All tagged Mortgage
I received an email recently that brought tears to my eyes if I’m frank. It was from someone who is in despair about not being in a position to own a house in New Zealand. I wanted to create a blog post about it because the struggle that the writer is experiencing is not unique; in the same week, I received several other messages along the same lines.
Rental real estate investment brings out some pretty passionate opinions and although I always enjoy a conversation, I don’t like arguing, therefore I rarely write about property. That and the fact it just does not interest me as a way to grow wealth. I regularly speak with such a wide range of people about money and I’m lucky that I get to see the allure or otherwise of property from many different angles and I conclude from talking to a lot of people who are ‘real estate investors’ that most of them appear not to be making any money.
I asked you last week what I could help you with and I received a lot of emails with questions on various topics. I have pulled a couple of themes out of them and have shared them in this post, because my guess is that they are pretty common questions right now.
Have you noticed that I never really talk much about real estate? Except to say that I own the house I live in and I have never really gone too far down the path of writing about property as an investment. With the equity that we have in our house, the ‘obvious’ thing to many Kiwis would be to borrow against it and buy more property that I then rent out to other people. For many this has been a way to successfully grow their wealth. To many, it has not.
This question was sent in by Declan a while back, but it is one that crops up in my inbox relatively consistently as well, so I thought back to what I did and what I would do if faced with the situation he is proposing again.
Today I thought I would tackle one of YOUR questions head on. It’s housing related, a topic that is constantly being talked about in New Zealand and one that I generally try to avoid. So here goes…
People tell me that they are investing quite large sums of money in order to get a return but at the same time they have a mortgage. My short and sweet response is typically that “in my humble opinion, you can’t make money while you owe money”. Once I’ve uttered my opinion the fireworks often start.
Because I threw off the shackles of debt some time ago I have become a little out of touch with mortgages. I’ve had enough emails about “Offset Mortgages” to make me think that this is something I need to look into because there are obviously a few of you out there who either use this system of banking or want to know what it is all about. This blog post may ruffle a few feathers...
