Didn't Shiller win an award for proving that home prices were relatively stagnant from like 1880-1990?
I read once that during the 50 year period of the Victorian era, when GB was at its peak of power and prosperity, home prices where stable or, if you were long, stagnant. Makes little sense to me that prices were not on the rise with money flooding in from every corner of the earth but that was the contention. Never took the trouble to look deeper and see if the article was accurate. Maybe someone here on ET knows.
GB empire was only 25% of the world, now capitalism is everywhere there is more money looking for a safe haven in central London real estate.
Actually, please do elaborate! I am in the market for a summer house now too and would love to hear how that makes me a bad trader. PS. from the pure trading/investment perspective, getting married is the worst trade you could ever make - you are swapping a depreciating asset against the floored forward of your earnings
LOL... Geez, I love my wife, my kid, my house, my cars, my account balances.... I guess that means I made some awful trades in life and it also means I'm a loser trader... DAMN, if only I had come to elitetrader 10 years ago and listened to all this advice. Oh well, sucks to be me.
Cash Rules Everything Around Me dolla dolla bill ya. Cash paid for everything. Still use a credit card fro online purchases and car rentals.
There are some overly complex replies here on how they assess the stability of being a professional trader. Just give them a copy of your tax returns. The person processing your mortgage application will probably just say, "Cool." Keep in mind that at big banks there is a systematic process that goes into place when processing mortgage applications. It's all about the core numbers, they have an algorithm that's not going to subjectively judge you because it has a bad gut instinct. The only problem would be if your income swings wildly from year to year and you were trying to get a loan amount that assumes the better years are the norm. What's more important than the listed title of your occupation are the core numbers behind net income, loan amount, and deposit amount. The smaller the loan amount is in respect to income and the higher the deposit, the better your chances of getting approved are. And you don't have to actually name the occupation, "Professional Trader" you can list something like "Futures Market, Forex" saying that you work in the Futures Market. Getting a home is a terrific investment, all the money you put in, your eventually getting back. When your renting, your basically building equity into someone else's home for them. But if you have only been trading professionally for a couple of years, you may want to assess how good you feel about continued success, because the last thing you want is to go broke with no means of paying the mortgage.
A few words: Why would I turn down cheap rates in a currency that is likely to depreciate steadly over the next few decades. I believe any trader that thinks borrowing money at say 5% needs psychiatric help. Borrow sanely, buy hard assets ... and live within your means. But buy all means do borrow when rates are low.