As a Gen-X’er, I had the same conversation with my grandparents 35 years ago.
“Why don’t you just buy a house?”
“Do you know how much houses cost now?”
“Well, we bought our first house for $40,000.”
“$40,000 isn’t even a down payment now. Tell you what, here’s how much I make, let’s sit down with the real estate listings and you tell me what I can afford.”
“. . . Oh.”
“Yeah, right, ‘Oh’.”
I did finally buy a house… 33 years later, a decade after they both died.
I’ve bought two homes with a price tag under 80k - most recently about 15 years ago (and it was a fixer upper to be sure) and sold it for about that 12 years ago. My first house I bought when I was 23. 27 years ago. I don’t recall what I put down, but it was under $5k.
Which isn’t to argue so much as just demonstrate that this varies wildly with location.
What are you talking about? I was responding to someone who said they couldn’t afford a house 35 years ago with 40k down. It’s only been in the last few years 40k wouldn’t be enough and even that is only if you go conventional mortgage instead of one of the other programs.
3% down FHA $40k will purchase you a $1.2 million house.
That’s not what he said. He said in a conversation that 40k wouldn’t hypothetically be a down payment 35 years ago. I didn’t say housing is cool today, I said that the conversation he had 35 years ago was very atypical and housing wasn’t impossible to afford until relatively recently. No, the experience of Gen X 20-30 years ago shouldn’t be compared to the experience of today as if they were the same.
You bought busted ass houses during the multinational housing market crash. At the time banks were struggling to offload massive inventory repossessed from people who could no longer pay whist they themselves were worrying about going bankrupt. There was very little in the way of credit available so you presumably bought them for cash which means that while everyone else was losing their ass you had more liquid wealth than most everyone. The last time this happened previously was the great depression.
To describe this as situations vary with location is to be completely full of shit.
Houses ARE cheaper in the boondocks where there are no jobs but this isn’t a viable strategy for most folks.
I didn’t buy any houses for fucking cash lol. I was making 32k when I bought my first house I put down 3% because that’s what I could afford. I didn’t have any money, and I’ve never even contemplated buying a house for cash. I was just a regular asshole living a regular life in a state capital where there are plenty of jobs, used to be many of them union jobs making a shitload more than me. I didn’t get any stupendous deals on either of those houses for the day.
The point here was things are much worse today. They weren’t this bad before. This is an exceptional market. I’m stuck in my current house now because of how much worse the market is. That’s my point is things are way worse now than we’ve had to deal with in the last 30 years at least.
In both those cases you still have to pay one thousand dollars in rent every month to the actual property owner, so I don’t know if I would call that home ownership except only in the most generous sense.
Oh yeah, it absolutely varies wildly. My first place is back on the market for little more than I sold it for over a decade ago. My current home is worth far more than I paid for it just a few years ago. They’re 4 hours apart.
Yep, you could still probably find that in the town I grew up in - which the major employer left decades ago, everyone of working age moved out, and has been getting more rundown and greyer every year. Sometimes a cheap house is not worth it.
As a Gen-X’er, I had the same conversation with my grandparents 35 years ago.
“Why don’t you just buy a house?”
“Do you know how much houses cost now?”
“Well, we bought our first house for $40,000.”
“$40,000 isn’t even a down payment now. Tell you what, here’s how much I make, let’s sit down with the real estate listings and you tell me what I can afford.”
“. . . Oh.”
“Yeah, right, ‘Oh’.”
I did finally buy a house… 33 years later, a decade after they both died.
I’ve bought two homes with a price tag under 80k - most recently about 15 years ago (and it was a fixer upper to be sure) and sold it for about that 12 years ago. My first house I bought when I was 23. 27 years ago. I don’t recall what I put down, but it was under $5k.
Which isn’t to argue so much as just demonstrate that this varies wildly with location.
Not where my friends, family and human/voting rights exist.
You’re literally the problem with the article. Just be less poor and go back in time. Suck a dirty dick please.
Bro, relax.
What are you talking about? I was responding to someone who said they couldn’t afford a house 35 years ago with 40k down. It’s only been in the last few years 40k wouldn’t be enough and even that is only if you go conventional mortgage instead of one of the other programs.
3% down FHA $40k will purchase you a $1.2 million house.
If all you can afford is 40k down there’s zero chance you can afford the 8k a month payments
That’s not what he said. He said in a conversation that 40k wouldn’t hypothetically be a down payment 35 years ago. I didn’t say housing is cool today, I said that the conversation he had 35 years ago was very atypical and housing wasn’t impossible to afford until relatively recently. No, the experience of Gen X 20-30 years ago shouldn’t be compared to the experience of today as if they were the same.
You bought busted ass houses during the multinational housing market crash. At the time banks were struggling to offload massive inventory repossessed from people who could no longer pay whist they themselves were worrying about going bankrupt. There was very little in the way of credit available so you presumably bought them for cash which means that while everyone else was losing their ass you had more liquid wealth than most everyone. The last time this happened previously was the great depression.
To describe this as situations vary with location is to be completely full of shit.
Houses ARE cheaper in the boondocks where there are no jobs but this isn’t a viable strategy for most folks.
I didn’t buy any houses for fucking cash lol. I was making 32k when I bought my first house I put down 3% because that’s what I could afford. I didn’t have any money, and I’ve never even contemplated buying a house for cash. I was just a regular asshole living a regular life in a state capital where there are plenty of jobs, used to be many of them union jobs making a shitload more than me. I didn’t get any stupendous deals on either of those houses for the day.
The point here was things are much worse today. They weren’t this bad before. This is an exceptional market. I’m stuck in my current house now because of how much worse the market is. That’s my point is things are way worse now than we’ve had to deal with in the last 30 years at least.
I could see that in some states, pretty much not anywhere on the West coast, at least not a house you could live in.
$25,000 - 1966 mobile home. But you can’t get traditional financing on a mobile home that old because they aren’t worth anything.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/16745-SE-Division-St-Unit-131_Portland_OR_97236_M22120-62557?from=srp-list-card
$60,000 - 1997 mobile home, same deal.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/12420-SE-Bush-St-Unit-5_Portland_OR_97236_M11761-60151?from=srp-list-card
https://www.justanswer.com/landlord-tenant/jgpyy-depreciation-schedule-mobile-home.html#:~:text=For tax purposes%2C the U.S.,useful life of 27.5 years.
27.5 year limit. So anything older than January, 1997.
In both those cases you still have to pay one thousand dollars in rent every month to the actual property owner, so I don’t know if I would call that home ownership except only in the most generous sense.
Congratulations on living in a town where nobody wants to live?
Oh yeah, it absolutely varies wildly. My first place is back on the market for little more than I sold it for over a decade ago. My current home is worth far more than I paid for it just a few years ago. They’re 4 hours apart.
Yep, you could still probably find that in the town I grew up in - which the major employer left decades ago, everyone of working age moved out, and has been getting more rundown and greyer every year. Sometimes a cheap house is not worth it.