My 10-Year Odyssey Through America’s Housing Crisis
I bought my first very similar house in 2005 and experienced this exact thing. Fresh out of college, moved to South for a promising job, and bought something small I could easily afford. I even wrote about the potential of a housing crash in Oct 2005 ( <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;chir.ag&#x2F;200510301225" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;chir.ag&#x2F;200510301225</a> ). I lived there through the housing bubble, saw my 145k house go up to 200k and then down to 75k, rented it out after I got married and moved away, and kept losing thousands each year for 5-6 years.<p>Last week someone offered to buy it for just a bit over my mortgage pay off balance. I will lose a few thousand but at least I will be out of the landlording business. I have my fingers crossed that the inspection goes well but I&#x27;m not holding my breath.<p>&gt; From the original purchase in 2005 to last year’s sale, I lost $25,500. My losses as a landlord? At least $35,000. Whatever the sum, it no longer mattered. I was free.<p>It&#x27;s scary how similar even his figures are to mine. I bought a much more modest house than I could have bought in a prime location, I fought hard to get a great deal on my mortgage, I paid bills on time and kept up with maintenance, and I&#x27;ve kept up with the market trends so as not to miss my chance to refinance&#x2F;sell.<p>Time and again I asked myself what I did wrong to lose 60k+ of my hard earned money over a decade. But after an investor friend of mine discussed his plans to buy numerous distressed properties to fix and rent them, I realized what had happened. The Great Recession had turned affordable residential real-estate into a zero sum game. I, along with millions of others had to lose 10k each per year to make it worth it for him to be a residential real-estate investor. My piggy bank investment was competing in the same arena has his tooth-and-nails livelihood.<p>The big lesson is that market manipulation can convert a non-zero sum activity into a zero-sum activity. It used to be that your small family home was a safe, gradually appreciating asset. Most everyone won, few lost.<p>&gt; In 1944, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern proved that any non-zero-sum game for n players is equivalent to a zero-sum game with n + 1 players; the (n + 1)th player representing the global profit or loss. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Zero-sum_game#Extensions" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Zero-sum_game#Extensions</a><p>Just need one new player to turn the game around. Enter my friend and a few thousand others like him with resources to buy out every third upside-down house in the neighborhood with cash, upgrade bath and kitchen, and then rent them out long-term with a team of property managers. It&#x27;s a sellers market but very few homeowners are bidding up sub-200k houses. Instead it&#x27;s the cash investors low-balling the price until owners such as myself and the author just break down and say &#x27;Screw it! At least the 60k loss will save me some taxes next year.&#x27;