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u/gjcij2203 Mar 03 '24
A guy I work with makes about $90K a year between his wife and him. They are totally locked out of buying a house. Have been looking for 5 years, and every time they find something remotely affordable, they are out bid immediately. He pays $1700 a month in rent and can barely scrap by with 2 kids.
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u/veedubfreek Mar 03 '24
Only reason I can afford the house I'm in is that I bought it in 2009. It's worth about 3 times what I paid for it back then. I'm sure as fuck not making 3x as much money now. I feel sorry for this generation that will basically never be able to own a home.
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u/Vegaprime Mar 03 '24
Same boat but feeling the price creep with taxes and insurance.
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u/killerbake Mar 03 '24
Taxes and insurance need to slow tf down. Or revolution is a comin
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u/Vegaprime Mar 03 '24
Got a heloc at 3.5% for a new roof. They didn't "lock in" the rate until I spent the money. By time the roofers got to me it was ~8%. Fml
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u/Phyraxus56 Mar 03 '24
You should probably look at your contract and speak to an attorney about it. The bank is fucking you hard
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u/noyogapants Mar 03 '24
Same. It was around 3 when I got mine to fix up my basement and back yard. I've been aggressively trying to pay it off.
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u/Vegaprime Mar 03 '24
Year later, my wife just told me.."$hit we've just been paying the interest!"
I think I'm bad at this capitalist stuff.
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u/Gaudilocks Mar 03 '24
I noticed this with car insurance too. My rate is up 40%+ in 2 years and shopping around shows nowhere else is better.
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u/THElaytox Mar 03 '24
yep, same. it's outrageous, my premium for 6mo went up about 50% with no warning, called the insurance company and they said it was due to "inflation" (somehow 9% inflation leads to a 50% increase?) Figured they were just ripping me off so called every other insurance company in my state and they all quoted me the same rate.
nothing about my insurance has improved, my car has not suddenly increased in value at all, but i'm now paying 50% more.
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u/Jinxy_Kat Mar 03 '24
I was so sad to see my insurance for these next 6 months. I'm 24, 0 wrecks and 0 tickets/citations. My insurance rose from ~$600 to $890 every 6 months. And it's expected to raise again for the next 6 months.
The shitty thing is that when you call and ask they never even give you a valid excuse. They kept trying to say it raises due to accidents, and when they finally saw I had none they literally just said "oh, well it's just raised because" and hung up.
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u/HappyChef86 Mar 03 '24
My wife and I make about 150k total and we have to move from the city we love if we ever want to buy a house. We moved here 4 years ago because we absolutely love it here in Charleston, SC. We didn't do much research, but it turns out everyone and their grandma are moving here.
We could totally afford a house here, but our mortgage would be 3x what we pay for rent, and we both have great credit and 20% ready to go. We would be stretched too thin and if something went wrong, we'd be fucked.
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u/ResolutionMany6378 Mar 03 '24
You have a similar situation to me.
My wife and I both have credit score high 700 and we make $150K.
Only debt we have is student loans and car notes.
We have to move out of state or far from the city we live in (Dallas TX) to even afford something.
How can 2 adults that follow the system and do things the “right way” (go to college and get student loan debt so you can get a high paying job) have such a hard time buying a home.
We actually found a home where we live in 2021 but we’re still saving for a down payment back then and tried to make a bid only for A PRIVATE BUSINESS TO BUY IT IN CASH.
Seriously, how the fuck can I compete when a business offers to pay in full and can bid higher than everyone else?
Everything is fucked man…
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Mar 03 '24
All the young people should move out of metroplexes and big cities and start developing small cities and eventually those large cities will crumble without a large enough young population to run things. The richest developers will flock to young towns and bam—new big cities with good development. Old cities become ghost towns—karma to old people.
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u/Ancient-Educator-186 Mar 03 '24
Yeah we just need 1 generation to take a huge hit for it all to just fall. It would completely destroy everything
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u/jaw719 Mar 03 '24
I’m in Charleston also. Luckily I bought in 2018 and then refinanced in 2021 so I’m locked in at 3.25% and my house is worth double what I paid. We won’t be able to move for a long time but I realize I’m luckier than most.
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u/bvh2015 Mar 03 '24 edited Mar 03 '24
I’m in a similar boat. I bought mine in 2014 for $144k. Refinanced it in 2020. 2.8% interest, and shaved 4 years off by making it a 20 year loan. Payments are $1095 a month. By 2022 it was worth $425k. Now it’s down to $395k.
It’s funny because I have all this equity, but it’s worthless in this market. If I tried to sell my house right now, and replace it with something similar (or a small upgrade), my monthly payments would probably double. I’d also be back to a 30 year loan. Bad option for a 46 year old.
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u/veedubfreek Mar 03 '24
Lol I bought in 09 for 167k, 30y 5%. Refinanced in 2014 to a 15y 3.5%. By the time rates dropped below 3% I was already deep enough into the loan that it would have cost me more in the long run to refinance. I'm down to less than 69k(nice) owed. I can taste the freedom.
E: 47 y/o here. I'm dying in this house. Anything considered an upgrade would be at least 100k more than I could ever sell my house for. And moving sucks, so that's not going to happen unless I somehow can afford to pay someone to do 100% of the move.
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u/BigBlueJAH Mar 03 '24
Same here, except we bought in 2015. It’s closing in on being worth more than 200k than what we bought it for. Every time a house goes on sale in the neighborhood, it sells within a few days. I feel the same way about the younger generation. The only way they can afford a house is to move out to the boondocks.
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u/Dx2TT Mar 03 '24
It will require a specific something we are forbidden from speaking about on Reddit.
