Proximity to Boston.
$300k is the average price of a new single-dwelling home in Sherman, Texas, a town of just over 40,000 residents. I don’t fully understand the market dynamics, but there was a recent class action lawsuit that exposed widespread collusion and price-fixing in the rental market. Perhaps that’s also part of what’s driving home prices.
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I think even worse are the folks pushing reverse mortgages. Sounds great until the details and risks are involved.
One scam though almost caught me and a new one. On a perfectly harmless YouTube all of a sudden an age verification screen popped up. Take a picture of drivers license, credit card, passport to prove your age. It was a google message. I thought that’s weird but I’m not sending a pic of my drivers license. Turns out it’s a scam.
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Reverse mortgages are fine in certain situations. An elderly couple 2 doors down from me got one. Used the money to fix up their home - it really needed repair. They have no kids or grandkids or even any close living relatives. When they pass the sale of the house will pay off the mortgage and the money left over will go to a charity trust they setup. They took the reverse out about 10 years ago. Their home value has more then doubled in price since then.
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Or they could have just done a cash out mortgage. Fixed the house and used the rest for payments and kept full control of their property. If the house doubled in value, how do they make use of that equity now? I’m not sure how you go about retiring a reverse mortgage if your value now doubled or at what cost. Hopefully they had a good advisor in the process.
Well back to drum brakes I guess.
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10 years ago, they didn’t have enough equity in their home.
If you, the homeowner, or the heirs to a property that has a reverse mortgage on it wish to repay the reverse mortgage, then you (the heirs…) must repay the loan, all accrued interest and fees.
It really bugged me when Tom Sellick (Magnum, P.I., Blue Bloods, etc…) started hawking reverse mortgages… The Interest Rates on reverse mortgages are higher that typical equity loans and as are the Fees. Making it less likely that the homeowner can get from under the reverse mortgage or for the heirs to pay off the loan to keep the property as the mortgage company usually only gives the heirs 30-days to clear the loan before they take possession of the home.
We never know what lies ahead. A banker had been on our cemetery board for almost 80 years. Very conservative wi CD at 5% then lower as the economy cratered. Wife went into a nursing home. He complained to me about the cost and I said maybe need to sell the house. Said he already did. Then he died and wife continued in the nursing home. When she died the will provided 10% to the cemetery. All that was left after years of banking and saving was $60,000 total. Another year of the nursing home before it was all gone.
Just saying keep control of your appreciating assets as long as you can and don’t give it away to a bank. Invest cash reasonably aggressively, not at a bank, and start early with long term care insurance. You have be able to withstand ten years or more of heavy expenses. Depends on value of the house, equity, and so on but cashing out half a million on a house and investing the proceeds can go a long way in paying these expenses. Just gotta do the Math. Back to drum brakes.
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I just received an “urgent” flyer from the dealer where I recently bought my Rav4. Naturally, I opened it with urgency to see what awaited me inside! 
Imagine my excitement to find a flyer advertising exceptional savings for their loyal customers (I bought one car from them).
Here’s where it gets good. These things are cranked out by computerized systems without any oversight. My exceptional deal?
Trade in my “old” 2025 Rav4 I bought in April for $5k less than I paid for it. It has 5000 miles so that is a cost of $1 PER MILE if I sold it now for that great deal. <-edited to fix mistake, thanks jtsanders!
But wait, there’s more!
If I act before 10/31, I can replace it with…wait for it… a brand new 2025 Rav4!
So, I can show up with my barely used Rav4 and a check for $5k and get…the same car!
I can imagine there might be people actually excited about this prospect. I was born previously but it wasn’t yesterday…
BTW- here’s a public service announcement. Don’t trust the PDI. When I brought my car home, I thought it rode kinda rough. Checking the tire pressures and find them at 50 psi. The max sidewall pressure is 51psi! This is the shipping pressure so they never let air out to the recommended 33 psi on the placard. The simplest possible part of the PDI, let air out of the tires, was skipped entirely…
Exactly. Reverse mortgage only makes sense if you don’t have any heirs to inherit the home.
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Checking and correcting tire pressures is skipped not just by pre-delivery, but by the majority of motor vehicle operators.
+1
When I drove my '81 Citation home from the dealership, my first thought was that it was riding very badly. Yes, I had ordered it with the “handling” suspension option, but it still seemed to ride like a truck. The next morning, when I checked the tires “cold”, they were inflated to 55 psi.
That dealership’s service department left a lot to be desired, and the frequent trips to the dealership for that X car’s many issues were probably more than they needed to be because of their failure to fix things on the first attempt.
Even when GM was still in its heyday, that dealership went out of business, and I suspect that one of the reasons was a lack of repeat customers.
Well, $1/mile, but your point is still reasonable.
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After a couple years my park ave was running $2 a mile. I told the wife to drive it more to lower the cost. 
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Yeah, that is crazy they/it thinks you would fall for something like that…
When I 1st got my truck, I kept getting letters that looked legit about my warranty, but the warranty company is like your warranty has expired get blah blah blah, I thought about calling and saying ■■■■■, the truck is 11 months old with barely 12,000 miles on it, I think I have a while still… I mean what a bunch of idiots (including the algorithm thingy)… lol
That’s new math 
Thanks for correcting that mistake!
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$50k avg for new “vehicles”. Trucks. SUVs. Sedans? What American sedans? I’m not even sure what American cars are available. I know of civics and corollas. Zero info on Kia’s as they are junk.
Figured that one out
I’ve got 21 tires not counting the bikes hanging from the ceiling so I’m not always on top of tire pressure. I did add some air to my log cart today though that looked a little low when I loaded the blocks on it.
I remember the guy who spent $3K fixing up his boat. He took his friends out fishing and they caught only 3 fish. He said those fish cost $1K each. A friend said it was a good thing they didn’t catch more.
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