Assuming you can even win the bidding war to buy a house right now. Nothing worse than seeing a house you failed to buy have a For Lease sign on it the next week.
In my area there always seems to be a cash buyer so even if you have a strong offer and are prequalified the seller isn’t going to pick you. They need to heavily tax non-primary residences and housing owned by companies. These robobuyers have destroyed any chance people have of buying a first home.
Nothing worse than seeing a house you failed to buy have a For Lease sign on it the next week.
And it’s not only companies. Lots of homeowners with low-interest mortgages from 2020-21 rent out their home instead of selling when they move, which in turn depresses inventory and puts upward pressure on prices.
That’s crazy, I’m actually getting ready to sell my house right now and it’s going to be a struggle to not lose money… and I live in the fastest growing county in Utah.
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It really doesn’t make sense to talk about averages for something like this in a country as large and diverse as[US is. Median home price in Hawaii is $973k. In West Virginia it’s $158k. The average isn’t relevant to most people, just the tiny fraction who live in a place where it’s about in the middle. Also worth noting that average salaries vary pretty widely, too.
It does make sense because the average house price has gone up for everyone.
The article is about median prices.
Yep, got that. I’m saying the standard deviation is so high that there’s not a lot of use in discussing median prices across the country.
I’m thinking about the argument that people should just move to a cheaper area if they can’t afford the city. Doesn’t this graph suggest that even if everyone could move anywhere without reducing their salary most working people would still not be able to afford a home?
It might be true, but you can’t say that from that graph, which is part of my point. Median income and median home prices for such a gigantic and diverse area make it hard to know what the situation is in a specific area of a specific state. I mean, just in my state (California) there are areas where every home is multi-million dollar, and areas where they’re reasonably cheap.
Its also very expensive to be homeless. There is no legal place to loiter or park your car. Even teh public spaces are strictly enforced with no loitering. Where I live anyways, public space is highly protected. If you dont have a private space you can do go, you are forced to constantly be nomadic going from one place to the next until you tire and cannot run away from the enforcement authorities and are jailed. When you exit jail, there is a halfway house or something you are allowed to go in, but thats only temporary and only if you have addiction problems.
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Idk, I’d imagine they’d get a cell phone for wifi reasons over loitering coverage, even though that could be an additional benefit
Housing is just a pump that transfers money from the bottom to the top. THE COST OF HOUSING USED TO BE 3 ANNUAL SALARIES. We could also turn air into a similar pump but air is more difficult to fence off…
When my wife and I started looking at buying a house, there were new houses in a brand new development going for absolutely screaming deals. Houses twice the size of similarly priced houses. They were bland, soulless husks, each one bordering on ugly. You could even just buy the land and build your own home, ordered from a catalog. No estimate on time, of course.
And nestled in to the fine print at every single one, an HOA. The worst being 400+ dollars a month.
New housing isn’t being built, at least not for most Americans. We’re above average earners in a low cost of living area. What we can afford is not typical, and these crappy catalog mcmansions were just at the top of our price range, before the HOA.
The only solution I see to the housing problem, is mandating that middle-low income housing be built. Right now there’s no incentive to. The money is in keeping it scarce, or milking a covenant.
Sorry, but for the non-americans, what is HOA?
Home owner’s association. Neighborhoods have common needs such as landscaping and other infrastructure that doesn’t fall in someone’s property. In theory these make sense, you have a group of people who set guidelines to keep the neighborhood nice. However, what often ends up happening is the group pushes their own agendas and it is no longer for the common good.
To elaborate for the curious, basically a community sets up a committee that will handle these things. You would normally pay HOA fees to cover things like paying for the streetlights in a private community, the pool or fitness center, or whatever a long those lines. Basically for a private community it’s a way to say “Hey, we need some things done to keep things nice, everyone pay in so the flowers look good this year”. Normally, not a bad idea. There are usually two things that go wrong though. One, the money is mismanaged and/or people are heavily overcharged and the extra money disappears. The other is that HOAs also have rules for the community to keep things orderly on their own property. No cars in your yard, no blaring music after 9pm, etc. But you hear about a lot of cases where this stuff gets out of hand and suddenly people are getting fined for having trash cans out too long or the wrong colored curtains.
