> No "10k new roof" or "1k new stove" suprises hit you.
New roof costs are pretty much never a surprise. You should know when you buy the house how much life is left in the roof and plan accordingly. If a natural disaster occurs that destroys your roof, insurance will cover it.
Appliance costs? Yeah, they are often surprises. Hard to find reliable appliances any more.
Oh, and it's hard to get a $10K roof these day :-)
> If you are say, saving 50% vs buying, you can put this difference in an index fund. This would over 10 or 20 years potentially give you a LOT of money over buying.
Yeah, I always wondered if I should do this analysis for my house, and I'd be curious on studies on how this would play out in most cases. For me, right from the get go the rent on a comparable house exceeded the monthly interest + tax + insurance (excluding principle). The tax benefits more than paid for all the maintenance costs. So the main questions would be:
1. How much would the down payment be worth in an index fund?
2. How much would the principle payments monthly in an index fund be worth?
I suspect that I'm ahead of the market significantly, what with all the crazy house appreciation (that alone is about 8x my down payment), and rents are quite high - easily increased by over 70% since I bought the house.
New roof costs are pretty much never a surprise. You should know when you buy the house how much life is left in the roof and plan accordingly. If a natural disaster occurs that destroys your roof, insurance will cover it.
Appliance costs? Yeah, they are often surprises. Hard to find reliable appliances any more.
Oh, and it's hard to get a $10K roof these day :-)
> If you are say, saving 50% vs buying, you can put this difference in an index fund. This would over 10 or 20 years potentially give you a LOT of money over buying.
Yeah, I always wondered if I should do this analysis for my house, and I'd be curious on studies on how this would play out in most cases. For me, right from the get go the rent on a comparable house exceeded the monthly interest + tax + insurance (excluding principle). The tax benefits more than paid for all the maintenance costs. So the main questions would be:
1. How much would the down payment be worth in an index fund?
2. How much would the principle payments monthly in an index fund be worth?
I suspect that I'm ahead of the market significantly, what with all the crazy house appreciation (that alone is about 8x my down payment), and rents are quite high - easily increased by over 70% since I bought the house.