I know I’m supposed to want it to keep going up as a wealth generator or whatever.
But like… I wouldn’t be able to afford the monthly payments if I bought my house right now and it’s scary. Also none of my friends are buying homes, none of them are even renting full places. Just like renting rooms.
So what are your feelings home owners of lemmy?
i bought my house at the top (two years ago) and no regrets. less about it being an investment and more about having a stable place to call my own that gives me safety and not at the whims of a landlord. i’d quite like it if house prices became more affordable for everyone, the counter intuitive thing to say. 🤷♂️ i was supposed to become a nimby and vote conservative but now i’m more left wing than ever.
I bought at the peak myself to have stable housing while raising kids.
If house prices just stayed flat until wages caught up and then only increased similar to match wage increases (not inflation) that might be a reasonable compromise between the middle class who have a house and don’t. Those who own will still be paying down a mortgage so increasing your equity that way without being decimated if you have to move. Unfortunately at this point, that could take awhile before wages caught up.
Pretty much this. I’m quite content with losing some of my net worth if it means other people don’t have to struggle as much to have their own place to live.
I agree with you. I think property is theft; in an ideal world everyone would have the right to shelter and no one would own land privately. And I also think fear of housing insecurity - including the fear of a landlord extorting or evicting you - is the biggest reason America is obsessed with home ownership and I can’t criticize anybody for pursuing it. The only way to have secure housing in the US today is to own your home, and everyone has a right to secure housing.
I’m not planning on moving so it doesn’t really matter what my house is worth. It was relatively cheap to begin with; 105k€. My monthly payment for the mortage is 520€ while the rent my friends are paying is usually 700€/month or more. That would cover my water and electricity bill aswell and I’d still have money left over.
I paid 91k in 2017. Zillow says my place is worth 209k just six years later. I’m more than prepared for it to tank but it won’t go lower than I paid.
Bought my house in 2019, and it’s apparently worth 30% more than what I paid for it if my rates bill (local property taxes for the US people) is anything to go by.
Problem is, it’s all paper gains. The only way I see any of that money is by selling my house - which I kinda need in order to live in - and buying something else that has also gone up by 30%, so I’m net-even, less increased property taxes which I directly benefit from via improved infrastructure.
Now if I was a blood sucking parasite and bought a second house as a rental property by using my increased capital to muscle out first home buyers with less capital, then the gains might be enough to allow me to sleep at night under the weight of my own crushing dread at the person I had become. Maybe.
I’m really surprised to see all these bitter comments. Downvote me all you want, but I think people hate the housing market because of a lack of knowledge.
I did my homework, worked my ass off and in a few months I will be buying two houses. One to live in and the other as an investment. And the best part is that the first one will be paid off in 5 years (thanks to publicly available banking tools). The investment property will not be paid off until the end of the mortgage. Why? Because it will give me huge tax deductions (again - great banking tools). After a few years I will be able to buy another investment property which will give me even more tax deductions. And so on and so forth.
So no, I don’t want the housing market to crash.
You are probably in a different tax bracket than us.
The median house hold income is 60kish in the US. Meaning half of all households make less than that.
2k for rent or 3k mortgages just isn’t doable. But that is the only thing availabe for most of us. The math can’t work with taxes, insurance, and utilities. Children right now is a poverty sentence for 50% of Americans.
And “make more money” can’t work for everyone. The median is 60k per household, meaning 10s of millions of people would need to find much higher paying jobs to be able to deal with this. But that’s not possible, there are not 10s of millions of 80k+ jobs just sitting around.
As I said before - lack of knowledge. You are assuming that the monthly repayment will be $3k. There are tools available for everyone to make it way less.
Let’s start with offset account. Having it setup with your mortgage will decrease the interest part of the repayments as long as you will keep adding money to that account. More money, smaller interests.
Second tool - interest only loan. For first few years you will pay only interests. In my case it will cut the monthly repayments almost by half. Combine it with the offset account and each month you save some money on offset account the interests rate will be lower allowing to save more.
And finally - interest in advance (pay the whole year of interests upfront). I don’t know US tax laws but where I live this gives me tax deductions starting from day one. This will work only for investment property.
