Who needs parents when you have a landlord?

How long are  you going to live in someone else's house?  Where are you on the "grown up and independent" scale?

1. Live with Mom and Dad for free.

2. Live with Mom and Dad and pay rent.

3. Go away to school and live in student housing.

4. Get a job and rent an apartment, town home, or house.

5. Your own place.

Numbers 1, 2, & 3 tend to be age-limited for most of us.  Somewhere beyond reaching puberty, we easily move through the first three stages.  Parents never understand that we aren't still children, and schools either graduate us or kick us out. 

Stage 4 is the tough one.  We can remain there forever, yet the landlord takes the place of your parents and treats you like you're a child. You're told that, even though it's your place (sort of), you can't do anything to it without permission, and you probably won't get permission.  You can have a pet rock, but nothing alive.  Oh, by the way, the rent is going up again.

That's no way for an adult to live. Even the government knows that it's time for you to take off the training wheels.  They're offering a bonus to anyone who fires their landlord and gets their own place.  Washington is offering you a dollar an hour, every hour 24/7 for the first 333 days you live in your new home, just for telling your landlord that you don't care if he says you can't have a Golden Retriever, you're getting one anyway.

We have often heard that patience is a virtue.  Sure it is, I guess.  You want to leave the training wheels on another year because it looks like home prices are still dropping.  Well, maybe you're right about prices, maybe. Chances are that interest rates are going to go up over the next year, and the free money from the government is going away soon.

By doing a little figuring, it looks to me that, if interest rates go up just one percent, you had better hope that home prices go down by at around ten percent.  To get about the same principal and interest payment, that's about what it will take.  Of course, there will probably not be a landlord firing bonus next year, or even next month. 

I'm not a great fortune teller, but it sure looks like mortgage rate increases are at least as good a bet as home price decreases, maybe even better.  Waiting is probably not a great strategy.  Today is the perfect day to fire your landlord.  Need help?  Call me now 612-916-3033 for a free, no obligation consultation and first time homebuyer orientation.