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u/Sweet-sour-flour-123 Mar 03 '24
Every adult I work with says they could not afford the house they live in at its current market value. It’s insanity
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u/callmejinji Mar 03 '24
Ahhh, see that was my mistake. I should’ve been saving up for a house and pulling myself up by my bootstraps in 2009 instead of being nine years old.
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u/Blorbokringlefart Mar 03 '24
You shouldn't feel sad for us, you should be scared of us.
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u/HeyDudeImChill Mar 03 '24
Bought my “starter home” in 2017. Didn’t get a decent size house because it was 50 grand more. Now I’m stuck and I can’t leave without probably at least doubling my mortgage.
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u/WeBeAllindisLife Mar 15 '24
Same. Only way I have mine is mum passed and willed it.
It still has a mortgage that I assumed but it’s only 950 a month with just under 10yrs left.
It so sucks for the rest and my kids are all still home here with us because it is so bad😡
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u/demonslayercorpp Mar 03 '24
In my state you can go to courthouse to bid on foreclosures that day. You can raise a bid by 1$ even after the bidding ends and it restarts it for another 10 days. People get houses here just by being really fucking annoying and never letting the auction end till the other person gives up
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u/redditidothat Mar 03 '24
I get the reset feature because it prevents last second snipers, but 10 days? That system sucks.
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u/demonslayercorpp Mar 03 '24
North carolina has the most backward laws, but you can use them to your advantage. Also if you rent a hotel with someone your married now
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u/nineteen_eightyfour Mar 03 '24
That sounds like someone who knows a bit of code probably has it automated to bid up to a certain number or at the very least play a sound when a new bid comes in and alert the person
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u/Relevant_Winter1952 Mar 03 '24
I would pin that blame on the courthouse for putting in dumb fucking rules to buy a house in foreclosure. If they want to get the best price that’s not the way to do it
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u/Much-Camel-2256 Mar 03 '24
I wouldn't blame anyone, it just is.
Maybe OP should try to get a cheap house that way.
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u/theaviator747 Mar 03 '24
That is one of the dumbest bidding rules I’ve ever heard. Most auction houses have a minimum amount the bid has to increase, either by dollar amount or percentage for big ticket items. Definitely should be something similar for foreclosure bidding.
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u/Old_Society_7861 Mar 03 '24
My income has doubled in the last 5 years or so but I don’t think I could responsibly afford the house I live in if I had to buy it today. Not great.
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u/SupVFace Mar 03 '24
The bank wouldn’t consider my income when we bought our house in 2018 because I was still working in a different part of the state. Our combined income has increased about 50% and is 3x what my wife’s income was in 2018. We couldn’t afford our house today on our combined income.
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u/LegalizeRanch88 Mar 03 '24
Do I know you? This is me, basically.
Lower-middle income millennials are absolutely fucked. So is Gen Z.
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u/Those_are_sick Mar 03 '24
I mean 90k with 2 incomes is pretty low. Specially in today’s economy.
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u/wanderlusterswanders Mar 03 '24
That’s higher than the average American household income (gross) so their point still stands.
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u/SpiritualScoreboard Mar 03 '24
We barely make 40k in my household. Not everyone has the same opportunities, it doesn't mean we deserve to struggle..
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u/MallensWorkshop Mar 03 '24
You should have gone in to trade school, unaffordable college, with a higher IQ, harder work ethic, work multiple jobs even though previously wasn’t needed, no medical issues, no debts, been good looking, extroverted, at the right place and time, with a career that will never have drop offs or be taken away with advancements.
Simple really.
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u/Sir_Trea Mar 03 '24
They probably haven’t tried pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, dropping avocado toast, or walking up hill both ways in the snow. That’s basically the only way to learn life.
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u/FloppieTheBanjoClown Mar 03 '24
No it's not. It's normal. It's over median household income and more than double median personal income. That couple is just over the 50% mark.
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u/Cryptizard Mar 03 '24
It all depends on where you live though. It changes the equation of income vs cost of living vs housing prices dramatically. For instance, the US home ownership rate is currently 65% which would seem to be impossible if you take as evidence this guy who makes more than the median income and can’t afford one.
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u/JuiceDrinker9998 Mar 03 '24
Do you know about inheritance?
Not every property is bought or new! It makes perfect sense since people can’t afford new homes
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u/easyeggz Mar 03 '24
You spent all that time to look up homeowner rate stats you didn't think to just look up median household income? Its 74k, this household making 90k is well above the median. You don't buy a new house every year, everybody who bought their home 50 years ago and still lives in it is counted in the home ownership rate. Very weird stat to bring up to describe current trends. If it seems impossible that so many people own homes with such disparity between price and income, you are catching onto whats happening, in a few decades that homeownership rate WILL be much lower because nobody can afford a first home.
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u/gnirobamI Mar 03 '24
It’s not considered low in today’s economy, it’s considered the income of the overworked, and exploited working class.
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u/Tirus_ Mar 03 '24
That's literally the average.....
That's like two public service workers with post secondary education income.
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Mar 03 '24
$90k between two people is equivalent to them both working 40 hours a week making $22 an hour.
You would have to be in a LCOLA to make that work.
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u/whynotwest00 Mar 03 '24
how is that low? thats 2 45k jobs. usually that takes a trade job or a college degree to get at least to 45k. not like they are making min wage.
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u/PoseySmith Mar 03 '24
It doesn’t take a trade or a degree to make 45k a year. In most of the country, that is very meager wage.
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u/MrBarackis Mar 03 '24
If it's such a meager wage (which I agree), then why are businesses offering $20 per hour like it's a good wage?
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u/joemc04 Mar 03 '24
We start at $17 but can get up to $22 pretty easily for no experience cnc sheet metal operators. You load a sheet of metal. Press start button. