Poll: Compare value of your residence to investment portfolio

[samclem]

But, don't ever think that owning a house is "free." Cost effective perhaps but, never, ever free.

Yep. One argument for paying off a mortgage is "I wanted to be secure that I could never lose my house. Now I can sleep at night" My RE taxes are hundreds per month for our modest house in a modestly-taxed area. When I see all the homes in the "tax lien auctions" section of our newspaper, I wonder if all those owners are sleeping comfortably at night.
Nope, owning a house is never "free", even if you really do "own" it.

 

[RobbieB]

I know it's not free...just like I know I always have debt.

Property tax - 2 grand/yr
Insurance - 8 hundred/yr
Maintenance - 2 grand/yr

Yup that's $4800/yr as compared to 16,800 rent for a 12 grand discount. This year I used my 12 grand discount to put solar on the roof so I can get free electricity for the next 25 years.

I love being a homeowner -

 

[samclem]

Changes in bold are mine.

This year I [-]used my 12 grand discount [/-] spent 17 grand of my money to put solar on the roof so I can get free electricity for the next 25 years.

You just can't help yourself. "free electricity?"
" I just paid $50,000 for a Lincoln so I could have a free car."

I love being a homeowner -

Me, too.

 

[RobbieB]

The dough I save owning vs renting for the next 3 years 12x3=36 will buy me that free car too -

 

[REWahoo]

Why would anyone want to buy a free car?

 

[ProspectiveBum]

The best part about home ownership to me is non-financial: I can do what I like with my property (improvements, paint color, etc.), and I can't be forced to move because my landlord has decided to sell.

 

[RobbieB]

Cause your old one is falling apart?

 

[SumDay]

14%. Our old one was 7%, and paid for. The 'new' one (as of last September) is 40 years newer, maintenance free, and is our dream/retirement/last home. Believe me, the next time I move, it will be 6 feet under.

 

[doneat54]

Around 14% if I read the calc instructions correctly. 12% is you include undeveloped (non income producing) land that we own.

 

[strathglass]

I think I was the 2nd person to select >50%.
We bought our home in the 90's. Mortgage has been paid off.
To calculate home value (since we should have full equity of the value of our home), I estimated based on the government's price assessment of our house for property tax purposes at the start of the year and what our neighbours just listed their home for. The realtor indicated they sold a comparable home a few blocks over for a similar price. Our house is newer and larger than house for sale so I figure its value is comparable. If so, the value of our house has increased about 3.6x. That's how ridiculous the housing market has been in Vancouver over the last two decades.
The growth of our investment portfolio has done well but hasn't kept up with the rampant increases in home valuations in Vancouver.

Actually, I would have expected the value of your Vancouver home to increase by a bigger multiple over ~20 years. I owned a home in Winnipeg for 20 years and sold it for 3.08 X my purchase price. Five years on, it has recently been on the market for 60% more than that (I don't know the 2016 sale price). Granted, both I and the new owners had done some renovations. And the numbers are an order of magnitude smaller than in Vancouver.

I am with Meadbh - I would have expected higher growth in Vancouver.
I'm in the other hot market in Canada - near Toronto.
I'm at 49% (and no mortgage) but could break 50% with a good offer if I were to sell.
That valuation represents an increase of just over 5x in the 15 years since we moved in.
That is so surreal we are worried about a crash and are thinking of selling next year, which is probably a couple years sooner that ideally we would. We plan to move out to the country.

 

[RISP]

63%! I think I win! (or lose?)

That's for a small, quite modest town house on a tiny lot. (German property taxes are based on the size of the lot rather than the value of the property, and I'm not much for yard-work anyway.)

Reasons:
a) We are still quite young and in the earlier stages of accumulation.
b) The housing market here is crazy.
c) We used a significant chunk of our assets for a large down payment, since we wanted a more manageable mortgage, and a lower rate.

Fun fact: The percentage was lower when we bought the house 3.5 years ago. The dumb thing appreciates quicker than I can save! OK, we also attacked the mortgage agressively and made some renovations/improvements. Once the house will be paid off and we come closer to 30%, I'd say we are FI. Should we ever make it below 10%, we'd be positively rich!

Some of these percentages are very high, which means the hard asset component of that asset distribution is kind of locked into that high spot. Not that that's 'bad', just that I wonder if there are folks in that position that are ignoring their personal residence when it comes to setting and maintaining their asset allocation.

I thought about investing in a REIT a while back, but decided against it. Main reason was that I feel we have more than enough exposure to real estate. OTOH, it might still make sense to branch out into other regions/countries and/or commercial RE...