I’m not doing the buy vs. rent analysis because my wife and I simply aren’t going to buy a house and try to sell it again in two years. We already know the analysis mainly hinges on expected real estate appreciation, and we ain’t psychic, so we are just going to take what comes for now. No word on if we have to move yet.

So apparently it wasn’t a false alarm, the appraisal our landlord got was to help them sell the place. But “maybe not until next summer”… uh-huh… Remodellers and real estate brokers coming by this week…

Should we try to make an offer? With only one income? Or move again? My head hurts.

Well, I e-mailed my landlord, and she says the appraisal is because she is looking into refinancing the house. I guess that’s cool, I have no reason not to believe her, except that I thought that she inherited this house from her parents, but I’m not 100% sure. I do know that she is definitely cashflow positive, since she talks about how it’s great to have extra income every month and she uses it to pay for home improvements on her own house, etc. She’s always struck me as a bit passive-aggressive, so I’ll keep my eyes open.

We rent. I just got an e-mail from our landlord that an appraiser will be coming by our place this week. Crap. CrapCrapCrap. We love this house, the neighborhood, even the landlord (up until now). This comes totally out of the blue, as our landlord seemed pretty happy with the steady rental income. I guess she wants to try and cash out on top before interest rates rise.

Our place would probably go for about $300k currently. Can we buy it? I suppose. Do we want to? Not really. The rent to mortgage ratio is pretty low for us… and she’s also pet friendly. We’re on a month-to-month lease. So we could be kicked out with just a 30 day notice. @#$%$^&*!!!

I ran across this website recently, Pac Equities, Inc. It seems like they do private equity funding – that is, lend money to real estate developers who cannot get funding via conventional means (aka a bank?). I know nothing more about this than what their website told me, but my interest is piqued. It looks like you get a 10% annual return, including all expenses involved. Your investment is secured by “A legally recorded Assignment of Beneficial Interest in a Deed of Trust”, which I guess mean you are one of the primary lienholders on the property. According to them, “Pac Equities? own money, a minimum of 10% of the total loan made to each project, is invested along with your investment.” Anyone out there want to weigh in on this?
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At least for me it is. Jim from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity lays down his results in this interesting article. Looks like he’s going for it! He also introduced me to Dinkytown.net, home of tons of neat financial calculators.

I remember running these numbers over and over about a year ago. As Jim also concludes, the most important variable is the expected appreciation of the house. It can change your break-even point from 10 years to just three or less. Another friend of mine just got an interest-only loan with 5% down on his townhouse, and it’s starting to wear on me. Am I missing out? Every time I write my rent check, I wonder…
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