In comparison, the new town houses in the new community are all 2500+ square feet separated onto 3 different levels. I don’t need the extra bedrooms, but the rooms are small and in terms of future appreciation, 4 bedrooms do better than homes with fewer bedrooms.

I may not be planning on having a family anytime soon…but you never know. Besides, I plan to live in this house for at least the next 5 years, if not longer and a bigger home will offer me more room to grow into.

However regarding the stock portfolio…it’s currently sitting idle in my various brokerage accounts as cash. I cashed out before the market crash earlier this year so I’m now waiting for a good time to get back in. Hopefully sometime soon…

I also noticed that you seem to be doing very well on your stock portfolio. I know many very experienced stock people who are routinely bringing in a negative change in a month. I am definitely going to subscribe to your blog and keep an eye out for any insider tips

It’s impossible to time the market perfectly. I generally invest for the long haul but at least I get to decide the exact timing of when I get in. I don’t fear volatile market ups and downs. It’s the disastrous collapses that I fear – the 20-25% drops etc….the drops that will keep one up at night. I would much rather miss out on a furious bull rally than be emotionally and financially invested into long positions and wish I could get out.

Right now I’m waiting to hear more about commercial mortgage foreclosures. They say it’s the next shoe to drop but I’m not sure it’ll be that serious. But if the rumors come to fruition, the commercial housing foreclosures may have serious impacts on the stability of banks and the financial markets. Still want to hear more news before I’m willing to commit again. At this point, I pretty much ignore everything I hear on CNBC – especially the trash spewed out by the know nothings on the Fast Money show. They’re just sports casters – reporting on what’s happening at that moment rather than truly projecting the future. I prefer to do my own research..

I bailed out of the market in late spring ‘08 – I smelled a rat.

Then we saw some declines and the market seemed to stabilize. I was proud of myself how I foresaw the decline and jumped right back into the market. A week later Lehman was history and my portfolio took a beating. But I stayed in and was able to benefit from the rally in 2009 so far. But this weekend I got nervous again and bailed about 60% of my portfolio into money market funds, the remainder is still in. This way a sharp decline won’t hurt as much, but I wouldn’t miss out on a bull run either. No idea what signal to wait for to get all into the market again…

The neighborhood has a lot of families…but the greatest draw of the neighborhood is the upscale feel and close proximity to transportation and major highways to DC and Baltimore where all of the job centers are. So yes, it is sought after by families…just not as highly sought after after by children-rearing parents as certain neighborhoods where the homes are extremely old but the schools are highly ranked.

Building a custom home in the DC Maryland area is extremely expensive, particularly if the home is close to major transportation arteries. $1- 1.5 million would be the typical cost of building a very basic home around here. I wish we could enjoy Syracuse type prices around these parts….

Since you have the cash, why not build a custom house. We’re in a recession so the price of material and labor is very reasonable and maybe the best price. One of my co-worker customer build their home in Syracuse, NY and has never regretted it.

Another thought, five years is not that far away. You might as well buy a house with an educational system to back it you and buy it with a family in mind if you’re going to get a family house. What’s the value in buying a family size home in an area not sought after by a family?

I wanted a 3 bedroom, 2 full bath house, but the extra bedrooms and bathrooms came as a promotional offer by the builder and price-wise, it would only have been an extra $10,000 or so. The existing and original 3 bedroom floor plan was rather odd and would have left two severely underused den type rooms on the second floor area. So I decided to go with the alternate floor plan and convert those potentially underused second floor dens into a giant 4th bedroom. Thus I also added an extra full bath for that room, and tacked on another full bath for the finished basement. With its own separate staircase and full bath, the 4th bedroom can now be converted into a large media room or kept as a private in-law suite.

Bedroom and bathrooms are one of those things that offer great returns on investment at resale, unlike granite/hardwood floor upgrades etc. From what I hear, most families seek out 4 bedrooms these days and they are in great demand.

For some reason, September has historically been a very bad month and has been the month when most financial collapses happen. The 2008 collapse occurred in September, and so did the Great Depression collapse. I would get out of the stock market or at least stay out of further fund positions until the end of Sept and get back in sometime October. Of course, they say one shouldn’t try to time the market…