hintklb

SF is the poster child of a HCOL where buying makes absolutely no sense.

Even if rent increases a lot, the buy to rent ratio is so horrible that it could continue to increase for MANY more years before buying could make sense.

I invite you to use the NYT Rent or buy calculator, It is clear as day: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html

I don't know if I agree. On average renting a room out of your place is the same as buying a place as a rental investment with the difference you can claim you live there (which gives you some small tax advantage).

In general, real estate rental investment are terrible subpar investment. How would this be different?

This is the argument that buying a house serves as a subpar, forced investment for most people.

But I don't know if I agree with you, I understood in my twenties that housing was generally a bad investment. We are now 10 years later and I invested everything in the stock market instead and came way ... way ahead than if I bough one or more houses.

I personally find it way way more scary to buy an average 2M$ house that could crash and lose half of its value overnight than the whole American economy that is relatively diversified. What happens if there is a fire in your neighborhood? Or if your city is the next Detroit? We have been made to believe a house is a safe investment. I personally think it's the scariest least diversified investment you could ever make.

Because the mortgage and the rent are completely different numbers.

The rent is the maximum you will ever pay for that period. The mortgage is the minimum you will pay and doesn't include the downpayment, repairs, HOA, Insurance and tax increases. It also doesn't include the closing costs, realtor costs, all the fees.

This is why the math is so complex. People easily forget all those fees and costs to make the math look simple.

This also takes into account that you invest into the US market and equity with all the cash that you would have had to spend on your house.

I'm talking about the US, but this holds true in multiple countries.

To answer your last question: In almost all HCOL (SF, Seattle, ...) you would have been way better renting than buying, except if you time it perfectly. If you look at today's market you would almost definitely be better renting than buying (But nobody knows the future...)

You are exactly right and I will add this to my post.

This calculator get most things right. As an exercise, you can try to retroactively put the numbers for the house you bought and the rent equivalent. The results might surprise you: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html

I live in the US and I'm aware of this. Those tax deductible interest should be calculated in the complex buy vs rent equation.

In fact, even when taking them into account, it still doesn't make sense for most Americans to own. (In today's market).

Renting and investing is still the way to go for at least 75% of Americans (this is slightly more nuanced for low cost of living areas, but hold true for any MCOL or HCOL areas).

Eventually the math could make sense again, but right now owning is a huge luxury that will cost you millions in the long run.

I invite you to play with this calculator: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html

Realizing that buying a house is absolutely not a good investment and that the whole society is on a narrative to convince more and more people to blindly buy (realtors, lenders, other homeowners, the governments, parents,...)

Doing the real math is the trick of the trade. The math for owning has been made so that it looks like a good deal while in reality it is not at all. Most people will literally compare mortgage to their rent, or "I sold my house I bought for 500k for 1M$, therefore I made 500k$".

Treat owning as a luxury item. The same way you would own a sport car or travel on a private jet. Do the (real) math and realize Owning is costing you money.

Also don't let yourself get emotional about buying a house. Society has made it look as if buying a house was a proof of success. A lot of research shows that once people buy they lose flexibility, feel more stuck, cannot access higher paying job in a different places etc. Renting has a ton of advantages.

This calculator get most things right. As an exercise, you can try to retroactively put the numbers for the house you bought and the rent equivalent. The results might surprise you: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html

Understanding the concept of Opportunity Cost and how it applies to everything in life.

- Buying a house: Is this the best return I can get on a downpayment. (Spoiler: It is not).

- Accepting a specific job offer: Is this the best way to spend 8 hours a day?

- Not making a successful trade, is as much as a loss than losing money explicitely on a trade.

- If you own something, you should consider what could you do with it's cash value if you sold it instead.

- If you have a paid off home, could you sell it and get a better ROI with the cash equivalent and rent instead? (The answer is yes and you should do it).

it's called renting.

Americans are obsessed with owning a home at all cost. This means that you are effectively bidding against people that do not even do the math. They are ready to spend Millions of dollar on something that is comparatively cheap to rent.

The fact that absolutely everyone wants to buy pushed prices through the roof. The good news is that you can take the other side of this bet. it's called renting.

