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Rent requirements in the US are nuts
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this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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Our mortgage is $2600 month. My wife has a much better paying job than me. I make $2200 a month after taxes/deductions. She is currently going through cancer treatments and although everything is looking positive it really got me thinking about what the hell does life look like for my family if something happens to my wife?
I've had the same bus driving job for 23 years. I'm undereducated. A 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom apartment is $1600 month here. I don't know how I'd ever be able to take care of myself and two kids.
They want us to have 80k+ in school debt so you can be allowed to have mortgage debt or rent and own nothing. I don't know where I'm going with this but I'm just bummed out about life right now.
You need to move to someplace you can afford.
The OP is another example... You can live alone in many places, but they chose to live in an expensive area. You can't complain about that and be taken seriously. I want to live in Beverly hills... but I can't afford it, so I don't live there.
OP's Mortgage: $2600/month
You: "I want to live in Beverly hills... but I can't afford it, so I don't live there."
Out of touch with reality? Check.
What really blows is when I bought my house 8 years ago, it was affordable. I now make almost 40% more and there is no way I could afford the same house. Mortgage, taxes and insurance (including flood insurance because the NFIP sucks) is less than $1,400. Once PMI is removed, it will be closer to 1,300, and once we finally remove flood insurance (because we are inland and the maps are outdated) it will be less than $1,100 a month.
I just don't see how millennials find homes anywhere remotely desirable in this market.
My daughter is only 13 but we're already expecting she's going to spend her 20s with us because of this.
Try 30s
Even back at the end of 2019, we managed to find a house in a decent area that we could afford on my $60K/yr job. The mortgage was only $100 more a month than we were paying for a TINY “2” bedroom apartment. We managed to use our state’s first time homebuyer program to get a grant to pay to remove the PMI up front, which was a big help. I now make more money but I really think we couldn’t afford our house now (at least at the price online website estimate). It’s crazy and we never want to move if we can avoid it!
I have a "starter house" but in a very desirable town, it's possible it might make someone more money to tear down and build a mcmansion. We will probably want to move, which is fine because bigger houses aren't that much more expensive. Once the mcmansions hit the market during the lull, they never went away. It's just no one is willing to pay 650k+ for them. So now they are in the 450k range, it has driven down the price of reasonably large and or older big farm style homes down. So now my 170k property is worth like almost 250k and the house that would have been 400k, is around 325 to 350. Those two events basically closed the gap significantly.
It's a strange market to be sure, but one way or another I think it'll end. Either mortgage rates go way, way down, or prices, or both in the medium to long term.