Exclusive: most renters surveyed by Harris Poll say the areas they live in have become so unaffordable they are ‘barely livable’
The poll, conducted by the Harris Poll Thought Leadership and Future Practice, asked survey takers to identify themselves as renters or homeowners, along with other demographic information. Those polled were asked their opinion on home ownership in the United States. For many, especially renters, the outlook is bleak.
Though the vast majority of renters polled said they want to own a home in the future, 61% said they are worried they will never be able to. A similar percentage believe no matter how hard they work, they’ll never be able to afford a home.
“When you think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and housing is right at that foundational level of security, the implications on consumer psyche when things feel so unaffordable is something that will impact everyone,” said Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at Harris Poll. The American dream of owning a home “is looking more like a daydream for renters”.
Veterans get their loans backed by the government, so no down payment.
It allowed me to get a decent sized 3 bedroom house on almost an acre inside of a metro location… For $400 more than a 1 bedroom apartment down the street a decade ago. I got two friends as roommates at first, paid lower than my old rent and they saved up their own down payments and both moved out into homes they bought in just a few years because I charged really cheap rent.
I just checked, my old apartment has went up $700 in that decade.
The Down Payment is the hardest part of buying a home. You can’t save up 25k while paying what’s essentially a mortgage payment.
Give first time homebuyers the same program, and loads of people who think they’ll never own a home would be able to do so and pay less than renting within just a few years.
If we don’t do anything, those people are going to be lifelong renters.
We were lucky enough to buy in 2019 before everything got out of sight in our area. We used a FHA loan which required a 3% down payment and I got a first time homebuyer grant that covered all of that which allowed us to pay closing and moving costs since we were leaving in a hurry due to the small podunk town we lived in for 12 years stopping extra trash haul off and allowing trash burning in town instead. Almost every day my house was full of smoke. I had to choose between my home or my health. We were outbid on about a dozen houses by landlords. With the loan type we got stuck with a PMI, but even with that and extortionate Texas home insurance rates we still pay half of the renters in the house next to us. Although we’ll never be able to afford moving now and if we had waited any longer we would have been stuck in the corrupt small town EPA violation. We paid 96k for a brick 3/1 and five years later it’s shot up to 240k in value. I feel bad for the people that can’t get one now because I fear it’s more going to get any better when half the country cares more about voting for the people they believe hate the same people they do.
because I fear it’s more going to get any better when half the country cares more about voting for the people they believe hate the save people they do.
This is absolutely not an endorsement of fascist traitors and everyone should absolutely (1) vote and (2) pick Biden, but I feel compelled to point out that a lot of the factors causing the housing crisis (car dependency, NIMBYism, etc.) are thoroughly bipartisan.
I mean absolutely. Lobbying, no party actually representing progressive ideas, and corporatism insures that if nothing else does. I’m just saying that the people who tend to vote for the fascist traitor always vote against their own interest. I’m sure it’ll trickle down any old time though. checks watch
How so? This is about home ownership. People who own homes don’t want new apartment buildings going up next to them so vote against that. But apartment buildings do not have home owners.
People are perfectly fine living in suburban sprawl which is what NIYMBism is most often associated with. So there is some argument that this causes higher rent but it seems quite the stretch to apply it to also blame it on home prices.
There is a federal first time home buyer program even for non military members. You can put basically 0% down on your first house. You just also have to pay PMI until you have 20% equity in your home. So you are better off making as large of a down payment as you can but it can be as low as 0%. Of course there’s still closing costs but that doesn’t cost too much more than most rentals charge for a security deposit anyways. As far as PMI goes it isn’t that expensive. With the PMI, taxes, and insurance included my mortgage payment on a 3 bedroom house is still less than rent on a 1 bedroom apartment in my area.
It’s better than renting, but PMI is a racket and needs to be discontinued. It’s a handout to the wealthy. The mortgage insurance is the property itself. If you don’t pay your loan, they take the property. It’s a hassle to foreclose a house, but I think mortgage lenders do just fine overall. They must assume some risk, it’s part of the deal.
When I was in my late teens/early twenties I truly thought that in ten years I’d own a home for sure, with some hard work and dedication.
Ten years later, I don’t even get to buy groceries every week or eat every day. I’ve lost 30 pounds in the last year just from skipping so many meals.
I can’t wait to see what the next ten years holds.
And if one more person tells me I should make sure to invest for retirement… I can’t even feed myself, what you want me to invest? My retirement plan is work until I’m too old/sick/injured and then off myself.
I wasn’t smart enough to make that choice this time around, but next life being born into a rich family is my number one criteria :)
It’s really quite easy. Just cut out the avocado toast, stop buying those expensive coffees, and invest that cool $69,000,000 your parents left you from their work on the board of an orphan crushing factory.
Sorry, I definitely might come off as rude in this comment, but this line of thought really annoys me. Do you think people are poor simply because they’re too dumb to think “I should spend less money on groceries?” Don’t you think they’ve already considered finding a better-paying job, if such a possibility exists for them? If moving is even an option for them (which is a big if), where do you suggest they get the money to rent a moving truck, as well as the money for a security deposit on a new apartment?
