Millionaire Mommy Next Door » Real Estate

Do you know how many dollars your spare room is costing you?

Millionaire Mommy Next Door — Thu, 13 May 2010 03:05:28 +0000

Do you have a guest room but few friends? (sorry.) A formal dining room that looks pretty because it rarely sees a crumb? A formal living room that only gets walked through on the way to your home’s hub: the kitchen and family room? Spare rooms… you dust them, vacuum them, furnish them, paint them, fuss over them… but rarely do you LIVE in them.

How many dollars does a spare room cost?

I pondered this question during our walk to our neighborhood park today. Our condo is surrounded by large suburban homes. Each home statistically has an average of 2.5 people living in it. I suppose the poor little 0.5 member is missing a few body parts. Probably from all that excess dusting. I digress. I look at these gigantic homes and wonder how many of their rooms get LIVED in on a daily basis versus how many sit pretty all day long but never see any true love.

So being the environmentally sensitive money gal that I am, I crunched some numbers today to see if I might encourage a few folks to join me in downsizing to a just-the-right-size home.

For those of you that don’t enjoy numbers as much as I do, I’ll get to the punchline pronto:

In my neighborhood, a typical 12′ x 12′ spare room (guest room, formal dining room, whatever) could cost about $350,000 EACH over the course of a 30 year mortgage!

Mommy’s Million Dollar Recipe: Dusty Room Dump-lings

Downsize your home by 432 square feet (three 12′x12′ rooms)
Which will reduce your monthly housing expenses by $530 a month
And invest your monthly savings into a diversified investment portfolio
Yield: Over one million dollars ($1,000,000) in 30 years!

For my fellow number nerds, here’s the assumptions I used for my calculations:

12′ x 12′ = 144 square foot spare room
Typical cost of housing per square foot (in my location) = $150
= $21,600 cost per spare room
@ 5.5% mortgage interest rate for 30 year fixed
= $122.64 month / room in principal and interest cost
+ $18 / month / room in property taxes (1% of value annually)
+ $9 / month / room in homeowner’s insurance (0.5% of value annually)
+ $27 / month / room in allowance for periodic maintenance, repairs, remodeling (1.5% of value annually)
= $176.64 / month / room…
…NOT including extra utility expense or furnishings
+ lost opportunity cost of $176.64 savings invested at 10% long-term compounding average annual return for 30 years (mortgage term)
= $348,692 TOTAL PER SPARE ROOM (x 3 rooms = $1,046,076)

So what do you think? Is this million dollar recipe worth dumping a spare room or three?

Why I’m Waiting Until After 2012 To Buy A Home

Millionaire Mommy Next Door — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 22:07:30 +0000

The real estate and mortgage industries are trying hard to convince us that NOW is a good time to buy a home. They use low mortgage interest rates and the soon to expire First-time Homebuyer Tax Credit program (which I qualify for since I’ve purposely been a renter for the last 6 years) as their rationale.

Don’t expect unbiased advice from salespeople! What most won’t fess up to is that if I (or you) buy a home now, we’ll likely be throwing our precious money away because home prices are still under great pressure. I’ll wait until the knife stops falling, thank you very much.

We are done with subprime resets but… pay attention… there is a second wave of mortgage resets to endure. What is a mortgage reset? It’s when the homeowner, who bought a house with a low “teaser rate” and planned to refinance when the house price went up, gets a new payment that is far higher (not always, but usually). Many homeowners can’t afford these resets, especially with unemployment and underemployment rates at these levels. Lenders are cautious and tightening their underwriting guidelines so refinancing may not even be possible for many borrowers.

The first wave of resets was subprime. The subprime wave is over. Whew! That hurt! But Alt-A and Option ARM resets aren’t over and combined, they represent a much larger category of mortgages than subprime. Most of these mortgages are already underwater: the home has negative equity; the home is worth less than the mortgage owed. The combination of resets plus the underwater status will likely add fuel to defaults and foreclosures, putting yet more downward pressure on home prices.

