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(former)FormerSanDiegan
Participant[quote=SK in CV]Don’t take amature advice. Much of it is wrong, stupid, worthless, costly or dangerous.[/quote]
Isn’t the suggestion above amateur advice ?
10 If I take your advice it tells me not to take your advice. Then again, if I don’t take your advice, it doesn’t tell me not to take your advice, so I guess it’s safe to take it.
20 GOTO 10
Participantsdsurfer – I think that’s a great idea for a new thread. I’ve never owned a condo (as a rental or primary), but have owned two different SFRs that we held as rentals (still have one of them).
My main concern for avoiding condos is control. For the house, we can defer maintenance to soem extent and do remodeling or upgrades as we see fit over time. We are the decision-makers. In a condo, I am afraid of losing control over portions of the finances with regard to the proprty maintenance and repairs.
I guess if there were a situaiton which results in a premium in terms of rent, relative to the costs for the property it might be enough to overcome this (maybe a beach rental or a highly sought after address) but I don’t think condos generally command the rent premium overt a similar priced house to make up the difference in HOAs and lack of control.
ParticipantMaybe you can donate to the Tax Assessor.
It seems to work in LA County
http://www.laweekly.com/2012-04-19/news/john-noguez-los-angeles-county-assessor-scandal/
ParticipantClearly the tenant is right. Just wanted to chime in in case you are counting votes.
ParticipantThe irony is that some folks might consider this thread Off Topic
April 13, 2012 at 2:13 PM in reply to: Peter Schiff: Housing prices will go back to 2000 or lower… #741630ParticipantI like the Coast-to-coast guests when it involves Sasquatch, the chupacabra, ghosts, and Alien abductions a lot more than their guests who talek about the economy. But, my guess would be that they are all essentially equally credible.
April 13, 2012 at 10:16 AM in reply to: Where is the inventory, where is the inventory, where is the inventory… #741611Participant[quote=ocrenter]
The tsunami already came and past, except it didn’t happen everywhere. It came in Vegas, Pheonix, and Florida.
My high school buddy bought an investment home in Queen Creek for 270k because MSM and realtor friend told him about all these baby boom snow birds. The house dropped down to the 50k range and stayed there with the tsunami that hit Pheonix. Ask any one in AZ, LV, and FL about the tsunami, and they will give you some horrific first hand accounts.
Just like real tsunamis, all the pieces have to be there for the tsunami to reach its max impact and cause the devastation. did SD have all of those elements? Absolutely not. But we get the same MSM. So while MSM chase the aweful stories coming out of tsunami central, the rest of us keep thinking we’re up next. Nope, while Phoenix got completely submerged and now homes are essentially the same price as cars, Temecula got some 6 foot waves and knocked the price down to 50%. Meanwhile, SD proper got some swells that managed to bring down prices about 1/3.
Like TG said, the story already happened, now the question is how this thing ends.[/quote]
+1
Well-stated.
ParticipantHe should call her bluff and propose to elope to Vegas and get married. If she still doesn’t sleep with him after they are married, it’s a scam.
BTW, how did they meet on-line ? Was it a real estate site, a dating site or something else ?
Participant[quote=paramount]I’m no tax expert either, and one question I had is can I write off my principal mortgage payment (on rental property) as a loss when the property is both advertised as available and vacant.
My understanding is that the answer is no you can’t write off the principal amount, but you can write off the interest under those circumstances.[/quote]
Mortgage interest is an allowable rental property expense when the property is occupied or available and advertised for occupancy.
ParticipantMLG generally has given reasonable advice. The important point in terms of being able to write off losses against regular income is your AGI. If your AGI is below 100K you’ll be able to use all of your write-offs against current income (up to 25 K in losses, if its more than that you are doing it wrong). The amount you can write-off is reduced by $1 for every $2 your AGI exceeds $100K (single or married, which is bogus). It disappears at AGI of $150k. If you are above (or near) 150K, you will have to carryover any losses.
There is more than one way to use the carryover losses in the future.
1- AS MLG stated … These can be taken when the prooperty is disposed of (sold).
2- These can also be taken against future profits (e.g. you can accumulate losses for a decode or two and capture tax free income in later years when the property ios paid off or rents have grown to the point where you make a paper profit).
Also, I believe that that you can move the losses and cost basis to a different property if you elect to do a 1031 exchange in the future.
The tax benefits are good over the long haul. While tax benefits are a factor in deciding strategically whether property makes sense for you to own long-term, IMHO, taxes are really not that huge of a factor in terms of making a buying decision on specific properties. I would aim for trying to make a small net profit on a cash basis with a low-maintenance property (in my experience this is much like the unicorn or mermaid, somewhat mythical, but it’s worth aiming for). If you aim for a small monthly profit, you’ll still end up with a tax loss due to depreciation anyway and also will probably underestimate long-term repair expenses.
[quote=MLG]
Another important thing to consider. You can only write off the full amount of your “loss” of your Adjusted Gross Income is less than $100,000. You lose a write off amount for every dollar over that you make. If your adjusted gross income is $150,000 or more, you cannot write off any losses on your rental income. The amount of your loss sits in a separate account, and you can only write it off against your capital gains upon sale of the house.[/quote]
Participant[quote=sdduuuude]Considering multiple winners of the same prize is important. When the prize gets bigger, more people play. If the number of people playing doubles, it effectively cuts your expected winnings in half.
Even using the 1/176,000,000 figure, you have to include the probability of sharing the prize in your expected value calculation or it’s a bad calculation.
If your expected value was positive, those running it wouldn’t be able to make any money, now would they ?[/quote]
The expected value over time is not positive. It is considerably less than 1 (something like .4 or .5 since half the income from lotteries are paid out in prizes_). However, the expected value for any given drawing, may occasionally be positive on rare occasions.
ParticipantAs to investing in a company that aggregates investor pools to rehab aparments …
Who regulates this investment ?
I assume this is probably a privately-held joint venture of some sort. Maybe a lmited partnership.
Before going down that road, I would want to be more educated in real estate, finance, liability, and the mechanics and pitfalls of various forms of partnerships.Investing in a single company like this can be risky. Personally I think it’s less risky to invest in regulated financial instruments (e.g. funds and ETFs) that trade on the stock exchange or purchaing individual properties myself.
ParticipantThere are tax advantages to owning real estate outside an IRA.
I think the only reason people consider owning RE inside an IRA is when they do not have enough cash outside their IRA to do it.
Inside the IRA if you want to diversify into real estate use REITS or Real estate ETFs. Consider the Rental REIT index ETF: REZ. It maybe a bit overpriced as it has had a nice run the past couple of years. But, it pays a reasonable dividend and will presumably grow as rents grow.
Participant[quote=bearishgurl][quote=FormerSanDiegan]…If you completely ignore shadow inventory and simply look at prices, inventory and fundamentals I think you are better off.[/quote]
I think we’re all trying to do this, FSD, but the drag of “shadow inventory” (that shouldn’t even be there at this late date) is insidiously artificially undervaluing many markets by trickling out below market short-sale closings. It is THESE closings that are ruining the comps for those homeowners who “played by the rules.”
[/quote]
As far as I know there is no way to know or measure the “drag” of shadow inventory and whether iit is artificially undervaluing anything (insidiously or otherwise).
However, if the presence of short sales does impact the market that at least has a chance to be measurable.
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