Negotiation Tactics When Buying a Home
In today’s real estate market, you really need to know what you’re doing. Interest rates haven’t been this high in decades, pushing most home buyers to the sidelines. It’s also sidelined sellers since they know fewer people can afford homes with such high interest rates. Often, sellers plan to immediately become buyers once they’ve sold their home since they need a new place to live. In doing so, they’d have to give up their (likely) low interest rate loan when they sell and take on today’s high interest rates when repurchasing. Again, since this is not a desirable outcome for sellers, even fewer people are putting their homes on the market.
That’s all to say that inventory and demand are low, bringing the market to a grinding halt. However, if you’ve been keeping a close eye on your local market this year, the few brave sellers willing to sell their homes have been dropping their list prices quite a lot. So perhaps, if you’re careful, you may actually be in a good position to buy a home now despite today’s high interest rate environment. Read on to find out how!
How I’ll Spend $2 Million Dollars
After selling my primary residence in California for almost $1 million over asking price, I received over $2 million in cash from the sale. I can’t let that amount of cash just sit around idly; it’s always best to put money to work so it continues to earn more on your behalf. In this blog post, I will share what my plans are for the $2 million. And no. I’m not going to gamble it all away in crypto!
What's A Better Investment: Primary Residence or Stocks?
Normally, a primary residence should not be considered an investment unless you house hack and rent out part of the home while you live in it or you end up selling the home. In the house hacking scenario, your primary residence acts like an investment because renting out a portion of your home could certainly reduce your housing costs. Better yet, if done right, it could even net you a profit!
If you end up selling your primary residence, the home acts like an investment because you will hopefully yield some capital gains after building equity for many years. Plus, selling your primary residence has a nice tax perk where you can exclude up to $250K (single) or $500K (married) of the capital gains from taxes! The latter scenario is what my partner and I recently did when we sold our home in California for nearly $1 million over asking. So how does our primary residence as an investment compare with, say, the stock market? Let’s dive into the numbers today and find out!
Selling My Silicon Valley Home For Nearly $1 Million Over Asking
In 2015, my partner and I bought our first home together in Silicon Valley, California. Our home was zoned for some of the best schools in the country, so the plan was to live in the house at least until our (future) child would finish high school. Never in our dreams did we even think of selling our home just 7 years later and relocating to another state. But plans change and my partner and I are the type of people who know how to pivot when it makes sense. So today, I will share how we sold our home for nearly $1 million over the asking price!
What It's Like Living in Texas as a California Native
Moving from California to Texas was not an easy decision. After all, my entire family is California-native. Nevertheless, after much research and planning, we firmly believe we made the right decision to relocate to Dallas at the end of last year. After living in Dallas for about 2 months now, I wanted to share some of my observations about the area and how it contrasts with California. Many of them were expected, but not everything!
2022 Business and Personal Goals
Happy New Year! To kick off every new year, I like to set goals for all aspects of my life, both personal and professional. By publicizing my goals, it helps me stay accountable for the things I set out to accomplish for the year. I also hope that some of my goals inspire you to set some for yourselves, too! Let’s get started.
My 2021 Year-End Review
At the start of 2021, I set out to accomplish some business and personal finance goals for the year. By the middle of the year, I published a review of how those goals were progressing, as well as some of my personal goals (not money-related). Now that we’re at the end of 2021 (crazy how fast it went), I will do one final review of both my money & non-money goals and share how I did!
I Just FIRE’d Myself At 31
When I was studying computer science in college just over 10 years ago, I told my partner that I was going to retire early. They didn’t understand what this meant at the time, nor was I taken seriously. We hadn’t even started working yet, so how could we think about retirement already? Well, fast forward to today, and I have 2 major life updates to share with you all!
First, I have officially quit my corporate career at the age of 31, having worked for just a decade. Second, I’m relocating from Silicon Valley, California to Dallas, Texas, accelerating my FI/RE timeline by nearly a decade! These were some of the hardest decisions I’ve made in my life, but they are ultimately right for me and my family. I’m positive that at least 80% of you have thought of relocating (however fleeting) and are also wondering why I am quitting my corporate career at such a young age, so I will share my thought process and reasoning in this blog post.
Doubling My $125K Investment to $250K in 1 Month
I thought that flipping one of my out-of-state properties for over $100,000 in profits in under 4 months was out of this world! While I wasn’t wrong about its success, I also never expected to beat that accomplishment in such a short period of time. The punch line? I doubled my $125K investment to $250K in just 1 month! In today’s post, I talk about my original plan for the investment, the numbers behind it, and why it was so profitable.
