[RastaMan]

Following someone's comment in the other thread, how much (%) of your household income do you put toward your housing rental? If your income varies (because based on commission for example), how much was it last month/year, or what do you expect it to be this year?

If you are an owner you should consider your mortgage as your rent...

[beafan]

obviously WAY TOO MUCH!!! and my rent is considered pretty cheap for a whole flat to myself. rent plus utilities is like 30% of my monthly pay.

WANTED: nice flexible and responsible non-smoking roommate. female preferred. lol

[jenifa]

ouch! We're expecting to be spending about 40% -50% of our income on rent to get something of a decent size...and by decent I mean 1000sqft - not exactly palatial.

And there was me thinking HK housing prices couldn't be any worse than London ones...

Jen

[phooey]

I'm thinking about buying now, but everyone tells me that the prices are really high at the moment. What do you guys think? Are the prices really going to come down?

[PDLM]

We're answering this based on gross income or post-tax? (I used gross for what it's worth).

[RastaMan]

Originally Posted by PDLM

We're answering this based on gross income or post-tax? (I used gross for what it's worth).

Yes, gross income. Sorry, I forgot to specify.

Re house prices: I have heard that prices are 'going up', not that 'they are really high'. I think it wouldn't be a bad time to buy. But according to my calculations it's cheaper to rent than to pay the mortgage.

I pay 9,300 dolars for a flat that costed (if I remember correctly) 4.3 million to buy 10 years ago. Not exactly the best investment I ever heard of. But then don't forget that I missed my O levels in math...

[freeier]

not sure who you heard it from, but apparently most ppl involved in the real estate trade will tell u house price is always going up.

or they will say : "its going to be volatile for a while but over 3-5 years you shld make money"... which essentially means it might go down then come up again. then why shld a person buy now instead of buying when its lower.

[RastaMan]

Originally Posted by freeier

not sure who you heard it from,

I heard it from an agent

I any case I am not interested in buying (I am not into wasting money...), only in renting.

[sunniefaith]

Actually, i can't stand the fact that i'm paying rent. It's like me paying off someone's mortgage But I'm not about to buy an apartment here....market way too volatile for me.

[coolgirl]

I might buy next year. At the end of the day, it's about gut feel. No one really knows when it's gonna go up or down...