Frequently Asked Questions
What readers and reviewers ask most about The Resale Trap.
The 25-year cost model calculates the total cost of owning a home over 25 years including purchase price, maintenance (1-3% annually), insurance (escalating at 8-10% CAGR), property tax, capital expenditure cycles, and opportunity cost of locked equity. It uses data from RS Means, FHFA HPI, BLS CPI, Harvard JCHS, and NAIC.
Each state is scored across 8 dimensions: Available Salary (after taxes and cost-of-living), property tax burden, homeowner insurance cost, construction cost per SF, land availability/cost, water quality (EWG data), natural hazard exposure, and regulatory environment. Each dimension is normalized and weighted to produce a composite build-feasibility score.
The float is the pool of money an insurance company holds between collecting your premium and paying claims. Chapter 7 explains how carriers invest this float for profit — your $4,000 annual premium generates investment returns for the carrier while you wait for a claim that may never come. Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway on this principle.
Over a 25-year ownership period, yes — the data shows a $400K resale costs $318K–$506K more in total cost of ownership than a comparable $400K new build. The gap comes from higher maintenance burden on aging materials, insurance cost differentials, capex timing, and the material tier advantage of new construction.
A 10-factor scoring framework introduced in Chapter 16 for evaluating buildable lots. Factors include soil/slope, utilities access, zoning, flood zone status, proximity to services, road frontage, environmental constraints, title clarity, and market trajectory.
Yes. Appendix A provides the complete methodology — input sources, assumptions, column-by-column spreadsheet instructions, limitations, and sensitivity analysis.
Yes. Chapter 17 is titled "When Building Doesn't Make Sense" and addresses capital barriers, construction loan qualification requirements, and the renovation path as an accessible alternative. The book also covers production builders (Lennar, DR Horton, Toll Brothers, Meritage) as a lower-barrier entry point to new construction.
The W-2 Trap (Book 1) diagnoses wage dependency. The $97 Launch (Book 2) provides the business-building playbook. The Condo Trap (Book 3) covers condo-specific housing traps. The Resale Trap (Book 4) covers single-family resale economics. Each stands alone but they form a complete picture of wealth extraction systems.