Some argue that the problem with adjustable rate mortgages resetting to higher payments isn’t as important now because many of those loans defaulted early. Even so, we still face the major problem of shadow inventory: distressed mortgages facing foreclosure and bank-repossessed properties that have not yet reached the market. At the current rate of sales, it could take almost 9 YEARS to sell off all the foreclosed homes in banks’ possession, plus all the homes likely to end up there over the next couple years (according to LPS Applied Analytics).

Another knife that has the potential of slashing home prices further is the increasing prevalence of walkaways (strategic defaults): the decision by the borrower to stop making payments on a mortgage despite having the financial ability to make the payments. Walkaways happen after a substantial drop in the house’s price. The borrower is underwater so she decides to free herself from the burden of mortgage debt. Once free of the mortgage, she is free to use her income for other expenditures. The borrower, after deciding to not make payments any more, can live free of the costs of mortgage payments until the lender forecloses — which may take the lender from several months to years!

A study in September 2009 from the credit reporting agency Experian and consulting outfit Oliver Wyman estimated that close to a fifth of troubled mortgages in the U.S. involved borrowers who were strategically defaulting. While I haven’t looked for a more recent statistic, I can only guess that this number will climb as more homeowners get mad at Wall Street and as walkaways become less morally and ethically charged.

I’ve been told by countless Realtors that I should buy a home NOW because having been a renter for the past 6 years, I qualify for the First-Time Homebuyer’s Tax Credit. But what do you think will happen to house prices once the tax credit incentive expires? I’d say houses will not sell as well as they have lately (with the credit artificially propping the market up) which will increase the supply of homes on the market… and push down on prices.

I’ve also been told by Realtors that I should buy a home NOW because mortgage interest rates are so low. But I don’t worry about rates because I have the cash to purchase our next home outright if the interest rates move up. Even if I did need a loan it wouldn’t change my mind because as Patrick Killelea astutely points out,

It is far better to pay a low price with a high interest rate than a high price with a low interest rate, even if the mortgage payment is the same either way.

Your property taxes will be lower with a low purchase price.

A low price gives you the ability to pay it all off instead of being a debt-slave for the rest of your life.

As interest rates fall from high to low, house prices increase.

Paying a high price now may trap you “under water”, meaning you’ll have a mortgage larger than the value of the house. Then you will not be able to refinance because there you’ll have no equity, and will not be able to sell without a loss. Even if you get a long-term fixed rate mortgage, when rates inevitably go up the value of your property will go down. Paying a low price minimizes your damage.

Additionally, if interest rates rise, the number of borrowers who can qualify for a higher mortgage payment will drop. Less qualified buyers in the market means… you got it… more downward pressure on home prices.

In summary, I see no rational or compelling reason to buy a home right now. 2012 or after? We’ll see!

Note: This post was featured in the most creative Carnival of Personal Finance I’ve ever read — check it out! The Origin of the Piggy Bank by Well-Heeled Blog

Don’t miss anything: Subscribe to receive free email or RSS notifications whenever I publish a new blog post. No spam, no risk, and it is easy to unsubscribe should you ever change your mind. Follow me on Twitter (@MillionMommyND) where I share interesting articles, opinions, quotes, tips and other bite-sized tidbits relevant to success, happiness and financial freedom.

Is The Recession Over? My Gut-Check Impressions on the Future of Our Economy.

Millionaire Mommy Next Door — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 04:34:18 +0000

I’ve been receiving emails lately from people asking questions like:

“Is the stock market experiencing a true recovery or is this just a bear market rally?”
“Do you think we’ll see a V, W, U or L shaped recovery?”
“Should we expect deflation or inflation?”
“When will my house be worth as much as I paid for it?”
“How should I invest my money? Stocks, bonds, cash, real estate, gold, or foreign currencies?”
“Is the recession really over?”

