141
Why are there so many expensive homes?
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
141 points (96.7% liked)
No Stupid Questions
35701 readers
3161 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
This is funny, because I consider OP's house to be obnoxiously expensive, let alone all the newer homes they mention.
There are MANY calculators out there as to how much house one can afford, and personally I think most of them over-estimate the amount. But based on very rough numbers, you could spend about 3x to 4x your yearly salary on a house. So to afford a $500k house, one "should" be in the $150k/year range. To afford a $700k house, one should be in the $200k/year salary range.
Personally I think both those numbers are bonkers and rather live well below my means than be house-poor.
The reason there are just so many expensive homes is that people are terrible at personal finances. They don't mind being in debt and then there is the awful FOMO mentality that is helping drive home prices up for no good reason. Add in the fact that for years now new home construction has simply not kept up. There were homes being built, of course, but many of them were on the top end of the market because local town governments rather get the taxes for ten $10M homes, rather than force developers to build 50 $250k homes. So there is so much blame to pass around.
It's not FOMO, it's financial sanity. If I pay rent for another thirty years, I have nothing to show for it except a period of non-homelessness and years more of rent to come. If I pay a mortgage for the same amount for thirty years, I'm rewarded with a house for the rest of my life and no more mortgage - and I can resell the house when it no longer suits my needs, or give it to a younger family member
I think it's awful that people are willing to be house poor in order to live in an expensive home, likely with no way to deal with it if something goes sideways.
FWIW, we bought the house when it was $330k with a sizeable down payment. We wanted to make sure that only one of us can pay for it, in case the other loses their job, or good forbid something worse happens.
You sound like me! Your situation and everything is similar. I also refuse to follow the herd when it comes to 30 year loans. No way, no how am I being enslaved by debt for that long.