Air Plane Buy Lease |

It’s a tough real estate market nowadays in this horrible economic situation we have found ourselves in. Home prices have plunged throughout the country and are still falling in places. For those who bought when the market was overvalued a few years ago, times are especially tough. Mortgages were given to any Tom, Dick or Harry and they had ridiculous terms which left those mortgage holders in a bad way.

I live in California, where the prices of homes five years ago was way above the assessed value and people routinely had buyers with fat checkbooks knocking down their door to get into homes. Unfortunately, I had just moved to Los Angeles, and I needed a place to live. Going with the conventional wisdom of buying is better than renting, I bought property.

I knew I couldn’t afford the place I ended up with. But, they gave me the mortgage so maybe they knew something I didn’t. My house was overpriced and my mortgage was way too pricey and not a good deal at that. I had little equity and no more coming anytime soon. Then, my wife and I had our second daughter and my wife left her job to stay home. We lost her full-time salary and were heading up-creek further without a paddle. We were literally sitting on collapsing furniture with home space heaters at our feet because we couldn’t afford to repair anything when it broke.

Sure enough, the bottom dropped out and the housing market as well as the economy took a nosedive and crashed. Our home value declined, but our mortgage was still the same. We were barely scraping by month-to-month and now we couldn’t even sell and make money. Finally, after a bankruptcy, we decided to become totally free and clear and get rid of our home with a short sale.

Today we rent and are on the path to recovery. We did learn many lessons and had I to do it all again, I would do it very different.

I would buy an income property, something that I could put a renter in that would cover my mortgage. I would buy a slight fixer-upper and spruce it up with some cheap home decor accents and maybe a coat of paint. But, most importantly, I would buy something below my price range, taking the renter into consideration and get a mortgage that earned equity and had a good rate either fixed or with a long arm.

I wouldn’t want to do this again and have to worry about covering mortgage monthly without the income to do it. I would own something with obvious value and not sell until it was a truly decent resale property regardless of the economy.