Also there is a thing called refinancing a loan. When the interest only and in advance things are coming to an end refinance a loan and start over.
On top of that is the mindset. People need to realise that in order to make things better some sacrifices have to be made. So when buying a house get the investment property first and work your ass toff to pay it off as soon as possible. After few years the value of the property will go up and you will be able to get a bigger loan. Buy another investment property in a better neighbourhood to get a bigger return.
To summarize, talk to someone who knows that stuff (not a banker, a real money guy), check bank offers, read articles about investments, learn about taxes. It’s easy to complain and do nothing.
When people can’t even afford 2K rent, there are no games to play. Median house hold income is 60k After taxes that’s closer to 40k. When rent alone is 24K, there are no games to play, no moves to be made. The math doesn’t work. 2K isn’t me over exaggerating, it’s median.
Then you’re supposed to put 6% into your 401k, then how ever how much for medical insurance , then cost for car insurance ,gas… where is money for food? Where is the 20% for investing for retirement? The basic of budget is 50,30,20. You’re not supposed to spend more than 50% of your income on “needs”, yet the median rent is more than 50% of the median after tax household income.
All those tricks are just putting the debt ahead into the future. That only works if you think you’ll be making more in the future, but wages have been super stagnant.
You can’t play games when rent requires more than half your income.
I own my home, life is fine, I’m fine. But try to do the math, try to make it work. For 60k gross pay and 24k yearly rent, explain how to make it work, how to save up the 10% down for a house and save for retirement.
I was starting with aroud $45k usd before taxes. I live in Australia, one of the most expensive countries. But instead of complaining and saying that math doesn’t work I made it work. For years I was saving on everything, putting away every penny on managed fund. It didn’t give me huge interest but at least I didn’t lose on inflation. Fast forward 7 years and I’m about to buy two houses.
It’s all about mindset, dedication and knowledge. And no, this isn’t moving debt to the future. It’s working around the debt, it’s making the debt to work for you. Again, talk to a real money guy and he/she will explain you how it works.
Cost of living, rent, and taxes are all lower in Australia than US on average. Also median income is higher in Australia.
And where did you live? Did you have room mate or live with family?
Melbourne - expensive city to live in and I was living with my wife. The $45k was a household income.
And what was your rent?
I bought this year in the US w/ my partner. Thanks to my credit union, got a rate about 1% lower than average at the time. Mortgage payment is significantly less than rent and most importantly: it’s going to be way, way, WAY less than rent in 10-15 years. Sure, we’ll have other associated home ownership costs, etc etc, but it’s worth it to us. Also, honestly, we LOVE this house. Took our time to find the right place and it has paid off, much happier here than any of the places we rented.
I have no issues with that. I’m not living here to make a fortune on speculation. I am living here because it is my home, and I leave selling this to our kids once we are dead, hopefully many decades in the future.
I’m just trying to build wealth and just entered the market, so I’m not too excited for me, but it needs to happen. It’s a basic necessity that the majority of people can’t afford, how is that okay? I will lose a bunch if the market crashes and probably never be able to achieve my goals, but its not very feasible right now anyway. I wanted a hobby farm, thats never going to happen regardless. Something has to change.
Burn it all down and end secondary real estate market. The housings price problem started with that.
For me personally, my wife and I are probably going to stay in this house until it’s time for the old folks home so it’s just numbers that’ll never actually mean anything. If it crashes by half or more I’ll actually get a reduction to my property tax.
Let it crash, this is unsustainable. Having a secure, long-term roof over your head shouldn’t be so fucking hard.
Capitalism is a Ponzi scheme. Build up debt, and pay it off by transferring it to the next generation of suckers.
I look forward to the crash, and hope it’s not just a reset of the same system.
My mom was complaining about some pyramid scheme get friend fell for and I explained how every business is a pyramid scheme.
You work, you produce way more value than you are paid, that money goes to paying other people and growing the business to make the shareholders rich. You aren’t rewarded for your work, generally. Somehow this is normal. The only difference with a real pyramid scheme is that they generally lie about how much you could succeed.
