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?
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.
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.
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.
Houses should have never been an investment.
Burn the entire fucking thing down.
House is an investment even if you build it entirely by yourself from materials harvested and processed by you. You invest a chunk of your time and effort to build something you expect to “pay you back” in the future, eg. keep you dry and warm when it’s cold outside.
In your new Wells Fargo Lifepod™! 160 sqft of essential living. Conviently stackable. Durable metal construction. Only $3900/mo!
The housing market isn’t going to crash. We’re at the highest mortgage rates in 23 years and it’s STILL a sellers’ market. The fact is, inventory being incredibly low + home buying being desirable for many == no reason for a crash. Even the Great Recession only resulted in a temporary price dip.
I know a lot of millennials and zoomers would LIKE for there to be a crash because they think it would let them afford a home. This is a false belief, though: if there were a major crash, it would likely be accompanied by a recession in the labor market too, so there goes your ability to pay for the house.
Also, it’s not black and white. If house prices and interest rates cooled off, it would let me (a homeowner) refinance my mortgage.
Morever, there are benefits to home ownership outside of equity / profiting off a sale:
- Tax benefits (I can deduct my mortgage interest and property taxes; can’t do that with a rental)
- Do what I want with my house – customize, upgrade, etc.
- No landlord to tell me what I can or can’t do, or kick me out
- For complicated reasons, there aren’t many detached house rentals in my area, so owning a house means no loud, obnoxious apartment living – this is the BIG one for me
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/housing-market-crash-experts-191734802.html---
This is the right answer.
Look at Europe. For many the closest you get to buying a house is a 99 year lease, and for the majority renting is normal. The main difference is that renters have many more rights so there’s less reason to want to own for yourself.
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).
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.
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.
