageous insurance of another $2k/year to the mix, and your payment would be 964. In my area, insurance shouldn't be over $1200 a year (which is still pretty high) and prop taxes shouldn't be over 1k a year.

My biggest problem with your argument is that you're comparing a $500/month "small" apartment to a $100k house. Now, I don't live in your area, but I'd be willing to bet a guy could find a suitable house for closer to 60 or 70k if he's single and has no kids. I mean, why spend $100k on a house if you don't need that big of a house? I paid $55k for my house, including ALL closing costs and VA loan origination fee. I put zero down. My payment is $360/month for mortgage alone. Add in property taxes AND insurance and my payment jumps up to a whopping $436 a month. And that's at 6 7/8% because I bought at the wrong time and took out 100% loan (which is why I'm paying $500 every month to pay it off faster). My house is 1000 sq. ft. upstairs with an 800 sq. ft. basement. How big is your apartment? Like I said in an earlier post, a similar sized apartment (1k sq. ft.) with a garage (minus the basement) would cost me $615 per month around here, and that's actually on the low side.

A buddy of mine and his wife rent a house slightly smaller than mine (it's about 900 sq. ft.), but they don't have a garage, don't have a basement, have a smaller yard, are in a slightly bad area of town and have to park on the street. Oh, they also rent from his wife's dad. They pay $300 a month, plus utilities (which are higher than my house utils), and they have to provide their own stove and fridge. At the end of it all, who do you think honestly comes out ahead? Me, or them? Oh, and to top it off, there is a house about a block away from them that looks VERY similar to theirs and is listed at $15k. That's right, I said fifteen. It doesn't look like a dump from the outside, but who knows what's on the inside. Yeah, it's not relevant to the argument, but just showing you the area they live in.

You want to "stick with the facts" but you're comparing apples to oranges. But, maybe you're just doing it because you want to argue. I'm just pointing out the flaws in your arguments. ;)

perhaps you missed my last post... YOU GUYS ARE RIGHT AND I AM WRONG!!!