How the hell do people afford housing?

[mnhtnbb]

48. Timing is everything in real estate.

We had a fire that burned our house down in 2007. Had to fight the insurance company to get what we were owed--based on a replacement value policy--
and ended up having to hire a public adjuster (give him 15% of what was collected) because the insurance company REFUSED to give us more than
2/3 of what we owed on our loan claiming that was the value of the house. They finally paid us enough to pay off the loan, but we still had to come
up with cash out of pocket to clear the lot of the burned down house and take down some trees that had burned and were a hazard. That cost us
about $30,000. Out of pocket. Should have been covered by insurance.

We rented for a year. A small house came on the market in our same neighborhood, and we decided to buy it and remodel/update it. The insurance
company didn't fight us on contents replacement and we basically used the money from that for the remodel of the house.

Yeah, you guessed it. We bought that little house in 2008. Absolutely top of the market. Probably paid about $65,000. more than we should have.
Then we put more money into it.

About 2 years later we decided to rebuild on the lot where the house burned. We had a rental apartment on top of the detached garage that didn't burn
and figured we could get almost enough rent that would pay the property taxes. We determined--at our ages then 68 and 59--that we could afford to use
cash (from a lifetime of investment) to rebuild a house that we intended to design so we could "age in place". I hate these retirement communities
of nothing but old folks. Lots of people in our area go into them when they are in their 70's. Not for me. Shoot me first, please. We figured we'd
sell the little house we had bought/remodeled. Well. In 2011 we moved in to the new, single level house and put the little house on the market.
Nothing. No action. Not an offer for 4 months and meanwhile we're making mortgage payments. Pulled the house off the market and rented it within
a week since we live walking distance to campus at UNC - Chapel Hill. We continued to rent it for another three years. By that time hubby is 71
and still working almost full time but really wanting to back off to half time. Our youngest son was accepted to grad school at Yale School of Drama--with an excellent financial aid package--
but was still going to need more than $10K a year in living expenses. He wanted to take student loans and we convinced him not to--that we'd sell the little house and use cash from
that to help him. He could just consider it getting inheritance early. So, we put the little house back on the market. Lots and lots of showings. Not one offer until 6 months later (and
now vacant since tenant moved out three months earlier) while we're still making mortgage payments on it--for $10K more than we paid for it. We figured we had put at least $100K in to
the remodeling/updating. So there went the contents insurance money, but we did clear enough to help our son for three years of grad school. That was 2014.

OK. Fast forward to about a week ago. The house across the street from the little house goes on the market. Same size. Original owners who are going to retirement community.
That house sold in LESS THAN A WEEK listed at the same price as where we had priced our little house. My guess is close to--if not--full price. No updated kitchen or baths. They patched the roof that needs replacement. No big deck or carport which our little house had. I contacted our realtor--who also had their listing--and his response was "the market is hot again".

Timing. It's all about timing. If we'd held that little house until now--renting it to cover mortgage/taxes--I suspect we could have gotten $50K more than we did, which would be
about what you'd expect to get for having updated the place.

It's all about timing. In hindsight, we would have been better off NOT buying/updating that little house and dumping the lot for what we could have gotten out of it and not rebuilding.
How could you know?