The World According to Mike.

Rent this house, only 4000 a month!!

I like to browse craigslist.  It is a good time killer and has become an obsession.  Lately I have been seeing people trying to rent out their houses.  I assume these are homes that they can not sell but are not living in so they want to make some money on them.  The part I find so interesting is that they are trying to get people to pay most of the mortgage payment in rent.  A mortgage payment that most people know was too high to start with. 

Here is a great example.
http://ventura.craigslist.org/apa/569214155.html

You only have to pay 4k a month to live in this house.  I will admit that this is a very nice house in a nice area of Thousand Oaks, CA.  But 4,000 a month, wow.  4,000 that is just thrown away.  I could not imagine having that much money to just throw out every month. 

What could you get for 4000 a month, besides a huge savings account.  Let’s take a look.  At a 6% interest rate you could get a loan for about 600k.  The average home you can buy in this area for that kind of money is 4 bedroom, 2 bath, 1800 square feet. 

I don’t know about you but I think that I would rather buy than rent.  But it is still taking home owners a while to understand that their properties are not worth what realtors were once telling them.