My wife and I are both lucky and we bought our place mortgage free because we were able to save while paying off our old place.
While making the purchase we specifically talked about how if the market crashes by 50%, we’re still better off. Because most likely every home will be similarly cheaper. And our earning potential would be similar.
The difference is that it’s hard to predict what will happen in an economic contraction like that. There would be a lot of joblessness and a lot of hardship.
I’m hoping we can minimize the joblessness and hardship (which is already happening). People are unionizing, despite the best efforts of the owners of even businesses that had a progressive reputation, and the strikes are getting results! It gives me a lot of hope for fairness without the reset that could lead to mass homelessness and poverty. But having been around the block a few times, I know it will be a close thing.
I’m a cynic and I find myself pretty perpetually expecting the worse from humanity.
But sometimes we really pull it together and knock it out of the park.
I think it’s great to have high hopes, I wish I had the fortitude to stay positive more often.
You point out the Catch-22 that a lot of people miss on this stuff. They get so fixated on increasing their property values because they want to screw someone over when they finally sell their house…not stopping to think that the same thing is about to happen to them when they go to buy one. Not to mention, higher property values means higher property taxes (in some places, anyway).
Yeah like it’s cool my 200k town home I bought 4 years ago is now selling for 400k (neighbor just sold for that much).
Except that means that the 350k home I was thinking might be a nice upgrade one day, is 700k.
Like I’m way more screwed over now unless I intend to like sell my home then move to the middle of nowhere. All that higher value means is property taxes like you said. But of course renters are the most screwed.
This was actually my thought process when I got divorced. It probably would have been prudent in many ways to downsize to a condo, since it’s just me, however I could afford to buy my ex out of the house and any percent gains will be off a much higher base. I’m hoping that when I do eventually downsize, that my equity will be higher than if I had a paid off condo. In your example, doubling prices gained $200k inequity for the condo owner, vs $350k gain for the house owner (of course it’s more complicated when you factor in the mortgage)
… so yeah, it would suck for the housing market to crash, or stay down
This is precisely why your home price won’t crash. You are locked in and so is everyone else. You literally can’t do better, so selling is a bad move.
I just sold my condo and went back to renting. Best choice ever. Feels great to be free.
If it makes you feel good, I’d say congrats. I’ve never owned a condo and it has different considerations than a home. I sold my first house in March 2021 after I bought our current house in 2020. Both felt like some of the smartest, best times moves. I actually do wish I would have bought a more expensive house in 2020, but we’re likely buying more land in the next 2-5 years. Not holding some kind of property right now (again, idk about condos), feels like leaving stupid money on the table.
Yep. Nobody’s buying, because they can’t afford to, and nobody’s selling because they can’t afford to.
A housing crash is only bad for you if you’re either outright selling, or moving to a less expensive house.
A bad crash can make you owe more than you can get for the house, which can make it impossible for you to move without losing money. If you lose your job or have to relocate involuntarily, property being cheaper elsewhere isn’t much consolation if you are under water on your existing loan.
Yes, so outright selling, or moving to a less expensive house, voluntarily or not.
I have like 15 years left on a 30 year fixed rate. I’d like to move closer to where I work, but I don’t want another 30 year loan and a 15 year would currently be a much higher interest rate, so I’m stuck with my house until it’s close to being paid off. Doesn’t really matter what homes are costing when you have to buy another after selling. Expensive houses only help people who own multiple homes and aren’t replacing what they sell.
I’m trying to fix up a few things then get it re-appraised so I can get PMI taken off my mortgage. After that I don’t really care, I plan to live here for awhile so if the value goes down in the short term I’m not too bothered.
I dont want to pay more in property taxes.
Not a fellow home owner, in my early 20s and debt free. I feel soo bad for people who sign the dotted line on 400k mortgage and agree to decades of slavery to the economy just to have a poorly made suburbanite 2 story 3 bedroom. My parents tell me its not worth it, and I believe them. The only option for my generation that doesn’t involve half a lifetime of mortgage slavery is to either buy land somewhere extremely rural and build atop or get used to the idea vanlife/nomadic living. I refuse to get into debt, period. Would rather live out of my van and pay myself rent while working and save up the money for a little plot of land in the mountains. My sympathies to anyone who goes the ‘normal’ path and eats 500k in debt in this day and age.