Because of this, people have justifiably built up a lot of hate for HOAs. Imagine buying a house, your own property, then paying +$100 a month to keep the neighborhood nice, then some picky Karen comes by to tell you that you can’t hang up your sports team flag and if you don’t take it down they’ll fine you $50 a day.
It’s worse than the just Karens. If you don’t pay the fines they will put a lien on your property and eventually evict you. This has created a strong market pressure towards swindling people out of their places. Financial groups that manage HOAs wholesale are now the norm and they love encouraging Karens to generate nonsense rules and report offenders… They get a cut of either the fine or the home sale sand get to play the role faceless enforcer. There are no regulations on how high fines can go, nor how high LATE FEES on those fines can go, nor how soon “late” is.
We are way past the time when HOAs were harmless funny people hyperfocusing on lawns… It’s a predatory business now.
My wife was telling me a story about her friends friend, who lives in an HOA neighborhood and had a big tree that was rotting in their yard and was causing concern about it falling over. Apparently they went to the hoa for approval to cut it down and they said no for one reason or another, then started fining them for it. Then a while after they collected a good deal of money off the fines said they could cut it down but they had to use a specific company who happened to be owned by a relative of the head of the hoa and charged them a lot more than they should have.
This story was passed down the lane and I don’t even know the couple, but it doesn’t sound far fetched.
Additionally, they set rules about really nitpicky things like house paint color, mail box standardization, how often you mow and water your lawn, what kind of holiday decorations you can have and when they can be up, whether you store your trash cans in a way that is visible from the street when it’s not collection day, guests parking on the street too often, that kind of thing. They can fine or even kick you out of your house for violations.
What is a group of Karens called?
A homeowners association.
Home Owners Association
Your proposed solution is too narrow. All housing makes housing more affordable. Just let developers actually build the places people are demanding, whatever they are. No housing you build will ever be affordable unless there is enough of it.
I see your point, and I don’t disagree. But we’re currently allowing developers to pick and choose which housing to focus on, and so the only housing being built is the housing with the most to profit from, the higher end housing.
I say mandate middle and lower income housing because it’s not being built, leaving a growing population to scramble for a decreasing supply of units.
Mixed use buildings and neighborhoods are also disappearing, and mixed use buildings are going to be key in the future.
We got our house before all of this bullshit back in 2014 before all of this bullshit happened, so we have a decent mortgage, but we really want to move to another town and we’ll never be able to afford it until my rich mother dies and I inherit her money and sell her house. Which sucks, because one of the reasons to move is because she lives there.
Have you talked to her about this? She may want to give you your inheritance early if she knows it’s so that you can move closer to her.
She knows we want to move there, but we don’t really talk about money in my family. I have no idea how much she’s worth. But she lives in a huge house, so if she’s broke, we can sell the house and get a smaller one.
I can recall a time when people said home prices will never crash, right before they crashed.
I like all the people on lemmy that just expect everyone to buy a house instead of renting.
Edit. I love how everyone hates me because I can’t afford a house. Thumbs up lemmy
The current level of ownership is an historical anomaly and it seems to be going down now but is it really something we should be glad is happening? I personally don’t think so although I also understand that not everyone wants to own, everyone who wants to should be able to, even if it’s just a small condo.
No, you just have to save money for a down payment. It’s not easy but you put that down and then you’re paying about $1500 to $2500 a month.
…for a $400,000 home, to pay $2,000 a month with current interest rates, your downpayment would need to be 50%>
You would need $200,000 cash in hand.
No one puts 50% down, it isn’t 1952. $10K-$25K is normal these days.
Can you not do that? Maybe try budgeting and learning a marketable skill like programming or plumbing instead of having a degree in gender studie /s
I dare you to post on a programming community, asking how long it would take for the average software developer to save 200k USD. Maybe only if you are a senior developer working for a huge silicon valley company. Or maybe working in a niche role that no one else can do so you can negotiate a better salary.
But the average college graduate coming into that field is not making anywhere near enough to save 200K. Especially not in the US because of student loans. And likely not overseas either because the IT sector isn’t as big as it would be in the US.
For context, I live in Ireland, and while we do have a lot of big companies setting up shop here, literally just for tax reasons, and we have most university courses paid for by the government (aside from 3k that most students must pay themselves). But even despite all that, the cost of living is horrendous here. Nobody that doesn’t already come from wealth would be able to save 200K.
