本帖最後由 BiscottiGelato 於 2010-7-16 18:01 編輯
Sometimes I see that people view buying a place as some virtuous financial goal of a life-time. 上車 is viewed as some sacred achievement by some. It's okay to adopt such a viewpoint, but only if one recognizes the countering viewpoints. From my narrow observations, there are usually 2 reasons for a single individual (not maried/common-law etc) to buy a place
1. Housing is an awesome investment in the long term (20 years - 30 years time frame), even if one'd have negative real rental yield (minus inflation, interest and other maintenance and management costs). Capital appreciation will always trump the negative yield.
2. Owning a place and moving out to live by oneself is a need. As soon as you can afford it one shall do so right away.
For 1, I personally think that people are influenced by the prior generation, and history of the past 20-30 years into thinking that real estate is the ultimate investment in terms of risk/return. For most people that are born post 1950's, housing boom have been with them through-out all their lives. They have gotten accustom to the boom and think that perpetual housing price increase, on the long term, it's a law of physics. So it doesn't matter even if one have bought at peak. They'd think that any counter example are exceptions, not the norm, and will surely catch back up if the investment horizon is sufficiently long. I personally have reservation in this line of view point.
For 2, I personally think that living by oneself is a luxury, not a need. If buying a place and renting it out is not an attractive investment, then buying a place and living by oneself is simply a luxury spending. The money that's sunk in interest, maintenance, property tax obviously would be pricey, but at least can be viewed as a cost of investment. But compared to living with parents or siblings, you are basically doubling all the other costs, on things such as buying groceries, phone bill, TV bill, internet bill, etc etc. Those are definately avoidable luxury spending that doesn't contribute to the investment in the hope of real estate capital appreciation.
Obviously, different people value things differently. I myself, as a single individual, just doesn't find the need to buy a place, nor do I think it's a good investment. I consider it as a very overpriced luxury item that I don't want to spend my money on. So it's not 易上車 or 難上車. To me, it's just 唔低買. In such light, the topic of the thread already seemed to be skewed towards the side that "one must buy a place, it's either u can afford it or not afford it". Which IMO is just very narrow visioned, biased and simply incorrect. |
發表於 2010-7-16 17:16
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