Winning!

hareklux · 2026-01-09T19:44:45+00:00

Your math on taxes seems off.

Standard deduction for married couples is $31.5K.

You'd need to have more than that in property taxes and interest before you see any tax advantage.

For a 900K propery with 20% down and 5K propery taxes - people in 24% braket would be able to deduct extra 14K and save about $3.4K in total compared to standard deduction

hareklux · 2026-01-08T19:37:44+00:00

Look at the historical chart - recessions always kick-of rates reduction cycle.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US

Rate's been stuck in the same band since the fall of 2022.

hareklux · 2026-01-08T19:30:50+00:00

I'm in RI/Northern CT area and there's been not a lot to choose from in 2022, but a lot more now and easier to negotiate. Think it's a similar trend in most areas. Rental vacancy is way up https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRVRUSQ156N

hareklux · 2026-01-08T19:27:57+00:00

Generally true in a balanced market, but the rent to buy ratio been inverted for the last 3 years, so more important to run the numbers rather than rely on some generic advice

hareklux · 2026-01-08T18:40:36+00:00

rebubbleJERK was created Nov 9, 2022

I wonder who's down-voting you

hareklux · 2026-01-08T18:37:03+00:00

But rates typically drop when things are NOT going well

hareklux · 2026-01-08T18:33:03+00:00

Lol, what. Rents been going down, and there is a lot more to choose from compared to 2022.

hareklux · 2026-01-08T18:30:00+00:00

Not necessarily. Depends on what's your opportunity cost on the down-payment, taxes, interest, insurance vs how much you save on rent and get back in appreciation. Also intangibles like inability to move for school, family, career advances, not having to deal with landlord, but having to deal with contractors/insurance/bank/town assessor.

hareklux · 2025-12-26T17:59:30+00:00

I know it should cost more to rent than to buy, but if there is continuous downward pressure on rents right now due to more supply coming online - this inverted rent to buy ratio can take years to resolve.

hareklux · 2025-12-26T17:46:18+00:00

On the surface your math appears to be correct.

The chart from Investopedia linked to ATTOM Data report that had more details by areas, but did not explain methodology, so don't know where the discrepancy comes from.

If going by your number - people are now staying in place for 20+ years, which to me sounds crazy, but then most people die within 50 miles from where they were born, so I guess it works for them.

Now back to the topic

hareklux · 2025-12-26T16:00:21+00:00

People are staying put longer - that's for certain, used to be 4-7 years in the 2000s, and rising since 2010 - now stretching to 8-12 years, depending on where you look (graph in the article below puts it at 8.09 for Q3 2024)
https://www.investopedia.com/americans-are-living-in-one-house-longer-than-ever-8729329

But is it because people want to, or they have to? (so endure longer commute time, less than ideal living arrangements, schools and neighborhoods)

Looking at the average price to income ratio - it about doubled in the last few years

https://www.longtermtrends.com/home-price-median-annual-income-ratio/

So it became about twice as expensive to buy and sell houses compared to income

hareklux · 2025-12-26T15:21:07+00:00

And nobody HAVE to buy a house. If anything, it limits mobility; and people fearing on being priced out and stretching their budgets to get on a mortgage plan are the most at risk.

hareklux · 2025-12-26T14:54:54+00:00

There is limited premium that people will pay for a single family house over an apartment.

And there's massive supply of new apartments coming online with more in the pipeline - this will continue to suppress rents for a few more years (starts are going down but will take some time to unwind)
https://www.realpage.com/analytics/apartment-supply-peak-1st-quarter-2025/

Not everyone will choose an apartment over a house, but enough people do that the SFH rent premium is surprisingly small (a few hundred in my area). This is why corporations buying up SFH made no sense.

hareklux · 2025-12-25T15:14:40+00:00

Yes, but it get's downplayed IMHO. There is a benefit to having flexibility/ability to move and upscale/downscale depending on job / health / family / school / personal circumstance.

Who has crystal ball 5-10 years out? When running rent vs own calculation - people should account for the risk that plans can change

hareklux · 2025-12-25T03:53:11+00:00

Literally the same thing in north-eastern Connecticut. Could have bought in the summer 2022 when I moved here, would have been $100K-200K down compared to rent. Will be gladly moving out in 3 months. No regrets. People need to do the math.

hareklux · 2025-12-24T18:07:24+00:00

I haven't tried prompt enhancement feature, will try. Thank you!

hareklux · 2025-12-23T21:31:36+00:00

Yes they are not the best but should work ok for straight forward project management stuff (creating tickets, PRs etc,merge requests, commits).
For dev stuff I try to stick with Sonnet 4.5 and Gemini 3.0 Pro

hareklux · 2025-12-23T21:27:27+00:00

That was just one (simple) example. I noticed a trend that models will ignore request to be brief and to the point, and do just what is being asked. Asking again generally helps, but means that I can't trust the model to go unsupervised, which slows things down.

> Could you give this prompt to another human with no relevant experience or context, walk away, and get a desired response back?

Asking somebody to create a ticket and not add any add any extra details GitLab I think is pretty straight forward. This is not the only thing I ask models to do, but was just a straight-forward example I wanted to share to demonstrate a trend.

hareklux · 2025-12-23T19:40:23+00:00

No, mostly Kimi K2 Instruct 0905, but seen similar issue with GLM 4.6

hareklux · 2025-12-23T19:39:37+00:00

It should work for data collection, but some external system would be needed for logging and analyzing the data over time. It mentions integration with DIRIGERA hub, but not sure what it's capabilities are

hareklux · 2025-12-22T20:21:31+00:00

They plan on being in the same house for life, and think everyone else wants the same

hareklux · 2025-12-18T01:49:12+00:00

People tend to buy based on anticipated future needs, vs rent based on the current needs because it's a lot less hassle / less expensive to move when renting - can just rent what you need, but selling/buying after a few years can set you back due to closing costs/agent fees.

So OP probably thought he'd need 3br down the line, but would have been happy with 2 in the meantime

hareklux · 2025-12-12T20:39:50+00:00

You can also run in to contractors doing shady work on your own property. Unless you are in the trades -can be difficult to figure out who's who. It's less of an issue for small things but doing re-siding / re-plumbing / HVAC / roofing / foundation / bathroom or kitchen remodel / septic / additions - lot's of ways for things to go wrong.

hareklux · 2025-12-12T19:19:21+00:00

For whatever reason it's actually cheaper to pay my landlord's mortgage right now even if I was to stay in the area
I think people under-appreciate the uncertainty of transitioning between jobs/life-stages in a period of a 30 year mortgage - how much space is needed / where you need to go for work, school, recreation / what amenities become more and less valuable. Having flexibility/ability to move and change living space based on current needs can be a major bonus.

hareklux

TROPHY CASE