Your comment is about as helpful as asking “Have you tried not being poor?”
Do you think people are poor simply because they’re too dumb to think “I should spend less money on groceries?”
It’s usually spending money poorly, yes. But I don’t blame them, I blame the lack of education on these topics.
If you aren’t even using freely available budgeting options, then I recommend to start there and assess spending.
I very rarely encounter people who complain about money but also have real concrete budget. If I ask it’s usually met with excuses and changing the topic.
If you truly have a genuine budget and still can’t figure out where the money is going, then it’s a more serious chat.
But the absurd frequency you see people posting about how they can’t afford groceries and lo and behold, they’re buying a bunch of overpriced garbage and paying extra for non necessities, it’s bananas.
If you complain about food costs and I find out you don’t know how to break down a whole chicken, I feel a little less bad for you.
If I find out your buying dumb shit, my empathy starts to go down.
I lived with and worked in a poverty stricken industry for many many years, and the constant frequency I saw people complain about money one day, then waste money the next, has gradually over time led me to just assume most people are completely inept when it comes to budgeting.
And I mean, it’s not exactly a required course in high school, so I am not that surprised.
And it’s mostly food, drugs, and alcohol when it comes to wasting money.
That and the “buying little things you dont need thatll end up in the trash” I see often. Fast fashion and all that jazz.
It’s a serious problem honestly.
Oh dear, thought I recognized that name and vibe. You’re not here to repeat this kind of thing again, are you?
Missing the other big factor:
There’s a large quantity of influencers profiting off of doomsaying and convincing millennial they can’t afford homes with bad math and bogus statistics. They churn out clickbait content with unfounded claims, purposefully designed to rile up viewers and drive engagement.
This of course applies to many topics, housing affordability just being one, that turns out drive big engagement by spreading disinformation.
It’s actively profitable to lie on the internet nowadays, so lots of my fellow millennials have an extremely soured and warped perspective of reality, because if you keep getting told lies by enough different random strangers on the internet on a topic you aren’t familiar with, you’ll start to believe it.
Spreading disinformation, especially about serious topics like economics, medicine, politics, religion, etc, needs to be cracked down on more. Posing as a professional online and spreading damaging info on purpose should result in jail time imo.
One of my friends solved this by sitting down with her parents and having them ‘help her budget things out’.
Suddenly they shut up about it. And gave her some money. So all it takes with some people is rubbing their faces in it so they can’t pretend prices are the same as they were in the 50s.
I posted in another thread that I have nothing to save for retirement but people chastise me for getting the occasional chai latte or buy Taco Bell for my kid once in a while and I got the response, “what are you going to do about your child’s future?”
Hope we can afford to feed her until (if ever) she can make it on her own?
As if I could put the $20 or so a month on “luxuries” like those into a savings account and become a millionaire by the time I’m 65.
seems about right. at this point my plan is to buy a small bit of land somewhere and plop some modular/tiny homes on it and call it good. not that it’s just that easy, but i’d rather try to find some resemblance of normalcy than play the rigged game.
My mother did this. Used her disability backpay to finance a little double-wide trailer, and the plot it’s placed on is like $150 a year plus utilities. Yes she lives in a trailer park, with all the associated things that come with that, but her monthly expenses are basically nothing and she owns the building under her own name.
The real trouble with trailer parks is when they get bought up by a REIT or something and the residents get forced out (and lose their trailers too, because they’re too flimsy and worthless to move again after they’ve been sitting in place for a few decades).
Very easy to own a home. Just buy a house in the middle of nowhere, and then have a campervan
Yeah… I’ve been looking in a lot of “the middle of nowheres” and I can’t find work anywhere even remotely close (1hr drive) that doesn’t pay complete dogshit that wouldn’t cover the bills. Not to mention the houses I keep finding are in bumfuck nowhere and yet are asking $150k+ for a house that is listed as a “teardown.”
…$150k for the luxury of having to build a new home over it… It’s absolutely fucking disgusting.
But yes, if this advice is for the lucky tech bros that can move wherever the hell they want, then sure. There are houses to “buy.”
Another user just posted a beautiful home for 180k. Sucks that your Google skills suck so much u can’t find them.
Doesn’t even need to be middle of nowhere. Just needs to be ~30 minute drive away from city core. Cheaper suburbs are still very much affordable in every city I have seen.
Sometimes you gotta go out to that 20-30 min away “next nearest” smaller town that’s right next to the big city but isn’t actually in it. It has all your amenities and plenty to live off of, but if you wanna go to the big city’s malls, theaters, concerts, etc, you gotta drive 30 min instead of walk there.
Usually you can get very decent starter homes for 250k to 300k in said places, and usually in said “one off” towns the renting industry is much more slow, so you don’t have that “you have to buy NOW” pressure. Homes stay up for sale for a bit and you have more than 3 hours to make an offer lol.
Downside is now you need a car… though often even then the smaller towns have some form of public transport to the bigger city you can use, though it can be on a rarer schedule. IE your bus may only come every 2 hours so better not miss it.