So respectfully, you need a reality check if you think that just by having a marketable skill, one can realistically achieve what’s necessary to own their own home in this day and age.
I tagged it sarcasm for a reason. My wife has a CS degree I know exactly how bad it is for programmers. Also I’m an engineer. Together we might have enough money that we could theoretically raise a small family and own a house if we’re frugal.
We should all just stop eating avocado toast, obviously.
You’ll probably have enough saved around age 28-30 in most cities. It seems large but it’s doable. Then you just have to get through the bidding war.
You’re liked an arrested development character.
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Your experiences aren’t universalisable. Part of growing up into an adult, is understanding that. The inability to understand that is quite literally “arrested development”.
“universlisable”
Yet I’m the comedian
Fixed it. Got anything else?
So, every single person can do exactly what you did and have every single opportunity that you had?
Of course there’ll be edge cases, but generally yes. Just save money, stop removed, buy a house from outside the city centre. Some tips for yall, that you’re not gonna listen as you’re already knee-deep in memes and self-sorrow. Sad
You’re a moron. Lacking empathy isn’t a super power, it’s a mental disability.
Average entry level home in my state is over 250k. 20% down payment is 50k. How many years will it take for someone actually making 115k to save that up? Stop boot licking
You call someone that can’t afford a house a bootlicker, and your also calling someone that can afford a house a bootlicker.
Pick your lane dude
Saving up $50K would take about 12 years, starting at age 18.
🙄 You bootstrap types coulda been made in a factory for how uniformly dull you come off
Oh, that’s all? Wow! So simple! I guess to be a millionaire, you just have to save a million dollars, it’s not easy, but once you have put aside a million dollars, you’re a millionaire, simple as that!
Shut up.
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Broski where do you live? Try saving 200k or whatever it takes to make a sensible downpayment wherever you live. Remember, while saving that money, you still pay for rent and logically, rent didn’t go down either.
I bring this up and get downvoted to hell.
I can tell you’ve never bought a house if you think you need $200K to do it. It’s more like $20K down and you refinance after a year to get a lower interest rate.
I can tell your house is nothing like what I’d wanna live in. If you can get a house for maybe 70k, yeah a downpayment of 20k works.
In most places a house will likely be 500k or above. Let’s just say 500k for the sake of argument… it’s a simple number for your simple brain. You’ll have to pay at least 20% up front. That’s 100k in my example. However, that’s quite an unreasonable thing to do in recent years, so I better suggest your downpayment be more than 30%, or 150k in this example. Generally, 40% is s very good downpayment in terms of long term financial security… that’s already 200k. So yes. 200k is what the average person should expect. 20k wouldn’t even get you the land.
Oh, now a basic home isn’t good enough for you. Let me guess, it needs a swimming pool, three car garage, and a finished basement, too.
Yes, $20K down will get you a standard 3 bedroom home. You want to have a McMansion which is unaffordable for 99% of the American public.
There comes a point where a basic house is not enough. For example, someone who starts a family and career before buying late.
By the time I bought my first house I had 2 teenagers, a work from home job (need a dedicated office) and a sick mother-in-law who is dependent on us. Add to that, I am an expat, so I want my sister to be able to come and visit (a nice-to-have I admit). The “starter” home for my family has 5 bedrooms!
20k will not get you a 3 bedroom home. Do you by chance live in West Virginia? Their median home values is under 200k, and even then, 20k won’t get you there. Trust me homeboy, 20k will not get you far, not even in the cheapest of regions.
The median US house value is 430k. The lowest legal downpayment is 3%, but that’s plain stupid. Financially, anything under 20% makes no sense. Your mortgage will be super high and you’ll have to pay for morgage insurance which you don’t have to do if you do a downpayment above 20%.
Also, if it’s so cheap and easy to buy a house, why isn’t everyone buying a house right now? The majority of millenials and forward are renting and you’re telling me half a year of rent is enough for them to get a house? Clearly they would have figured that one out by now.
Just so you understand my living standards. I do not own a car at all. I could financially afford one, but that wouldn’t be a sensible investment.
You can buy a 3BR home for $130K in Oklahoma City, so yes putting $20K down will absolutely secure you a home.
The median house proce in Oklahoma is super low. Try finding a home in the west.
