Crunching

Posted on February 19, 2007 - Filed Under Housing |

"You can’t keep renting a room.  You have to live somewhere."

Sounds good.

The Real Estate Agent and I were seated in his office, reviewing the houses I looked at the previous weekend.

All the deals I’ve looked at are within my grasp.  But the numbers only work if all the units are rented out.  And that puts me back out on the street.

Remember my talk on flexibility?  Yeah, I’ve also got to have some quality of life.

For the moment, I’m not sure if any deal I’ve looked at thus far will work in my favor.  And when I speaking about favor, I’m speaking from the standpoint that I have to live somewhere that I can actually call "home".

I am glad that he has my best interest in mind.  There are more than a few agents out there, that would gladly put me into  a deal and not care about where I would actually live.  After all, the customer is always right . . . right?

It brings comfort knowing the agent is looking out for me.

If you liked that post, then try these...

Snowball Effect on July 26th, 2006
A realization came to me last night.

. . . in sheeps clothing on July 14th, 2006
This could be a "buyer beware".

Comments

4 Responses to “Crunching”

  1. Kenric on February 19th, 2007 8:22 am

    What exactly are you looking for in terms of numbers?

  2. Clifford on February 19th, 2007 7:42 pm

    I wouldn’t mind 25% of my salary, going towards my portion of the living arrangements. But the numbers show that 70% of my salary would disappear. With the negative cashflow on the first properties, that would take all my salary.

  3. The Engineer on February 20th, 2007 1:10 pm

    Long ago there was some proverbial rule of thumb that suggested not spending more than 25% of your salary on a house payment. I’m not sure if that was before or after taxes, or even if it was 25%, but what is the general consensus among “experts” on what that number should be these days?

    Now, I know you’re going to say something along the lines of “it depends.” But I want a figure. What is the average percentage of a paycheck people are spending to live somewhere?

  4. Clifford on February 21st, 2007 6:24 am

    It depends . . .

    For your question, I asked Lord Google by typing in the words “debt income ratio mortgage” and he responded with this:

    http://homebuying.about.com/cs/mortgagearticles/a/debt_to_income.htm

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