Been poor my whole life. Guarantee 99% of people on here make far more than I do. I can’t work as much as others due to health issues, and I still managed it though cunning, sacrifice, and good timing.
You’re pretty massively understating how much timing played a role in your specific case.
The timing was more a factor of having a real estate agent as a friend. If you’re using bullshit like Zillow to look for properties, then you’re an idiot.
Zillow is not MLS, and most of what people are seeing ‘on the market’ is shit that’s left over from being snagged up. Get yourself a real estate agent that can keep an eye out on property for you, and there are plenty of deals that come across their desks that you could be notified of before it hits general availability. They don’t make money unless they find you something, so they are generally on the ball when it comes to keeping an eye out. Everyone here whining is just showing their inexperience and lack of drive for actually fixing their situation. Instead they just want to be stuck in a rental loop their entire lives.
No, you bought in 2008 when prices plummeted to insanely low levels due to economic collapse that was ALMOST worse than the Great Depression. There were lots and lots of modest or shitty houses like yours available for cheap then, all over the country.
It was 95% that, and maybe 5% your resourcefulness and willingness to sacrifice or whatever.
Buying a house like yours for 30k (even inflation-adjusted) are nearly nonexistent in the vast vast majority of the US at this point. They’re definitely not out there by the hundreds of thousands in lower-middle income neighborhoods like they were in 2008-2010.
For a significant number of people to be able to do the same thing in the same way, there’d have to be a similar cataclismic event again.