Homeownership: Is It For Everyone?

Well, no, it’s not. Not in my opinion, at least.

 

Now, home ownership is a great thing. Oftentimes, real estate values don’t really go down over the long run, unless you buy your home in a ‘transitional’ area, ie an area where parts of the neighborhood are going up in value and parts are going down. Transitional areas can be downtown areas where development is taking place or basically property in an area that’s about to take off. Transitional areas can also be on the border between ‘good’ areas and ‘bad’ areas.

 

Another time that you can seriously lose money is when you get a stupid mortgage. Bad idea. Don’t buy more house than you can afford and don’t agree to some crazy interest rate.

 

The government is wrong, yes, they’re wrong, to promote home-ownership so fiercely. Now you may wonder, why do I say that? Because they make it look so attractive that people are brainwashed into thinking that homewonership is the only way to fly. It’s not. One should not buy a home until one is financially ready to cope with all the potential problems that can happen.

 

Remember, when you buy a home, if the hot water heater or the furnace or the roof fails, you better have the money to fix it. If you’re someone who doesn’t have the resources to deal with things like that asap, then homeownership might not be for you right now.

 

Personally, I’m one of those. I like living in a house. Love it. It’s awesome. I certainly don’t mind taking care of the yard. But sometimes, when I look at the yard and think of all that would need to be done to it to make it an oasis, like I would like, I feel so overwhelmed. And of course, you need tools. How else are you going to keep that yard in check? Those weeds sprout up everywhere. Next – Dee’s playhouse…there is a roof on that, it needs to be kept clean (to some degree). The deck will need refinishing soon, and there are weeds sprouting up between the clumsily patched cracks in the concrete. I’m not willing to buy all kinds of tools and weedkiller, etc., to make the yard look perfect. Even if I were willing, I couldn’t afford it. And whenever something goes wrong….I call the maintenance man. He does everything.

 

So, I am not homeowner material. Yet. But there are many advantages to owning a home.

 

For example, the home we occupy now is in a good area of town, in fact it’s in the best school district in Omaha, District 66. If you want to talk about New Urbanism, or the walkable neighborhood, well this is it. Stores, restaurants, bars, parks…all found in abundance within walking distance from my home. Just on Saturday, I rode my bike to lunch with my parents. I really believe that property values in this area will definitely go up. If my $700/month were going toward a mortgage, I might have some equity eventually. Whereas, right now, the $8400 per year I spend right now is going toward equity, but not mine. So I’m not going to get that money back.

 

If I owned the house, I would be free to have my buttery yellow exterior with white trim. I could put in my fairy rose bushes. I would more than likely be inspired to do so, since it’s my house. At this time, I’m not inspired to do so. Partially because I am very tired and partially because I don’t own the house.

 

So, bottom line- this guy has a point. Homeownership is good. It promotes investment in the place where you live. But renting can also be good. Certainly people who are not meant to be homeowners, who can’t really afford the investment, should remain renters.

 

 

 

 

 

Home Not-So-Sweet Home

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: June 23, 2008

“Owning a home lies at the heart of the American dream.” So declared President Bush in 2002, introducing his “Homeownership Challenge” — a set of policy initiatives that were supposed to sharply increase homeownership, especially for minority groups.

By Paul Krugman

Oops. While homeownership rose as the housing bubble inflated, temporarily giving Mr. Bush something to boast about, it plunged — especially for African-Americans — when the bubble popped. Today, the percentage of American families owning their own homes is no higher than it was six years ago, and it’s a good bet that by the time Mr. Bush leaves the White House homeownership will be lower than it was when he moved in.

But here’s a question rarely asked, at least in Washington: Why should ever-increasing homeownership be a policy goal? How many people should own homes, anyway?

Listening to politicians, you’d think that every family should own its home — in fact, that you’re not a real American unless you’re a homeowner. “If you own something,” Mr. Bush once declared, “you have a vital stake in the future of our country.” Presumably, then, citizens who live in rented housing, and therefore lack that “vital stake,” can’t be properly patriotic. Bring back property qualifications for voting!

