I always love the use of the word 'absorb' when it's thrown in while discussing matters of a financial nature.
Our landlord wrote us a letter a couple of months back - just before Christmas, incidentally - and he used it to justify another rent increase with "Unfortunately we are no longer able to absorb the rising costs associated with the property".
Brilliant. I love that word.
It reads like he's been doing it tough letting us have the rent at the price we've been having it, but now he's losing money, and it's just got to stop.
Unfortunately, it's all bullshit.
You see, we had a great meeting with that Homebuyers Centre rep, and as it turns out, as far as they're concerned we can afford to buy. Ok, so we're borrowing about $400,000, and it's going to take about 25 years to pay it off, but it's doable.
The interesting thing is that we're going to be looking at repayments of around $550 a week, but that shouldn't be a problem considering we're already paying $350 a week in rent.
This is what leads me to believe our landlord is full of crap. We've been here since 2005, and we've received letters from tenants he's had before us too, so it's a good bet he's owned this property for at least a decade. Back when he bought it, he probably dropped half what our loan's gonna be, which occurs to me his repayment for this property is going to be in the neighborhood of, ooh I don't know, about $350.
He ain't absorbing crap, he's using us to pay this place's mortgage for him. Nobody absorbs anything these days, they just filter it down to the poor bastard at the bottom.
Same old, same old.
Does it scare anyone else working out just how much you may have dropped in rent over the years? We started here at $180 a week, shifted to $250 in 2008, and are now on $350. Assuming two and a half years at $180, the same at $250, and a couple of months at $350, it's pushing a whopping $60,000.
Never mind that though, by the time our house is built and we move out in a year's time, we'll have surpassed $70,000.
Holy shit.