I don’t get it either. Got into a thing with someone I know recently. What exactly is the worse case scenario if I rent for the rest of my life? And all they could come up with is I might not making as much money. Ok, so that is it. I won’t be as wealthy as I could potentially have been.
So yeah a slightly shittier nursing home, big freaken deal. It’s not like my entire life is going to be ruined it means that I could have had slightly more money when I am too old to do shit with it. Potentially. It isn’t even a certain thing the housing market can do whatever it wants.
You people are freaken nuts. Half million dollar bet on a wood house that a single flood or fire could destroy you. You have zero control over your taxes or if some zoning department person wants to just ruin your life. And the entire awful system only exists because the government is going to bail you out. Well guess what, the government will be broke one day.
I bought a reasonably affordable small home in 2019 when I was 21-22. I got it on a 15 year mortgage. That means by my mid 30’s I’ll own my home outright and will be able to put my entire mortgage payment (minus property taxes) into my bank account every month, opening up tons of possibilities for the rest of the best years of my life. If I was renting that would never be a possibility, and I’d have to pay ever increasing rent until I die.
You people are freaken nuts. Half million dollar bet on a wood house that a single flood or fire could destroy you. You have zero control over your taxes or if some zoning department person wants to just ruin your life.
In fairness, my mortgage is never going to go up aside from property tax which is pretty reasonable here, whereas our rent was going up every year. Also every mortgage payment is at least in part a bank deposit towards when we sell at some point.
I don’t know why you say that. Your taxes can easily go up, your insurance can go up, and your bank can do all kinds of games. Which doesn’t even deal with if your neighborhood changes and your house is underwater.
If I hadn’t bought my house at what turned out to be a steal at 240k with low interest 4 years ago I would be looking at like 50k middle of nowhere properties. If it has even a broken down house there with plumbing/electricity then it would mean that a trailer would hook up nice.
I hope you are able to save up for a nice tiny home away from cost of living nonsense with good internet!
Thank you! I am actually completely content living in a 4 season canvas tent + propane heat and would rather build my own little cabin on-site than pay 60k for a ‘tiny home’ (glorified shed IMO lol) I also download most of my entertainment to hard drive and have lots of offline games and ebooks (and other hobbies that don’t involve the internet) so as long as I can go to the library every month or two and stock up on entertainment with their wifi ill be happy as peaches! Not everyone is willing to give up modern convinence like I am, very grateful to be able to live cheap and minimal.
I was looking at that and it’s so annoying how many cities ban living on property you own like that.
Cause honestly everyone living in trailers on bits of property until land lords get foreclosed on feel like our best bet. But so many places are like nooo you gotta live in a 500k house. We would rather the lot be empty than you have a little camper trailer you live in on it.
Oh yeah absolutely was just told a story about a family who built a little tiny house for elderly parent instead of nursing home. They drew up design blueprint, got the specs, had it all professionally drafted and built to code, and then they are told to tear it all down because it was 200sqft less than minimum requirements. Like 1. why didn’t they tell them that before it was approved by city and 2. come on show a little humanity even if its not exact code any reasonable person would look at that and go whatever good enough. When you can’t do what you want with your property without jumping through a dozen buracratic hoops, it isn’t really your property in anything but name IMO.
Also IDK where you live but over here where I am theres abandoned shopping malls EVERYWHERE left to rot. I say we should spend some tax dollars to renovate them and their big ass lots and turn them into homeless shelters/ extremely low cost living areas. No they would rather them just rot if they aren’t making any money.
If more people lived with that sort of style, they wouldn’t even have to give up modern conveniences. If there was higher demand, there could be development to increase internet accessibility in residences like that, better equipment for cooking and plumbing, insulation, etc. There could be modular small dwellings easy to build, like the way people used to get Sears home plans and lumber delivered and build their own house.
