Bog: I totally understand what you might be feeling with 1/2 a million as a sales price, but honestly it's JUST A PAYMENT and one day that might be easier to make. with the credit of rent or extra monthly payments I was thinking of a way you could get the down payment which might be the hardest thing to get or save for.
when i was a bit younger than you maybe in my late teens one of my older friends offered to sell me one of her rental homes for say $10,000 (it was 40 some years ago and wages were about $2 per hour then). she knew i had money, but my dad never mentioned anything about FINANCING a sale so i'd always PAID CASH and I HAD ZERO DEBT.
so I told her i couldn't afford it and I bet i had $8,500 cash (I started working at age 12 and moved out of my parent's home at 18) at the time and didn't think about asking if I could pay her $100 or $200 per month to pay it off. that same house today is worth maybe $600,000.
so not to bring all this out on the internet about yours or anybody's personal finances I just know you are making that place of yours much more valuable even if you think any new owner might tear it down it really is looking a lot better.
so moral of the story if you want to be debt free that is a good thing, but major purchases usually need to have some borrowed money involved so you can pay for it over time then one day it will be FREE AND CLEAR.
NOW back to your garage and hope the cats and dogs are still making you smile!!
I understand your point of view and genuinely appreciate your advice, but there are multiple reasons that make this investment not possible.
The main reason is that Romanians are a lot different from Americans.
I see that Americans have a great job mobility. You can sell your house in a heartbeat if you find a better paid job or one with a better future prospects.
This can be also seen by the materials that you build your houses. A lot of wood and because of drywall everything can be easily changed.
Romanians have a very different mentality.
The house is the most important thing you own and it's usually passed on to children or grandchildren.
In the last 10 years a lot of people have left Romania to work abroad, but most of them didn't leave for good. They still have relatives here that they visit at least once a year and most of them plan to return after they have enough money. Generally, the money they save are intended for a house and a nice car.
One of the problems of Bucharest and other major cities in Romania is the price for a house or apartment in relation with the average wage.
And I believe one of the reasons for those unrealistic prices is the fact that Romanians are not particularly cultured from a financial point of view.
There are a lot of people that get a 30 years bank loan for an apartment or house and that means they will have to live on the edge.
And because of those unrealistic people, real estate prices are very high. A lot of them end up losing their houses after a few years of paying installments.
For example, a three room, 65 square meters apartment in an ugly building from the communist period is 60 or 70 000 euros.
And not near the city center but in a decent neighborhood.
The average wage in Romania is now 528 euros or $646.
Bog: no way i'm trying to get you to buy if you really can't or don't want to and just throwing out ideas that I wish someone had for me when i was younger. if you have a plan that's great and I hope everything works as planned. Truthfully i'd still have several rentals if i had more tenants like you that improved the property and didn't trash it cause it wasn't theirs.
It would be incredible to be able to buy the property, but as I explained, this is almost impossible. I am trying to make the most of what I am able to do.
