Dahon.Steve

You're very lucky.

I live in the New York Metro and you can't touch a home for less than 245K. Most of the homes around my way are going for over 360K! In other words, your mortgage will be much more than 1200 bucks a month even with a 10% down. You're income alone will have to be around 70-100 K a year if you're not married. You still have pay for PMI, repairs and did I mention taxes! People around my way are paying in taxes what I pay for rent! It's insane and getting crazy. Real estate prices in the past four years have gone through the roof and you need two incomes to hold down a mortgage. What I need is a wife and fast! I refuse to go for a no money down loan but that maybe my only option because I can't save fast enough to make 20% down before the prices rise again! I heard the other day that 40% of all mortgages have no down payment. Scary.

Dahon.Steve

Folks. Here I am thinking how terrible my life is without being able to afford a house and having no significant other and then someone posts this. Now I don't feel so bad and I thank the poster for being truthful and real. There are many people doing so much worse in life that you just have to be happy with what you have. I know a guy my age right now dying in a hospital at this very moment. Let me tell you, if you don't have your health, you have nothing.

cerewa

Dahon.Steve- maybe you should just keep on renting, given the current market.

There's no guarantee that the NYC housing market won't take a dive.

Although one option is to move out of NYC. Philly is pretty nice...

If you want fairly cheap housing in a tight market, go for less space rather than more. That's the trouble with houses, they generally don't come nearly as small as my apartment. (Heating bills are generally lower on apartments too.)

Mortgage-subsidies considered, i'd say it's still better financially to go with the minimum amount of space to suit your needs. If you're a renter, you can put money in the bank instead of into home equity.

Also, as far as freedom to dump one's lease-

You can always try to find someone to take over your lease if you want to leave an apartment before your lease is done. You're not absolutely tied to paying rent unless there's nobody your landlord will accept who wants to take over your place.

Roody

I was homeless for a while in the mid-1970s recession, when a mixup at the unemployment office left me high and dry. Luckily I was in San Diego and able to sleep on the beach. For a young man it was a lot of fun, though also stressful. Every morning I wondered if I would be able to scrounge the wherewithall to make it through another day. But in the evenings I enjoyed the fellowship of the other beach bums. Every night we would pool our meager resources and buy some wine. It was always a waiting game to see if the guys who went to buy the wine would ever come back with it! Then we'd build a little fire and sing songs ("Bobby McGee" was a favorite) and swap stories. I remember one guy said he hadn't slept indoors for over 15 years. Even when he visited his sister's house he would sleep in her back yard.

If you slept on the beach, the tide would come in and you might get wet. If you slept on the bluff above the beach, the cops would roust you a couple times during the night. The surf would sing you to sleep and you'd wake up every morning with the same view that folks in La Jolla paid a million dollars to see.

After a couple weeks, four months worth of unemployment checks all came in at the same time. I took the Greyhound back to Michigan, and soon was full time at both college and work.

Since then, I've always rented. I'm a good steady tenant. I lived in one rental house for 13 years, and I've been alone in my little apartment for five years now. I think renting vs. buying is a personal choice with absolutely no moral or ethical overtones. You can use a spreadsheet to figure out which makes the most financial sense, but often it comes down to whether you want to fix the garbage disposal when it breaks own.

Mtn Mike

I'm not old enough to have that kind of introspective. Ask me again in 20 years!

timmhaan

i've moved 5 times within the last 6 years. and i'm planning to move into my GF's apartment next month and then we'll probably move to a bigger place within a year or two. if that happens, i'll have moved 7 times!

as such, i'm absolutely dying to have a stable living condition. moving all the time between rentals or staying with people is exhausting. it's fine for now, but within a few years i'll need to claim a stake to something.

Sir Lunch-a-lot

Here's a somewhat silly thought: What if one were to build/modify a bike trailer so that it was a sort of mini sleeping unit (kind of like what you see with some motorbikes). One could insulate it with thin foam insulation sheets or something, have a couple of foam mats as a mattress, a hatch on the back (perhaps built to use standard house door latch and locking mechanisms), one of those little roof vents (like camping trailers have), maybe a section on the trailer in which a solar oven could be stored, possibly a little tank for storing drinking water, etc. Then, if one were to get really creative, you could add on a toilet/shower stall (that would be collapsable, walls made out of tarp or something of that likes (granted at this point its probably starting to get a bit heavy.) The possiblilitys are (possibly) endless. Such a trailer could allow one to live a nomadic stort of lifestyle, or just go camping in style. Maybe one could even rig it so that you could park in a parking lot over night and plug it into a power outlet to run a heater on colder nights, or even watch a small tv or something. (Or one could do a solar power rig.) Something like this could be good for being home free. Then, if you could come up with a steady source of income (Bottle and Can collecting, maybe? Being a courier or something, delivering packages throughout a given area of the city?), you're good to go.