Some are saying that I’m prescient (have knowledge of events before they take place). As much as I wish this were true, it isn’t, I promise. I got out of real estate and stocks before many others simply because I stopped listening to mainstream and acknowledged the writing that was already plastered on the proverbial wall.

Like many of you, I hear and read convincing forecasts made by a variety of so called experts who support opposing arguments and recommendations. And each time, I try like hell to take a step back and take a gut check. What seems to make the most sense to me? Is there evidence to support it and if so, who or what is the source? What emotion am I feeling and what does this emotion “want” me to think? What is the worst thing that can happen if a particular forecast comes true? How can I reduce the risks associated with various outcomes? And last but not least, what decisions will allow me to sleep well at night?

I’m hesitant to share my recession outcome opinions with others for a few reasons: 1) I don’t want anyone to make decisions based on my guesses, 2) Discussion of possible outcomes often turns to politics — and political discussion tends to get overheated, 3) Some might take perverse joy from pointing to this post in the future, with a wagging finger, telling me how wrong my guesses ended up.

But I’ve decided that I’m as entitled to guesstimate forecasts as anyone else, so here it goes, for nothing more than entertainment value and for exposing my potential bias. Normally I provide hyperlinks to information, statistics and educated opinions that support my writing, but not today. If you want to read the news or hear what the “experts” are saying about this stuff, use Google, turn on the boob tube, crank the radio or grab any newspaper. There is no shortage of opinions thrown about. Please come to your own conclusions.

Here are my gut-check guesstimates on the future of the economy:

I think the stock market will climb a bit more, then retest the March lows. Minus some funky blips, I think we’re in for a long “L” shaped recovery; or really, one that looks more like a long bathtub:

(March ’09) /\_____________/ (several years later)

Note: The bottom of my tub diagram should have an overall slow gradual curve to it plus a few wicked and jagged up-down points but I don’t know how to illustrate this with my keyboard. My bathtub edges should look taller, too. If it wasn’t so close to my bedtime, I’d draw you a picture instead…

I think we’ll continue to experience deflationary pressure. I think the Fed will continue to “stimulate” the economy but will face an upward battle trying to make it stick. If and when deflation is curbed, measures will be needed to tighten the money supply to prevent hyperinflation. I think these measures will be taken. From what I understand, it is easier to curb inflation than it is to stop a deflationary spiral.

I think housing prices have further to fall in most areas. Besides the probability of an overcorrection, Baby Boomers are beginning to hit retirement age and because much of their net worth in real estate and stocks has been wiped out, they will be downsizing en masse. McMansions will languish on the market or they’ll be repurposed into multi-family or extended-family units. Commercial property will be hit with a sledgehammer.

I think I will continue to stash most of my cash because with deflation, cash is king. When I do buy ETFs (only the ones that are experiencing upward momentum), I will keep tight stop losses in place. I will take a look at the currency market (certainly not my area of expertise) to see whether or not it’s a good fit for me. Overall, during this extremely volatile market, my main focus is capital preservation. This keeps me sleeping as snug as a bug in a rug.

In this economy, I think one of the best places to invest is in one’s own skills and education. I think vocational schools will see an increase in enrollment while universities see a marked decrease.

Entrepreneurs most likely to succeed will be the ones who bootstrap, sell low-priced necessity items, entertainment or services and keep overhead extremely low. Most of them will operate from in-home offices.

Because I think prices will continue to fall, I will continue to put off large purchases.

And finally, as painful as the process is likely to be, I think the Great Recession will ultimately be the Great Shake Up our society and planet needs to get on the financially and ecologically sustainable track. (Wow, that’s a mouthful.)

Okay, now it’s your turn. What do YOU see in your magic crystal ball? Please share your opinions and guesstimates in the comments. Have fun and play nice.

Relevant Post: Hyperinflation or Prolonged Deflation? Coping and Investing Strategies For Either Scenario