Wednesday, March 12, 2014

I should be happy, but all I've got is a 1000 yard stare.

Some of you who have been reading for a very long time might have gotten that the recession took a huge toll on me. I went through the craziest housing crash ever - with two houses. At one time I'd lost so much equity, you could have burnt down my rental and it wouldn't have even made a difference for me financially. Between the two houses I'd lost the entire value of it. It made growing up poor seem like a cakewalk. Being poor would have been a relief honestly instead of owing the kind of money we did.. But I feel that once you jump off that treadmill, it's really hard to get back on and you have to run twice as fast to keep the same place. I chose to keep calm and carry on no matter what happened. Every day you wanted to jump out of your skin though.

The unending drum roll of people and articles telling you that you were a sucker for owning real estate still echo in my mind. It would never in your lifetime be worth what you paid. After so many years, you couldn't help but wonder if they were right. Most of the time I'd have to tell myself - either my whole life in an anomaly - or this period of time is the anomaly. Since my life has been longer than the five years of the downturn - I trusted it more. It's the only thing I could do to keep sane at the time.

There was virtually no one that offered support to me. They couldn't. Most of them were walking away too. I thought about it a million times. Even as I was telling friends to fight for their houses, I wasn't sure I was going to be right. And I'm still not sure. History is my only guide.

Now I have my rental open and I'm finding the complete opposite craziness. As of today there is literally nothing in my town to rent. Nothing. You might find something in the 500sqft range, but everything else is gone. And you can not believe what a place that small is costing. I almost choked when the rental agent told me what they'd charge people for my place. It's almost the same situation for home for sales. There are virtually no houses for sale. Real estate agents are now regularly knocking on doors.

I have property managers and sales agents competing for me. Which would make most people feel like a big shot. I'm not that person. I just want all the chaos to calm down. All of these people are giant bullshitters and it takes up a lot of space in my head. One side wants me to sell, and if not they have a tenant. Everyone I've had by that place says they know someone looking. It's so bad, I almost don't want to tell people it's open until I get more work done on it. Because I'm just really not sure what I want to do. I locked in at the crazy low interest rates. I will never be able to borrow money that cheap again.

While all that is going on, I'm trying to figure out whats really going on with the market through what the professional are telling me. Which is fairly hard. They have an agenda, and real estate is really filled with lies, distortions, and fantasy. Sometimes you have to talk to a lot of people in the industry to figure out which information is true. These people not not deep thinkers so clawing relevant information out of them isn't easy. It takes many sources to to get the real picture.

So far the insane rental rates seem to be solid. It also seems to be pretty solid that October-ish of 2012 was a turning point, and the past few months have really heated up. It's hard to figure out the real equilibrium. When banks were not lending - that was not a real market and likely things over-corrected. However, I'd call this market not real either. I can't even figure out what comes next. Because the stock market does not go up forever. Google it.

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