The Wealthy Renter by Alex Avery

This book’s full title is The Wealthy Renter: How to Choose Housing That Will Make You Rich. I belong to Ellen Roseman’s Investment Club and Alex Avery was a speaker. He gave out copies of his book at that meeting. The book is available on Amazon.

There is an interesting debate on the subject of renting versa buying on Reddit. I have been renting since I moved back downtown in the 1960’s. I did for a while have a cottage. I have saved money for my retirement and now live off my dividends. Here is a recent article about Real Estate in Toronto.

I did do some needed renovations on the cottage after I bought it. Every year there was work to be done and I was lucky there was a local contractor who was willing to do a number of small jobs on the cottage in the winter time. I figure I did not make any money on the cottage. However, another way to look at it was the sale price covered the purchases price, renovations, maintenance, and other costs. So, I had use of a cottage for 10 years at little cost.

Since a new company bought out my rental building a few years back, they taken us to court every 2 years to get a higher rent increase. Extra increases are supposed to be for capital expenditures, but since the rules are so broad, a lot of maintenance work is included in the increases. On the other hand, legal increases in rent are low. These are the rules under rent control in Ontario. I do pay under market price in rent. I do like where I live. It is in a lovely neighbourhood with easy access to downtown.

Urgen Kuyee on Passionate Bibliophile writes about an interview with Alex Avery. Alexandra Bosanac on Lowest Rates does review of this book. There are also quite good reviews at Good Reads.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.