walkinwood
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
My wife & I were having a conversation about this yesterday.
Our friend's home burned in the fire in Louisville CO almost 3 years ago now. Louisville is not in the mountains and there are no forests nearby - yet, after a long dry spell, on a very windy day, a fire swept through the open spaces around town and burned down about 1000 homes in a matter of hours. It took my friends over 2 years to rebuild - dealing with the city, the builders and worst of all, the insurance company. Two years of stress. Two years where they had to put just about everything else on hold while continuing to work.
We see this again in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, and again and again elsewhere.
With property destruction in places where the probability of that kind of disaster is very low, the continued rise in the cost of insurance, the stress & time endured in rebuilding - does it even make sense to own a single property with around 15-20% of our net worth. We would never think of investing this much in a single stock.
If there was a good rental solution - with a long term lease and a known rent increase rate (say tied to the prime rate + something), we would definitely consider it. Unfortunately, in our area (Denver CO), rents have been jumping higher by huge numbers (it may have stabilized this year), and there are no controls on rent increases.
So - for now, we're stuck with owning.
Our friend's home burned in the fire in Louisville CO almost 3 years ago now. Louisville is not in the mountains and there are no forests nearby - yet, after a long dry spell, on a very windy day, a fire swept through the open spaces around town and burned down about 1000 homes in a matter of hours. It took my friends over 2 years to rebuild - dealing with the city, the builders and worst of all, the insurance company. Two years of stress. Two years where they had to put just about everything else on hold while continuing to work.
We see this again in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, and again and again elsewhere.
With property destruction in places where the probability of that kind of disaster is very low, the continued rise in the cost of insurance, the stress & time endured in rebuilding - does it even make sense to own a single property with around 15-20% of our net worth. We would never think of investing this much in a single stock.
If there was a good rental solution - with a long term lease and a known rent increase rate (say tied to the prime rate + something), we would definitely consider it. Unfortunately, in our area (Denver CO), rents have been jumping higher by huge numbers (it may have stabilized this year), and there are no controls on rent increases.
So - for now, we're stuck with owning.
I was buying my first house and was scratching for every dime I could find for closing costs so losing $750 (in 1979) was a big deal. First place was a teardown to build a gas station; the landlord actually required that I repaint the second place before vacating and I left it in immaculate condition so no damage-related reason to keep the deposit.