Even Democrats seem to share the sense that Americans who don’t own houses are second-class citizens. Early last year, just as the mortgage meltdown was beginning, Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist who is one of Barack Obama’s top advisers, warned against a crackdown on subprime lending. “For be it ever so humble,” he wrote, “there really is no place like home, even if it does come with a balloon payment mortgage.”

And the belief that you’re nothing if you don’t own a home is reflected in U.S. policy. Because the I.R.S. lets you deduct mortgage interest from your taxable income but doesn’t let you deduct rent, the federal tax system provides an enormous subsidy to owner-occupied housing. On top of that, government-sponsored enterprises — Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks — provide cheap financing for home buyers; investors who want to provide rental housing are on their own.

In effect, U.S. policy is based on the premise that everyone should be a homeowner. But here’s the thing: There are some real disadvantages to homeownership.

First of all, there’s the financial risk. Although it’s rarely put this way, borrowing to buy a home is like buying stocks on margin: if the market value of the house falls, the buyer can easily lose his or her entire stake.

This isn’t a hypothetical worry. From 2005 through 2007 alone — that is, at the peak of the housing bubble — more than 22 million Americans bought either new or existing houses. Now that the bubble has burst, many of those homebuyers have lost heavily on their investment. At this point there are probably around 10 million households with negative home equity — that is, with mortgages that exceed the value of their houses.

Owning a home also ties workers down. Even in the best of times, the costs and hassle of selling one home and buying another — one estimate put the average cost of a house move at more than $60,000 — tend to make workers reluctant to go where the jobs are.

And these are not the best of times. Right now, economic distress is concentrated in the states with the biggest housing busts: Florida and California have experienced much steeper rises in unemployment than the nation as a whole. Yet homeowners in these states are constrained from seeking opportunities elsewhere, because it’s very hard to sell their houses.

Finally, there’s the cost of commuting. Buying a home usually though not always means buying a single-family house in the suburbs, often a long way out, where land is cheap. In an age of $4 gas and concerns about climate change, that’s an increasingly problematic choice.

There are, of course, advantages to homeownership — and yes, my wife and I do own our home. But homeownership isn’t for everyone. In fact, given the way U.S. policy favors owning over renting, you can make a good case that America already has too many homeowners.

O.K., I know how some people will respond: anyone who questions the ideal of homeownership must want the population “confined to Soviet-style concrete-block high-rises” (as a Bloomberg columnist recently put it). Um, no. All I’m suggesting is that we drop the obsession with ownership, and try to level the playing field that, at the moment, is hugely tilted against renting.

And while we’re at it, let’s try to open our minds to the possibility that those who choose to rent rather than buy can still share in the American dream — and still have a stake in the nation’s future.

 

more about character assassination....

Rico said:
The one thing I like about Obama's message is that he is positive and try to get things done.

I just try to look at what people say and ask the question, "why are they saying it." This message about McCain's ex wife is coming out now because?......

Good post though...Thought provoking...

Flyinfox_SATX

By the way...the count down is now on! 6 Days to go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
First off, Awesome!!! I am so excited for you two!

2ndly, what's really interesting about this story is that I didn't get it from an American paper. I got it from a British paper!!! More specifically -- the UK's own Daily Mail. I didn't see this story anywhere else. And the link I followed to find it...from a gossip blog...Perez Hilton to be exact.

I do like it the way that Barack has run his campaign. He's been just as clean as he can be, in this political climate. I like that about him, a lot. He's not willing to do *anything* to win.

Why Our Kids Are Fat

I have no scientific proof. I don't have much anecdotal proof either.

But we have moved to a house in a great neighborhood. Not suburbia, it's my kind of 'hood. It's in the middle of town and near the university. It's diverse and quiet. The houses are small and tidy, on the whole. I see lots of established trees and gardens in this neighborhood. Our oak tree out front towers over this small house that we're renting. We moved in at the beginning of April.

All the houses around here have large backyards and ample front yards as well. It's great.

