Should I Buy A Home?

Jan 29, 2021

Episode Transcript:

Hey guys, Matt here and welcome to the first installment of a new podcast called Five Minutes of Housing Literacy with Powerful Homes. And I'm going to be the host of this podcast. So excited to bring you this information. Basically, the idea is to support our program, Powerful Homes, which empowers people's dreams through home ownership and real estate investing. And it's basically in support of the book I put out last year called Powerful Homes.

So, today's topic is going to be something I hear people asking me all the time, the last few months in this crazy world that we find ourselves in, and the question is, should I buy or rent? Should I buy or rent in Denver? And if I do buy in Denver, should I hold or should I sell? Is it a good time to do that? There's a lot of uncertainty and chaos in the world. I just don't know what to do.

So huge question, a big, big question, which I could probably spend an hour on, but what I would like to do is just share an experience I've had, and that's going to be a lot of what this five minutes in housing literacy is about. I can't give you specific answers to questions, but I can give you experiences and contexts that I've gone through that would now inform how I would answer that question.

So one of my favorite properties that I've ever bought and sold was a property I bought in Highlands. For those of you who know the Denver area, I bought a turn of the century old Victorian thing in Highlands, about a mile from Highland square. And I bought it for believe it or not in 2004 for $100,000. And I didn't have somebody to ask that question, should I hold this? Should I rent it? What do I think about that choice? So, what I did is I put about $30,000 into it and I sold it and I think that was a good project, and I ended up reselling it for about 250,000.

So, I made a really good profit at that time, fantastic profit. I had four young kids at the time. So, it just made sense for me at that station in life, where it was at to take that profit and use it for kids' soccer and things like that. Now, looking back 14 years later, I just did an analysis of that exact property, which is still there owned by a second owner. The woman bought it, sold it about five years later, that property now is worth around $600,000. It's a thousand square foot, two bed, one bath home. Believe it or not, that's around $600 a foot, which is crazy to even think about, but it's why I'm bringing it up. It's something that, you know, you think markets would slow down, appreciation would stop at some point. But that's the whole point of bringing up this story. It went up $400,000, around 30% a year, which is way more than the national average of around four to six. In the Denver area it's been eight to 12 for many years now in a row.

So hopefully that gives you some context as you make a decision to buy or rent. I would say on that one, you know, one of the big things that comes up for me there is, there's going to be around 12 billion people on the planet in 2050 versus the 7 billion now. So the demand is going to be the fastest or the increase in population is going to be the fastest we've ever seen in the world's history and demand for properties around our country is going to continue to be strong. I wish I knew that 16 years ago when I made this decision.

So why is real estate such a great thing? The demand is still there. The population is growing and that's why real estate appreciation just continues every year. So, hopefully that provides some insights, some housing literacy for you in making that kind of decision. But I really don't know your specific, what, where, why, how, who, who your people are or what your big purpose is. But I will say this, that when you are making those judgments as your life unfolds, what you're going to do, where are you going to do it? I would really strongly recommend buying a first property, the first property and putting down a where and that you're committing to a place.

And the reason I would say that as your first choice was when was the last time you ever washed a rental car before you brought it back? Probably never. And the reason is you don't own it. So making a decision to own is something I would strongly recommend. I would also strongly recommend considering holding it long-term based on the thing that I now looked at back on 16 years ago, is that it's going to appreciate most likely appreciate very nicely. And then the compounding of that appreciation, the compounding of the interest deduction savings, all increases your net worth in a significant way.

So hopefully you find some value out of that information, on housing literacy today. Look forward to seeing you every Friday, and on this podcast, we're going to have guests and we're going to cover a ton of topics and it's gonna be real exciting. So look forward to seeing you again, thanks for being here. See you next time on Housing Literacy.