Sell up or Rent Out

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Rob,

Yeah, my views also.  A lot of Americans eventually go back home after retiring overseas. I think I would like to come back to Sydney for my parting days. I might be a bit too cheap to leave the house empty.

Bob

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Is it not just a question of where you perceive "home" to be, which may not necessarily be your "country of birth"?  But maybe a little deep for a Monday morning.

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Keep it empty, I read years ago never sell your base in your home country, step off the financial ladder in the West & you will never be able to get back on it!. Rob

This is the crux of my problem.
I'd love to move to Malaysia. I'm young enough to still work for a good number of years. But the income I would earn there would effectively trap me. I wouldn't be able to return to the West.
In the meantime I'm working in the West trying to save everything I can since it will go two or three times further once I get to MY.
But really the real cost in Malaysia is the housing cost. Once you get past that then it's easy. So I need to be able to own the house in MY outright first.

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Many of us think that we can never go back to the West because of the housing cost.  For what it's worth I left California for Maryland in 2003.  My friends told me I could never come back to California, "Once you leave, you can never go back!" (The usual real estate only goes up; they don't make new land etc...).  Well, the real estate bubble bursted, including in California.  I came back to California in 2007.  In 2008 I bought a house for about 45% of the original price so we have space for the children and grandchildren's visits.  Even then I knew that the price would continue to decline, though not as precipitously.  Sure enough, a year later after we bought, it went down another 5%.  So, in our case, we could go back again, even California (where real estate never goes down and they don't make land anymore)   Timing, if we're lucky, is everything.

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I agree, timing is everything!. Rob