And that's not factoring in the added costs from higher interest rates, which now stand at roughly 7% for the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage that is typical in the US, up from about 3% in 2020.
Homebuyers today need an annual income of more than $100,000 - well above the country's household median of about $75,000 - to comfortably afford a home in most places in the US, research firms such as Zillow and Bankrate say, and face monthly payments that have roughly doubled in just four years.
We own a house. It's a nice house in a nice neighborhood, but in an undesirable town in an undesirable state, so it's worth very little comparatively.
Because of that, we can't afford to move.
We literally have to wait for my mother to die so I can inherit her money and her house. I hate how ghoulish that is, but that's how we've been forced to live. And we're some of the lucky ones.
I had a long talk with my daughter about this last week.
I bought a small 700 square foot house about a year and a half ago. I'll have it completely paid off in ten years.
My daughter made all the right moves and is making more money in her early twenties than she knows what to do with.
So here's the plan:
When my house is paid off, she'll have a house of her own.
I'll retire and go live with her.
Then we rent out my house, but not in the traditional way. We're going to look for somebody who is genuinely looking but unable to buy. We'll go in the rent to own model, so eventually the tenant owns my house and the daughter has cash from the proceeds to go buy another house and rent it to own.
I'm sure somebody on lemmy will find reason to punch holes in this plan and call us horrible capitalist pigs, but short of outright giving everything away, this was the best we could come up with to use family assets for the good of others without starving ourselves.
I bought a house when I was in college. It was a shitty 900 square foot 2 bedroom for 40k. My mortgage was $109 a month. After I graduated and moved away, I tried two rent to own contracts. First one was a disaster. They paid for a few months and then after a couple of court appearances, they got evicted and owe me several thousand dollars.
The second contract was "successful." It was a professor of mine that went through a nasty divorce and had credit problems. Dude took the full term to pay me off even though I suggested that he take a loan in an attempt to rebuild their credit. Nope. Just gave me money each month.
Three months after paying me off, he left the house and moved into on campus housing for adults. Let someone buy it at a tax sale or something.
I don't get it. I know I'm probably more aligned with boomers than I am with my millennials, but why wouldn't you want to own your house that you've been paying for? Renting is nice because it's not your problem if something breaks, but the vast majority of rental owners are shitty and are going to fix things the cheapest way possible.
Me and my SO bought our house 15 years ago. Add to that she was a shrewd negotiator who pitted a few banks' offers against each other for an even lower rate.
Yet even back then, the only way we were able to put down a down payment for a modest house in a modest environment was because both my and her parents had saved something up and were willing to do this for us. If we'd been kicked out at 18 with no kind of support we'd still be renting today, no doubt.
So I can definitely appreciate that we were among the lucky ones, and even back then it was already hard. My heart bleeds for young people today, especially knowing it'll get a whole lot worse before it ever gets better, IF it ever does...
13 years ago I bought my childhood home from my parents. They basically gifted me the down payment and my dad helped me update it. I was exceptionally lucky them and I'd have no chance in hell buying a house now.
REITs and REOCs aren’t helping by treating the housing market like the stock market. No more than 30% of their sales can occur within four years of purchase, encouraging them to hold properties. With respect to property that consists of land or improvements, the REIT must hold the property for two years for the production of rental income.
Today, U.S. REITs own nearly $4.5 trillion of gross real estate with public REITs owning $3 trillion in assets. U.S. listed REITs have an equity market capitalization of more than $1.3 trillion. In 2021, REITs paid an estimated $92.3 billion in dividends to shareholders.
Look deep enough and youll likely find lots of collusion to fix prices in all sectors. Article is right you cant blame any single person for it. You can blame coalitions, corporations, llcs, and the like as they are the biggest players in this game of 'fuck em'
I mean, I did it in 2021, but interest rates hadn't gone batshit crazy yet.
You don't need 20% down. You can pay less and get saddled with mortgage insurance. Once you've made enough equity, the insurance drops off and your mortgage payment goes down.
I worked from home starting in 2018, by 2021 I had $30,000 in cash in the bank. 7.69% down on a $390,000 house. 3.25% interest.
All you gotta do is have 1 kid. Then you just give your house to that kid using a family trust. Finally, if you get along with the kid, everything is cool but right about at 70 years of age you gotta croak.
If you don't get along or if you're already 70, here's the way out. First make sure your kid can keep collecting the checks. Next move to Latin America, don't worry, it's on paper only. Here's option 1; parachute without the little backpack they give you. That's an easy 200mph for 3 minutes. Choose a flat or rocky place, you don't wanna be there when it happens. Don't choose a fluffy canopy area, trust me, you don't wanna be there. Option 2 is enlisting in the ruzzian army, just go to Ukraine right after and take lots of snacks for the road. Option 3 involves chemistry so I'll be skipping it, you and I don't have the patience.
Anyway there's a movie with a 100 ways of doing it, and Switzerland has made it legal, so it's a plane ticket away, you just have to convince a psychologist that you really want economical freedom and that this is the only way. This and taxes.