Currently in most places in the US you will save literally millions over the 30 year mortgage by renting and investing in the market instead.

Reminder that renting and owning is functionally almost exactly the same thing.

Never trust your realtor and never trust other homeowner that most of the time never did the math (We all know those people: "I bought my home for 500k 15 years ago. It is now worth 1M$, therefore I made 500k$").

In other words, let other people take the irrational side of this bet and take the rational side by renting. It's an arbitrage opportunity.

I tried to stay spontaneous and being able to do things on a whim. But most of my friends focused on partner/work/kids with the infamous 3 month in advance fully booked calendar.

At some point you have almost no other choice than give up and self-realize as well and become that person as well. Simply because everyone else gave up. I think it is sad

I never even understood why people even think Airbnb is a tech company.

They basically operate a pretty simple website. Most of their busines is about arbitrating issues when they come. This has nothing to do with tech.

I would bet that United Airlines or American Airlines website handles way more queries than Airbnb.

But for some reason they managed to market themselves as a "design driven" "Tech company".

Surprised to hear this because I had a very weird experience on my last stay. (and it will always be last as I will never stay at an Airbnb again).

Airbnb sided with the Host for some fabricated damages because the host was mad we told them the place was unclean. They put the burden of proof on us to prove we didn't destroy one of the sinks. Absolutely ridiculous.

We had to fight it for 3+ hours on the phone and message and start a chargeback and only then did support drop the fabricated charge.

And to top all of this, Airbnb deleted our bad review from that place (but left the review of the host).

So, never, absolutely never again. Too bad because I was spending 2k+$ on Airbnb before that incident and only got great reviews from other hosts.

Funnily enough I went through something similar 3 weeks ago at an Airbnb in France.

The host retaliated because we had the audacity to tell her that the place was unclean when we checked in. She claimed 2000$ of fabricated damage and as you Airbnb sided with the host initially.

It's only because I lost 3 hours of my time with support and took a thousands of screenshot from our Messages that I got them to drop that charge.

I also issued a Chargeback with my credit card for the dirty place.

But yeah, this is done for me as well. I had 20+ stays but I will never , absolutely never use them again. My time is worth something and this Airbnb destroyed our holiday and took way too much of my time to handle.

Use booking.com for discovering hotels then book direct. Never had issues doing that

had the same experience with a wildcard host that went absolutely full lying during our stay just because we told her that the place was not really clean.

She went full damage on us as a revenge. Trying to charge us 2000$ for fabricated damage. Airbnb Support tried to stand on her side asking us if we "had proof we didn't do it". I was on holiday. I didn't think about taking every single object in high definition picture.

We had to spend 3+ hours on the phone and by message to have Airbnb "drop" that 2000$ charge.

Never again. Not worth the time. Airbnb is great when it goes well. But you have too many bad hosts that ruin it for everyone. And when it goes bad it goes really bad.

My advice to everyone is to never book an Airbnb if you value your time and sanity.

After a couple OK stays I had an absolutely horrible experience. The place was super dirty and the shower was clogged. The hosts tried to play nice and made us stay even though they didn't do the cleaning (Our fault I guess but when you are tired and already there you just want to move on and forget about the incident).

After the stay they became dishonest and lied to Support, tried to make us pay more. Support sided with the Host and even deleted our bad review of the place.

And the final nail in the coffin is that by deleting our bad review the host was able to get to Superhost status.

That stay destroyed our holidays. We then had to spend multiple hours on the phone and by message with support to defend ourselves. Ultimately they manage to leave a misleading review for us that we couldn't delete and Airbnb deleted our review of them.

It was already overpriced but once you account for the time lost when something goes wrong there is absolutely no point to book an Airbnb ever again.

Stay with professional in hotels. Your future you will thank you.

A lot of those catering services get close to free Snacks to fill Tech offices.

Their bet is that you will like them and get used to them and buy them once you get used to them (And I sadly must say that worked on me).

Did they though? No price announced which means it's not even clear if investors and employees were made whole.

No price announced which usually means it is not an amazing outcome.

Employees might not even make anything depending on the strike price.