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 hate that we lost sight of what wealth really is and replaced it with the idea of profit. I bought my house to provide myself with financial security, not profit.
My monthly “rent” (mortgage payment) is locked in for the next 25 years and will not go up. At the end of those 25 years when I’m ready to retire, I’ll have housing with only taxes and insurance payments. THAT is wealth. THAT is what home ownership is meant to be. If housing prices fall, it won’t change my life a bit.
Additionally, if overall house prices go up that does mean that your house becomes more valuable.
However, it also means all other houses become more expensive.
So in practice, if you want to move in 10-20 years for whatever reason, it essentially means nothing that your house has gone up in value. All that extra money is going to go to another house which has equally gone up in value.
The value of a house going up means you are technically building wealth, but that wealth is entirely tied up in the house itself. Unless you are intending to become homeless it likely will stay tied up in your house forever.
House prices going up is mostly a good thing for investors. Not so much for people who simply want a place to live.
Except that many people live in their homes until they need assisted living. In which case selling the home nets them more money than they put in to pay for those services. Or consider that home prices raise at different rates in different areas so it’s possible to sell in a hot market and retire to a cheaper area when you no longer benefit from things like proximity great schools as your children are grown.
Meh I don’t care. We bought a couple years ago when rates were super lower but prices were high. Our mortgage is less than rent would be and we’re not going anywhere for a long time. I think of the house as a place to live, not an investment really. Like a car. It serves a purpose and I’ll use it until I can’t anymore.
Same boat. Got a 10 year lock in at ~2% interest and now the rates are more then double that.
Going to do everything we can to keep that rate although we doing extra repayments just in case.
Doing extra payments when you have a 2% loan is just throwing money away. Savings accounts rates are minimum 4% right now - put your extra payments there if you’re super risk adverse. If you’re less risk adverse, buy mutual funds that match the market.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
We need a housing market crash. My pocket book be damned. We’ll figure it out. The next generation won’t.
Ain’t that the truth.
I live in Orem, a city you probably have never heard of. Population of under 100k, not a rich city by any means. Median individual income of 26k, median household income of 65k.
There are no single family homes for sale under 400k, and all apartment/condos for sale are 300k.
Just picking a random apartment for sale for a little under 300k and doing an estimate of 10% down with current rates is a mortgage of 2.2 k a month on 30 year fixed. So of course whoever buys and rents these out are going to do so at AT LEAST that number.
With JUST taxes taken out of 65k bringing it down to 45k, the mortgage/rent alone would be well over half the median house hold income for these things. But of course there would be HOA, withdrawals for 401k, withdrawals for medical care, etc. Meaning it would probably be closer to 70% of median household net just to pay mortgage on the cheapest apartment for sale.
And of course we can repeat this exercise for just about any city and get the same result. It’s scary.
Howdy neighbor. Things are pretty bad up here in SLC too. I’m just gonna keep renting until it all comes down, or the lake dries up.
Fun part about Orem is that all of those houses for 400-600 were built in the 80s and haven’t been updated since then.
So then you start looking at houses in at least Saratoga or Spanish fork. I landed in Springville and I bought 3 years ago before the market got as bad as it did.
Non-home owner of Lemmy here. I want you all to know that my fondest wish to see the housing market completely implode is strictly not personal.
My only chance to buy a house slipped away a few years ago. House prices have gone up by 50% or more in some locations, and interest rates have more than doubled. What was previously affordable is now completely outside my means to pay for each month.
My last hope now is for a 2008 repeat so I might be able to snag something up for what it’s actually worth. I certainly can’t count on the state or the government to take the housing crisis seriously enough to have them actually build more affordable housing for people to buy and drive the asking prices lower.
I feel this so much. My dad was a general contractor in California during the 2008 crash; we lost 6 houses that were either ready to sell, or still being built. So I personally know the kind of pain and suffering that a housing market crash can cause for certain people. At this point though I have to look out for me and my family, currently renting part of a way-to-small condo in an area where you’d need 3 incomes to afford a mortgage on a house big enough for all 4 of us.
So yeah, crash and burn market. Give me a chance to get us out of here.
It was a gigantic mistake to ever allow homes to become investments. That economic value growth is only possible by limiting the availability of homes near popular areas, which is by definition exclusionary meaning some people must be priced out of having a home in a place with good opportunities.
It’s not just unfair, it’s also inherently unstable. You’re eventually chasing away many of the workers you’re dependent on, you can’t avoid bubbles and crashes, etc.
