买自住房和买投资出租房的思想方法很不一样,要严格区分 (zz from miat42)

For investment house, you want to have cash flow positive, goodrentability, and good future appreciation potential. The price must below enough to give you relief on carrying cost. Often, these standardswill lead you lower income districts such as Hispanic areas.

For self-living house, you want to have nice and safe environment,educated neighbors, great schools, also good future appreciationpotential. These standards will lead you to expensive areas. There areno freebies in this world. You get what you pay for. If you can afford,you should buy according to self-living standards.

However, when you don't have children, and don't expect to have themfor the next 5-7 years (that means you are young), you may adopt theinvestor's logic and buy a house that you can afford but in a poorerneighborhood.

From my researches, appreciation percentage for a poorer neighborhoodis very equivalent to that for a richer neighborhood. For example, inthe Bay area, a 300K in Mexican district can rise to 600K during aboom. Similarly, a 600K house in a good school district can rise up to1.2 million. They have similar appreciation percentage. Therefore, fromcash flow point of view, it makes very much sense to split 1.2 millionto buy Four 300K house in Mexican district than buy one single house ina good district. From math point of view, I bet everybody willunderstand that.

If you are not investor, and hate to deal with such investment idea, Isuggest that you adopt the logic for a self-living buyer, buy the housein a good district. In other word follow richman's logic.

You do need to know what kind of buyer you are first!