Deedee loves going outside. Oh boy, does she ever! Bugs, bunnies, birds, dirt, a little clubhouse for her to hang out in...we've named that little clubhouse 'Deedee's Lab'. It's a paradise for her.

So it's a cute little neighborhood. It's quiet. Nothing ever happens here.

So where are the other kids?

The neighbor kids almost never come outside. There is not a child to be seen outside on this block almost ever. The three kids next door almost never come outside. They're always in the house. It might have something to do with the big screen TV and the Xbox I glimpsed in their living room at the girls' birthday party last weekend. I'm not sure what's going on, but it seems unnatural.

Why are children almost never outside? This is a very safe neighborhood. Nothing ever happens around here. Dee is outside almost all the time...she lives out there and she loves it. She's got dirty knees and dirty hands, and I confess, *I* love it too. It feels like her being outside is the way it ought to be, not just the way it is.

Perhaps my daughter is outside more than most because we don't have cable or an antenna. She doesn't have video games, except for one Pokemon game on her little GameBoy Advance that the Makistani got her.

I'm not tooting my own horn. I'm asking...why aren't kids playing outside? This is crazy. And we wonder why there's a childhood obesity epidemic? This has got to be at least part of the answer.

Sometimes it can be scary with Dee; her boundaries aren't that great. It's hard to keep her in the yard, and I mostly do not succeed. My social butterfly is off up the street or across the street making friends. I fear child predators and when I call her, I get nervous if she doesn't come right away. But I am not going to keep her in the house because of that fear. She needs socialization, she needs some freedom...not overprotection and video games. My Dee is out there reaching out, trying to make friendships. She doesn't need me around her every minute, accompanying her everywhere in the neighborhood.

Common parental wisdom dictates that I ought to be out there watching her every second...and I would die if something happened to her. I am thinking of getting her a two-way radio or something.

But consider for a moment what a miracle this is for Dee. She's been in one home for two years and she's finally got a yard of her own. And she's actually *trying* to make friends. Even after all that's happened to her in her short seven years, my Dee is out there trying to make friends.

I look at her dirty hands and her dirty knees with pride and joy. My Dee is out there having fun and discovering life. Success! I have provided a safe house and a quiet neighborhood for her to grow up in!

John McCain's Character...My Commentary

Ok Rico I saw your comment. You're right but...

I find it unlikely that she did something wrong...I mean, what could she have done? No one's perfect, but it sure doesn't sound like she could have had an affair or been a diva when he came back.

This is the problem when people want to start getting personal in elections like they are doing with Obama. Where does it stop? How tawdry do we get? How long until people are talking more about someone's pastor or ex wife or *insert topic here* than the issues and the candidates' positions on them?

I have to admit, I never cared about what Obama's pastor said, I don't care about his religion either. I'm not sure I care that much about what McCain did to his ex wife. I guess what I am tired of is a one-sided attack on Obama's personal character that I am seeing from conservatives...whether it's referring pointedly to his middle name (Hussein) or it's quoting things his pastor said and practically attributing them to Obama's mouth.

And I get so many emails from my conservative friends that try to incite fear about what Obama's going to do to Whitey. Seriously. It's like there is a fear of a slave uprising or something. I hear a lot of fears about change and especially new things like a black president for the first time.

People need to take some courage, lose their fear, and start using their brains. Not poring over every bit of propaganda that comes into their email inbox and believing it as though it's Gospel.

John McCain's Character

The wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind

By Sharon Churcher
Last updated at 1:45 AM on 08th June 2008

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Now that Hillary Clinton has at last formally withdrawn from the race for the White House, the eyes of America and the world will focus on Barack Obama and his Republican rival Senator John McCain.

While Obama will surely press his credentials as the embodiment of the American dream – a handsome, charismatic young black man who was raised on food stamps by a single mother and who represents his country’s future – McCain will present himself as a selfless, principled war hero whose campaign represents not so much a battle for the presidency of the United States, but a crusade to rescue the nation’s tarnished reputation.