I prefer “edge of the city suburbs” over “one town over” personally. Access to public transport means I skipped buying and paying for a vehicle and skipped straight to saving up for a house.
Just needs to be ~30 minute drive away from city core.
I skipped buying and paying for a vehicle and skipped straight to saving up for a house.
It’s not just this. Everything you said is objectivity bad advice.
I’m gonna have to call bull on almost all of this, at least in my state. (The low listing times are real though… big money buying anything they can rent out)
To get to a starter home at $250,000 my commute would be 1hr and 50 miles minimum.
350k only gets me about 45 minutes and 30 miles.
And these time estimates are on a good day, because fuck good freeway design where I live. One goes north south, one East West, and that’s it. Everyone commutes on them and if you need to go anywhere in rush hours it’s three times as long
Checking Zillow for my city, it’s $500k minimum for a 2br an hour and a half away by car. That would also put me in the middle of a Republican area as a queer immigrant.
The “buy a house in the middle of nowhere” mentality doesn’t take into account the risks and depression associated with living somewhere red as a minority.
Try looking in CO. The only house within 30 min of my job under $300k that isn’t a trailer or a tiny condo in this one old shithole building says, “everything needs to be repaired including structural repairs” in the listing. Trailers are still pretty much rentals and lot rent is outrageous ($800-1200 at basically every park that isn’t located directly on a hellmouth). Oh wait, I could go 90 min out and get a sweet deal of just $220k on a house that’s basically just a rotting outside and interior framing and insulation. What a great opportunity!
Try looking in one of the most desirable places to live in the country right now??? Are you all clueless???
Of course everything in CO is super pricey it got all that sweet Cali money flowing in.
If you’re expecting popular places to be even reasonably priced you’re kidding yourself.
It’s like going to a Bentley dealership and saying well where’s the bargain lot?!?!
You look foolish.
Even the houses in the middle of nowhere are $400K in my state. Rundown, off State Route X, nearest neighbors are all poor trash house? Still $400K.
I’m looking to build in the next year, and just expect that housing will be 50% of my pay or more because I’m sick of renting and being unable to prepare for when the rent shoots up $300 a month like it did last year.
Unless you’re in California or some other very high CoL in a city area that’s pretty doubtful.
In 2018 purchased an 1800sq ft 3 floor town home in northern Virginia in the fair fax area (very wealthy area) for 420k. 2 bed room 2.5 bath, built 2005.
I sold it in 2021 for 550k, probably could have made a bit more but we wanted to move . So there was definitely a big increase. But that’s a very nice, 2 BR, etc. there were cheaper ones. Down in the 300 range would get you a smaller home. Bought a nicer home in 2021 in a wealthy ish town of a small city. 2300 sq ft, 2 car garage, good schools, half acre to relax on. 450k after a second round of 3 way bidding.
The idea that you can’t purchase a decent home in a nice area for 400k is entirely incorrect. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5908-Founders-Hill-Dr-UNIT-302-Alexandria-VA-22310/51919565_zpid/
And to be clear, 400k isn’t affordable, we should drive that down, I just didn’t think what you said is realistic for most areas. It sounds unique ish to your area.
I don’t know what to tell you. I’m in Ohio, and everything is $400K, hence why I’m planning to go for a new-build…at over $400K.
Off topic tanget but I’m pretty tired of being told “housing is affordable, just not where YOU want to live” I’m in a midwest state and buying a home anywhere near a city is apparently now a luxury.
All my home owning friends keep telling me to stop throwing away my money on rent, and just move somewhere the nearest grocery store is quick 40 minute drive away. There are USDA loans to help, no city tax, no homeless or crime, if I could only stop clinging to “societal interactions and infrastructure” I could have a great homestead!
What a joke.
if I could only stop clinging to “societal interactions and infrastructure” I could have a great homestead!
This is so true, and something that really gets ignored in the discussion. I don’t WANT to move to bumbfuck nowhere where I have no roots, I want to stay and give back to the community that raised and nurtured me into the person I am today. Unfortunately I (and a lot of others) have been priced out by home speculators.
How is there a loneliness epidemic in all age groups of our society, and yet no one is asking if one of the factors might be people having to move for education and then work to chase affordability, while getting pushed further and further away from their social networks?
It’s not actually a joke, it’s the reality of the current housing market. If you want to own a house now or soon, that is where they are affordable. The other part of that reality to face is that this situation is not going to be fixed anytime soon, so you will have to deal with it by renting a high-priced small place in a big city, or taking the option to own your home where you can afford to buy.
I’m on track to have my house paid off about 15 years early, out here in rural USA where houses can still be bought. I would never trade this life to live in a big city, unless it was free to do so. It’s 5 minutes away from 2 grocery stores, 30 minutes away from the largest city in this part of the state. Most people in my area commute about 20-30 minutes to work. All of my peers own their own houses here too.
So you can laugh all you want at that “joke” but those of us living it are laughing at you paying $2000 a month for rent.
