12 Comments

Great piece John. I living all these scenarios at once.

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John,

We need to build our home. We bought land in 2022. We’ve decided to wait to build based on material prices and interest rates. We felt the balance of investment was upside down to build. Do you see this changing and when? What should we should be looking for to know when it’s a better time to build.

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Great article! The costs of homeownership are often underestimated.

My rough cost estimate to own a house is simple:

-property taxes +

-homeowner's insurance +

-1.0% of the home’s value for maintenance.

This 1.0% maintenance covers both regular upkeep (like lawn care) and big repairs (like replacing a roof or water heater, etc.). The 1.0% is an average over several years. Ideally, try to save any of that 1.0% that you don't spend. This way, when a major expense arises (and it will), you'll be prepared.

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Owning a home is bankruptcy by a thousand cuts.

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How could we have a housing bust if America is about to become great again. Wouldn't it take a slimy turd in office that surrounds himself with clowns and criminals to really see a housing bust gain some traction?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcJ9TNmRCAs

Job Opening: Minister of Defense-no experience required.

Job Opening: Attorney General-Lawyers need not apply.

We will outlaw background checks. Here comes the SS.

As Adolf said repeatedly: No one can do the job so I'll have to do it myself. "I have a much better understanding of Monetary Policy than the Fed".

The fun part will be watching who he blames for the train wreck ahead. Will it be the Catholics this time or the Hutterites.

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Interesting to read about massive bicycle rides clogging highways in China and terrifying the government. Housing is unaffordable there too. It seems every country has masses of unemployed people who can not afford to make ends meet. How can this be global? The short answer is Peak Oil. Simon Michaux has an excellent summary of the problem here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvRVUSUQp8M skip to 29 minutes in.

Of course the 'experts' have redefined 'oil' to obfuscate the situation and governments have talked up Climate Change to inspire people to leave oil (before it leaves us) but the fact remains, with less energy, less gets done, leaving many many people frustrated.

We are having a crash in a lot more than house prices!

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What never seems to be mentioned is the possibility that people simply stop paying, but -importantly - en masse and together. There is no way people would be evicted. Instead the crisis would be on the lienors (“owe the bank 10k sucks to be you, owe them 1 milion and sucks to be the bank’).

Banks didn’t expect so many people to foreclose in 2008/9, but that’s what I think is going to happen big time once again.

So many triggers ….

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One big problem with not paying property taxes is that some states can then swoop in & take over your property. Other states will put a lien against your property.

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I understand that, but if anything like that occurs on a large enough scale everything changes. Liens don’t mean a damn if they’re not paid.

Besides, I’m talking about after the mass non-payments are start, after all the dominos start falling rapidly. When you don’t have the money to pay, things don’t get paid, and it’s a chain reaction. It becomes a matter of survival.

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Dena, I suppose the people could swoop in and burn the county property tax records.

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the Fed is doing a very good job of Destroying the Middle Class........he is doing a very good job for the Deep State.....

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for a Very Very long time........Buying a House.......if you can Buy a House.......has been a heavy Duty Chore on the Budget..........

all the kids in the family can not leave the Family anymore.......most of them can barely afford to Rent an apartment.....they have to Group with their friends......and all Chip in to Pay the Rent.......would you like to live with your Friends.........not me.....lol

there has to be some kind of HUGE CRASH.......to get us back to some kind of Sanity........

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