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Forgotten woman: But despite all her problems Carol McCain says she still adores he ex-husband

McCain likes to illustrate his moral fibre by referring to his five years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children.

But there is another Mrs McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator’s presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain’s three eldest children.

And yet, had events turned out differently, it would be she, rather than Cindy, who would be vying to be First Lady. She is McCain’s first wife, Carol, who was a famous beauty and a successful swimwear model when they married in 1965.

She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and torture in Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison and the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting anxiously for news.

But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.

When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons

had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter.

Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self.

Today, she stands at just 5ft4in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering.

For nearly 30 years, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about the accident, McCain and their divorce. But last week at the bungalow where she now lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200 miles south of Washington, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain divorced her in 1980 and married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona brewing fortune, just one month later.

>>>Who do you want to see as the next US president? Leave your views below...

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Golden couple: John and Cindy McCain at a charity gala in Los Angeles

Carol insists she remains on good terms with her ex-husband, who agreed as part of their divorce settlement to pay her medical costs for life. ‘I have no bitterness,’

she says. ‘My accident is well recorded. I had 23 operations, I am five inches shorter than I used to be and I was in hospital for six months. It was just awful, but it wasn’t the reason for my divorce.

‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens...it just does.’

Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the field’. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.

McCain was then earning little more than £25,000 a year as a naval officer, while his new father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was a multi-millionaire who had impeccable political connections.

He first met Carol in the Fifties while he was at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. He was a privileged, but rebellious scion of one of America’s most distinguished military dynasties – his father and grandfather were both admirals.

But setting out to have a good time, the young McCain hung out with a group of young officers who called themselves the ‘Bad Bunch’.

His primary interest was women and his conquests ranged from a knife-wielding floozy nicknamed ‘Marie, the Flame of Florida’ to a tobacco heiress.

Carol fell into his fast-living world by accident. She escaped a poor upbringing in Philadelphia to become a successful model, married an Annapolis classmate of McCain’s and had two children – Douglas and Andrew – before renewing what one acquaintance calls ‘an old flirtation’ with McCain.

It seems clear she was bowled over by McCain’s attention at a time when he was becoming bored with his playboy lifestyle.

‘He was 28 and ready to settle down and he loved Carol’s children,’ recalled another Annapolis graduate, Robert Timberg, who wrote The Nightingale’s Song, a bestselling biography of McCain and four other graduates of the academy.

The couple married and McCain adopted Carol’s sons. Their daughter, Sidney, was born a year later, but domesticity was clearly beginning

to bore McCain – the couple were regarded as ‘fixtures on the party circuit’ before McCain requested combat duty in Vietnam at the end of 1966.

He was assigned as a bomber pilot on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin.

What follows is the stuff of the McCain legend. He was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967 on his 23rd mission over North Vietnam and was badly beaten by an angry mob when he was pulled, half-drowned from a lake.

War hero: McCain with Carol as he arrives back in the US in 1973 after his five years as a PoW in North Vietnam

Over the next five-and-a-half years in the notorious Hoa Loa Prison he was regularly tortured and mistreated.

It was in 1969 that Carol went to spend the Christmas holiday – her third without McCain – at her parents’ home. After dinner, she left to drop off some presents at a friend’s house.

It wasn’t until some hours later that she was discovered, alone and in terrible pain, next to the wreckage of her car. She had been hurled through the windscreen.

After her first series of life-saving operations, Carol was told she may never walk again, but when doctors said they would try to get word to McCain about her injuries, she refused, insisting: ‘He’s got enough problems, I don’t want to tell him.’

H. Ross Perot, a billionaire Texas businessman, future presidential candidate and advocate of prisoners of war, paid for her medical care.

When McCain – his hair turned prematurely white and his body reduced to little more than a skeleton – was released in March 1973, he told reporters he was overjoyed to see Carol again.

But friends say privately he was ‘appalled’ by the change in her appearance. At first, though, he was kind, assuring her: ‘I don’t look so good myself. It’s fine.’