How I Flipped an Out-of-State Home for Over $100K Profit In Less Than 4 Months
Earning a lot of money doesn’t mean you have to have a high-paying 9-to-5 job; it can come from a side hustle like my out-of-state flipping business! In fact, because my flipping business can be so lucrative and take just a few hours a week, I often wonder why I should even keep my 9-to-5. Well, I’ll save the answer to that thought for another day. Today, I will share my experience buying an off-market property and how I ultimately sold it for a massive profit!
When It Makes Financial Sense To Relocate
The Great Resignation (AKA the “Big Quit”) of 2021 is the incredible phenomenon driven primarily by millions of Millennials and Gen Zers who have been quitting their jobs in droves. COVID-19 has forced many employers to offer work-from-home benefits. So, employees have increasingly enjoyed better work-life balance and flexibility to do things on their terms. With employers seeking to reverse that trend by requiring employees to return to the office, employees are opting out by seeking other opportunities that allow them to continue to enjoy their work-from-home privileges permanently. And with millions of workers seeking to stay or become fully remote, why continue to live in a HCOL (high cost of living) city? Maybe it makes financial sense to relocate to a cheaper area and get a bigger bang for your buck. Let’s dive in!
Why Turning A Primary Residence Into A Rental Is A Bad Idea
If you’re thinking about or already have turned a primary residence into a rental, you might want to rethink that. Even if your property is allegedly in a “high appreciation” market, it still may not make financial sense to hold on to it. To understand why, it all comes down to a numbers game, especially taxes. In this post, I will share why I decided to sell my very 1st primary residence instead of turning it into a rental, how I determined that was the best financial decision, and the numbers to back up my decision.
My 1st North Dallas Flip Sold For $130,000 Over Appraised Value
In my previous post, I talked about my house-flipping strategy and my takeaways from my 1st out-of-state flip. However, when I wrote that article, I hadn’t officially sold the home yet. But today, I’m happy to announce that I’ve officially sold the home! While it was a happy ending, when I first listed the home for sale, the listing really got off on the wrong foot. Today, I will share the full story with you.
8 Steps To Buying A Home Anywhere
The home-buying process can be overwhelming, especially for 1st-timers. Even experienced real estate investors have their work cut out for them since every real estate transaction can pose unique challenges. However, the majority of the process (and paperwork, ugh!) is largely the same every time. In this post, I will go over the broad strokes of the home-buying process to help you understand what it takes to become a homeowner. Let’s dive right in!
My Top 9 Tips For 1st-Time Home Buyers
Having bought my 1st home at age 22 and after taking part in dozens of purchases over the years, I’ve been asked by so many people for tips to buy their 1st home. Depending on where you live, the market can be red hot where multiple offers and bidding wars are normal, leaving many of you wondering how to even compete.
In this article, I will talk about common dangers of being a buyer, how to navigate through those pitfalls, and some of my top techniques that I employ when I’m shopping around for a home. Even if you are an experienced home-buyer, many of the tips and tricks I’ll talk about in this article are applicable to buying any home, not just a primary residence.
Bad Debt, Better Debt
Okay, you made a mistake of carrying your credit card balance over one month. So what? It’s just a month. Next, you continued to carry that balance over one more month. No problem, you’ll pay it off in the 3rd month for sure. Uh oh, time has really gotten away, and now it’s been an entire year, and that balance has really grown! Now you’re in a real pickle and don’t know how to stop the vicious cycle. How will you get out of this cycle?
Predictions of 2021’s Economy and Investing Landscape
Between COVID-19, the March 2020 stock market crash to all-time highs for a basket of stay-at-home stocks, no one could’ve predicted what 2020 had in store for us. Let’s have a little fun today by looking into our crystal balls and predict what 2021 has in store for us! At the time of writing, it is December 30, 2020. By the time you’re reading this, some of my predictions may have already come true!
How A Self-Made Millionaire Budgets
Have you ever wondered how much a millionaire spends per year? Do they even have budgets? What do they spend their money on? Speaking from firsthand experience as a self-made millionaire, I definitely do have a budget, and I know exactly where my money is spent every month. It’s important to know where my money is spent no matter how high my net worth is. Tracking my expenses and comparing them against my budget is crucial to attaining financial independence some day. Becoming a self-made millionaire in my 20s didn’t happen by sheer luck; it was calculated. Budgeting helped me get to where I am today, and I assure you that it will continue to help me reach my goal to attain financial independence by 40.
Why I Decided to Buy Instead of Rent
Many of us grew up dreaming of owning our own house some day for a variety of reasons. Maybe somewhere along the way, a seed was planted in your mind that buying a house is part of the American Dream. Or maybe your parents owned their own house, and you simply assumed it must be the best path for you, too. Well, maybe. Maybe not. To help you make the right decision (and it’s a big one), let’s put those societal factors aside for a moment and focus on the financial aspect of buying versus renting.