All Forum Posts by: Dennis Cosgrave

My first question would be, What was your original investment strategy? If the price appreciation objective has been met, then I would sell. If you do not have a long term investment strategy, I recommend that you put some serious thought into it, formulate a plan and then stick to it. 

You failed to mention how much equity you will have. If you have $300k cash to invest, then I would buy 2 homes, or with that kind of cash, I would buy an apartment building. If you have only sufficient cash to leverage $300k in financing, I would buy one property so that I have sufficient reserves. 

The tax is legitimate. Read the following article. 

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=8a0c6dc5-bcae-4637-bb10-e7fa158f3d1b

It is not just the WFH phenomenon that is driving this trend. The BLM protests just added fuel to the fire. To make matters worse, the demands to defund police departments are actually being implemented in some cities. In NYC, de Balsio cut the police budget by $1 billion and within a week crime increased 380%. Who wants to live in that kind of environment? WFH just made the decision to leave a lot easier. 

Looking a little further down the road, municipalities have lost serious revenue from the COVID lock down and they will be raising taxes to compensate for the losses. Smaller communities suffered less.

I forgot to mention the pension problems that some major blue cities have. More tax revenue is being diverted to cover pension payouts that will result in other services being cut or taxes raised again. 

When you add this all up, the future for big cities, especially those that are leftist and financially unstable, does not look promising.

Was this a private deal or did you both use brokers? If there was a selling broker involved, it would be his responsibility to know that there was $20k owed above and beyond the selling price and it was his duty to disclose that information to prospective buyers. Since it was not disclosed, you might have a case against the broker and the loss might be covered under his E&O insurance.

If this was a private deal, the obvious question is, Is the property still a good deal for $20k more? If so, I would kick it in and close the deal. 

There is also another factor at play. After the COVID lock down and the accompanying WFH, followed by the BLM protests and talk of defunding the police, many people are looking to get out of the large urban centres and out to the suburbs or more rural communities. I am sure that is helping to drive demand in those areas. 

There is an old saying; An agreement is not worth the paper it is NOT written on. Hopefully, you learned a valuable lesson from this experience and it is good it happened when you are just starting out. Always get everything in writing, even if you partner is your life-long best friend. People have short memories and will often forget things. A written agreement provides a written record of what was actually agreed to and the signatures verify that written record. $100 spent on an attorney today saves you thousands down the road. 

The end of unemployment benefits are the least of my concerns. I am more worried about the continuing economic fallout from the lock down. Now there is talk of a second wave, and a reinstatement of further lock downs.That would likely destroy the economy for a very long time. As a previous poster pointed out, even when the benefits end, there are fewer jobs to return to. 

Given the current uncertainties, I would probably buy precious metals, evenly split between gold and silver and wait for the next correction. Inflation is around the corner. The question is, how bad will it be? Once the correction comes, I would buy a self sustaining farm as far away from major urban centers as practically possible.