It's fun to think about at any rate.

Dahon.Steve

That's what I intend to do. It's incredible how many luxury apartments builidngs are being constructed today. They are not affordable and many of these towers remain empty. We have an unaffordable housing glut and an affordable housing shortage.

I myself am wondering when this housing market will take a dive. I don't think it will because cities need all the property taxes they can get so I don't see assessements going down any time soon. I do think we are headed for a recesssion and then we'll see what happens.

I like Philly too and they have an excellant transit system.

timmhaan

no kidding. the luxury market is crazy! almost every new development i've personally seen has been a suite of luxury units. i wonder how this is going to play out in the long run? surely the market can't bare this forever.

Artkansas 

When I lived in Coachella Valley there was one fellow who was always towing a hand-built trailer behind his bike. From what I could see, he lived in it. But he was always pretty private so I never got the chance to talk to him about it, though I would see it parked near Hwy 111 and Washington by the Swiss Donut pretty frequently. It had to be fairly heavy, even on flat ground he was using gears that must have been down into the teens.

Artkansas 

Yeah, it's ironic. When I lived in Coachella Valley I saw one house sell for $30,000 and 6 years later sell again for $300,000. I knew some of the contractors and they said it had become a problem to get enough skilled workers to compete. The houses had become so expensive that the people building the houses couldn't afford to live there.

v1nce

Interesting stories all! Some really do make me feel blessed. That other thread is going pretty well. Concerning that thread i will say this,.. i am not in my 30's yet but am glad i am thinking about these things and even taking action. If one waits untill one is older to do this kind of introspection or to make changes it could end up being too late (sortoff)... or not. As for buying or renting a home not being a political thing, well i guess it depends on the person. For me and from my point of view everything i do has some sort of political (personal not parliamentary) effect. Consumption or acquisition (whether it be food, a home or whatever) especially is pretty much like voting with my money... but that is how i see it. I can well imagine that people choose to look at it a different way.

That Bike trailer thing is feasible, there is even a movie about some guy doing it except he rides a tiny tractor in front of it (very slow speed) and is old as well. But i am not sure what the title was, anyone know?

eofelis 

[QUOTE=PVyrus] I can’t get a good job because of my poor education and sleep disorder, so besides being car-free I’m looking for other ways to live with my current min-wage job should I have to leave. I don’t need much space, so renting a room out of someone’s house sounds like a good idea, plus I love the idea of community housing (especially with friends, but they all live too far away). [QUOTE]

I just recently rented a room in a house. It's only been not quite a week yet, but it's working out fine. A bit of my situation is that I moved out of the apt I shared with my bf as I felt I need my own space for a while. I'm nearly 40 yrs old, so I didn't make any rash immature decisions. Anyway, I felt I didn't really need a whole apt for myself, and couldn't afford it on my student budget anyway. I found a good situation. I got a furnished bedroom with my own bathroom. (The only furniture I brought was a small desk for my computer). I share a living room and kitchen with 2 other roommates. We all get along good, and mind our own business. The owners of the house live right next door and are nice folks. There is a TV with cable (a treat for me) and one of the roommates has a phone he will let me use. I feel like my life has been simplified a lot. I pay my rent and no other bills. I like it. I have my own space, but I also get a bit of social interaction each day if I happen to cross paths with a roommate. Since I have the place to myself most of time, I feel like I'm renting a house for much less than it would cost to rent an apt.

Roody

This sounds like a good setup for you. Just curious--where do you keep your bikes?

Sir Lunch-a-lot

As Peter Parker's (Spiderman's) Uncle says, "These are the years in which we become the men we are going to be for the rest of our lives." (Or something to that effect).

tharold

I lived in my van for about a year, partly while I was going to school. This was mostly in Austin Tx so the winters are bearable.

It's completely doable. The biggest problems were find a place to park and shower. And remembering where you parked... Cooking was not a problem, I had a coleman 1-burner. While I was going to school I would use the gym showers. Other times and on the road I would wash my hair at a rest stop or a burger joint restroom.