He bought her a bungalow near the sea in Florida and another former PoW helped him to build a railing so she could pull herself over the dunes to the water.

‘I thought, of course, we would live happily ever after,’ says Carol. But as a war hero, McCain was moving in ever-more elevated circles.

Through Ross Perot, he met Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California. A sympathetic Nancy Reagan took Carol under her wing.

But already the McCains’ marriage had begun to fray. ‘John started carousing and running around with women,’ said Robert Timberg.

McCain has acknowledged that he had girlfriends during this time, without going into details. Some friends blame his dissatisfaction with Carol, but others give some credence to her theory of a mid-life crisis.

He was also fiercely ambitious, but it was clear he would never become an admiral like his illustrious father and grandfather and his thoughts were turning to politics.

In 1979 – while still married to Carol – he met Cindy at a cocktail party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage.

Carol and her children were devastated. ‘It was a complete surprise,’ says Nancy Reynolds, a former Reagan aide.

‘They never displayed any difficulties between themselves. I know the Reagans were quite shocked because they loved and respected both Carol and John.’

Another friend added: ‘Carol didn’t fight him. She felt her infirmity made her an impediment to him. She justified his actions because of all he had gone through. She used to say, “He just wants to make up for lost time.”’

Indeed, to many in their circle the saddest part of the break-up was Carol’s decision to resign herself to losing a man she says she still adores.

Friends confirm she has remained friends with McCain and backed him in all his campaigns. ‘He was very generous to her in the divorce but of course he could afford to be, since he was marrying Cindy,’ one observed.

McCain transferred the Florida beach house to Carol and gave her the right to live in their jointly-owned townhouse in the Washington suburb of Alexandria. He also agreed to pay her alimony and child support.

A former neighbour says she subsequently sold up in Florida and Washington and moved in 2003 to Virginia Beach. He said: ‘My impression was that she found the new place easier to manage as she still has some difficulties walking.’

Meanwhile McCain moved to Arizona with his new bride immediately after their 1980 marriage. There, his new father-in-law gave him a job and introduced him to local businessmen and political powerbrokers who would smooth his passage to Washington via the House of Representatives and Senate.

And yet despite his popularity as a politician, there are those who won’t forget his treatment of his first wife.

Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit.

‘When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it.

‘Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better.

‘This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it all belonged to Carol.’

One old friend of the McCains said: ‘Carol always insists she is not bitter, but I think that’s a defence mechanism. She also feels deeply in his debt because in return for her agreement to a divorce, he promised to pay for her medical care for the rest of her life.’

Carol remained resolutely loyal as McCain’s political star rose. She says she agreed to talk to The Mail on Sunday only because she wanted to publicise her support for the man who abandoned her.

Indeed, the old Mercedes that she uses to run errands displays both a disabled badge and a sticker encouraging people to vote for her ex-husband. ‘He’s a good guy,’ she assured us. ‘We are still good friends. He is the best man for president.’

But Ross Perot, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of modern politics.

‘McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,’ he said.

‘After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.’

Update

ok I haven't posted in over a month. That is because things are going well.

 

I'm sewing more. I'm reading more. I'm selling more stuff on eBay. I'm working. I'm taking care of my little family. Things are good with the Mackistani. I'm industrious, hemming people's clothes for them and stuff. I'm learning about designing websites in my spare time and trying to help Mack with his little business. Holy Lord his communication skills are a problem. So basically things are good. There are a few nettles but I can't really complain. Well....I can. But I choose not to!!! LOL

 

The sales people at work are still ravenous and food-obsessed. I'm refusing to go get the food even this minute. Supervisor is out this week and Twiggy is so excited about doing her job. As if. She isn't supposed to be back there at supervisor's desk right now because she's supposed to be up here answering phones, but she's milking that for all it's worth to escape the reality that she's a travel-arranging receiptionist. Oh well, let's be charitable. It's not like I'm cranking out all kinds of work nor is it like I need to. Let her have her break. If it gets busy later, I can always send the phones to her.