Anyone here live where it’s worth buying a house?

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Just day dreaming about buying a house somewhere else. Buying one here = ~impossible, as a typical suburban house now costs $1.5M and it’s also difficult to make positive cash flow on rent.

Day dreaming about buying a house in another city (Canada) Or country if it’s a safe transaction. (USA, somewhere else?)

There are a couple old detached houses for sale in Winnipeg for $79k that are already rented. Never know, I might do something like that in the next year or two. Unless there are better markets to buy & rent out in? Would be nice to buy an inexpensive property that’s reasonably well maintained (not a money pit) that has a long term renter already in place that doesn’t want to move.

Aside: On the bright side, I can afford many homes in the Japanese countryside. I read an article that abandoned houses are selling for $500 because there are millions of them the government wants filled. (Aging population is dying, young people are all moving to big cities.) Read that a couple villages in Italy and elsewhere have homes as cheap as 1 Euro just to add people to their dwindling populations.

Last edited by goldfish21 on 20 Dec 2021, 2:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

Decent 2 bedroom terraced houses available in my area of Greater Manchester for £120,000 ($US 158,000). Whether you'd want to live here is a different matter entirely. Not sure I do.

OP, if you were me, you'd realize that your southern neighbor has basically gone crackers and you really should not consider moving down here no matter the finances. you are better off staying up north in your very nice country, still nice despite the neglect of your gov't at present. this said, RE is obviously not as extreme in my neck of the woods as in yours despite the fact that average property values up here and asking prices even for some dodgy places have tripled in a period of about 4 years. house next to me [on an acre of land] was about $60k 4 years ago and now is worth about $300k. ridiculous. it is just a fking old smoky tin can circa 1980s with RV covered parking and large 2-vehicle [two RVs will fit in there] parking outbuilding. the people that live there now ain't budging. but they are old and in mediocre health so i don't give them that much longer. smokers, the lot of them, they are grandparents.

No no no - I have no intentions of moving. Just maybe buying a home somewhere as a rental property, possibly with a contracted property manager if necessary.

Winnipeg example: 79k place, 20% down, mortgage is $338/mo, rented for $900/mo.

It’s not exactly my dream to become a slumlord lol buuut it’s tempting to buy a sub $100k home somewhere else and rent it out if it’s reasonably profitable as it’s next to impossible to own a primary residence or revenue property here unless you have big $.

^^^very likely you will have to travel to the deep south before you find affordable property these days.

Houses are way out of my budget where I live.

i'm glad i don't right now have to buy a house, today's market has lost the plot.

Real estate has went through the roof here in the Ozarks.A crap shack on 50 acres of rough land is on the market near me and it’s going for $500,000.
It’s still reasonable in Mississippi.

They got any shacks on 1 acre for 10 grand rented out for $400/mo?

Or maybe a place in Detroit or Chiraq?

Not interested in Florida swamp land - that isht will be underwater in my lifetime.

Meanwhile, house values in Vancouver are projected to rise 12% next year to an average price of $1.9M.

Hence the day dreaming about buying something somewhere else where I can easily come up with the down payment and get approved for the mortgage or two.

I’d be okay with being a good landlord in a stable market where some locals just simply can’t afford to buy. I’d feel scummy if I waltzed into some affordable neighborhood, jacked up the price of housing & rent and was hated by the locals for doing it - not my style. Probably why I’ll never be a real estate tycoon, but I’m okay with that.

You won’t find a usable acre here for that cheap.Small acreage is hard to find and always pricey.Especially if utilities are available.
No swamps here in the Ozarks.

You can have my house for a cool million, and likely rent it for $4K / month.

Work needed: New windows.

Everything else is maintained.

Not worth it. $1M mortgage = $4800-4900/mo pmt + property taxes etc. Also, one would have to have a minimum $200k down payment. An 800k mortgage would be $3900/mo. Still not worth it as a revenue property since whoever bought it would be upside down on it every month. Definitely not an example of a home worth buying from a purely investment point of view UNLESS someone wasn’t banking on cash flow and only speculating that it will appreciate significantly in price - $1.5, 2M etc.

Whereas the low dough slumlord option of buying an $80k house that’s rented out for $900/mo, even the entire amount mortgaged is only $380/mo. So from day one you’re on the black $520/mo, which allows for maintenance/repairs and a bit of positive cash flow ROI.

If over the years I were to buy 5-6 of these I could have $2500-3k/mo coming in on top of employment and other investment income, which on the scale of my wealth and wants is quite a lot of money for other goals and eventual retirement. Sure, Some people I know make tens of thousands of dollars/month and would never piss around with 5-6 properties to make a couple grand a month, but I’m nowhere near being levelled up to their scale of income tax brackets And don’t have a super high dollar lifestyle nor expectations. If I made some moves that yielded an extra 2.5-3k/month ~forever, I’d be pretty ecstatic about it as it’d be enough money To Me to free my time to pursue other things and not have the basic financial pressures of how I was going to pay for food/clothing/shelter/medicine etc.

Other folks seem to have figured out how to generate FAR more wealth & have an abundance of funds to buy six figure toys and vacation around the world whenever they feel like. Ok cool, more power to ‘em I guess.. but if I can get myself up a level or three from where I’m at I’ll be quite content.

I'm selling a one bedroom flat in the summer. Not sure of the list price yet.

In scenic areas you make more renting out as a vacation rental.
Places here book solid during the tourist season.

That’s a part of why we’re the second least affordable real estate market In The World - only behind Hong Kong.

It’s very scenic here and tons of locals have been evicted in order for owners to Airbnb places, often illegally as there are local rules about length of stays and licences/permits etc.

Then there are some doing it on a different scale.. I know one guy who moved out of his place for a couple weeks and into his parents place because he rented his house out for 14 nights for $20k or something like that. Obvi he has a $$$$$ house. (Family business = property development, mostly low rise condos.)