You do have to work at it. One time I had to drop the engine in a deserted parking lot to change the clutch throwout bearing. And it started to rain! No fun wrestling a 300lb greasy engine alone in the rain.

But there were pluses too. I remember listening to the rain freezing one night as I fell asleep. Or spending the night beneath a tree full of flashing fireflies (I opened the hatch cut in the roof).

roccobike

Home ownership in the 80's was THEE way to go. Increased home value was a sure thing for nine of the ten years in that decade. But for today's young home owners, I'm not so sure it is such a great investment. If you have a family with children, then yes a home offers space that apartments, mobile homes and vans can't offer. But for the single or couple with no children, I think buying a house is more of a personal choice or lifestyle than an investment. As for me, if I had the choice, I would still choose a house because I value the independence, space and comfort it affords me.

eofelis 

I have 2 of my bikes with me (Pacer & Randonee) and they are in my bedroom. I locked them together, plus there is a lock on the door for when I'm not there. My other two bikes are still at my former apt., which is fine with everyone for now.

The only downside of this has been that I went from 1/2 mile to 3 miles away from the college I go to. And I'm not within walking distance of much of anything. Sure, a doable bikeride (all flat) but it's been cold, and the anxiety of doing the move and dealing with stuff has me wiped out and I haven't felt like riding much, so I have been driving my car more. I'll be back to riding soon enough though.

PVyrus

I've wondered this myself, and it is a very interesting thought so I'll throw some ideas on the fire... Something like that would definatially get VERY heavy for a bike to pull, so I figured that it would have a small solar-powered motor with battery storage to help "lighten the load", much like an E-bike's pedal-assist. The battery might even be able to provide power for things like laptops or heaters, but probably not for long. During the day, it would collapsed into a small arodynamic storage unit, than it would prop open into a sheltered sleeping area kept aloft by tires and stilts. I can't imagine putting a bathroom into it because the water-based storage would get heavy and smelly. There would probably be a lot of problems with this though such as finding space to tow, finding places to prop for the night, the battery running out of juice, and machanical things to worry about, but to see one in action would be awesome! But another disadvantage I see is it would take away the "getting back to nature under man-power" bit, but than agian it might be the perfect solution for those who are traveling to weather worn areas (or for people like me who need power to run a CPAP machine during the night).

attercoppe

I'd just like to insert here a bit of hippie crap about civil discussion...it's so nice to see all of us here getting along so well despite some varied opinions on various issues. This thread may well have gone off topic a bit, and arguably isn't strictly a living car-free issue, but it sure is a nice change from some of the vitriolic threads lately. Thank you all.

eofelis 

A while back I saw a link somewhere to a site where they had bike trailers that folded out to some sort of little tent trailer. A Google search might turn up something.

I just searched around on the web a bit with no luck, but this link was interesting:
https://www.sherpacart.com/

v1nce

+1 To last post! Some people on these boards need to relax! Or at very least get worked if they must up but not take out their rage at others and hence remain civil.

On the trailer thing,.. i am not sure i still reckon a Hennessey Hammock or such might be a better bet/bed. Or maybe a tent that you can set up at night on the platform of the trailer.

One thing which i have always thought is very important:

If one is going for the extended tour type thing one thing that can really make life way better is other people. Having some sort of conversations starter (URL on bike, postcards you sell with a link to Blog), looking neat and approachable can really get you far in terms of places to crash, a warm shower and maybe even a temporary job.

Artkansas 

Start your saving and investing now! Even a little now can pile up cash substantially with relatively little work. Getting a house that can appreciate is not a foolish thing to do. It all becomes much harder later.

v1nce

For sure and that is exactly what i am doing (if you read my prevous posts, i think it is pretty clear).. but i am saving to DIY build not to buy (well maybe the land) in spain.

srrs

i don't live house free. however, i always keep myself in a situation where i can up and leave any time if i want to. i don't sign any lease more than month-to-month, and often i just don't have a lease at all. i currently have a car that it's possible to comfortably and easily sleep in, but soon i'll be trading it in for a bunch of touring gear, which'll serve basically the same purpose - if, for some reason, i feel the need to leave suddenly, i can. pack up the important stuff, put the rest in storage or just leave it, and disappear.

it's funny that i live like this, because it's not like i move all that often, or that i leave places suddenly. i just feel much more safe and happy when i know that if i want to i can leave whenever i want. otherwise, i feel trapped.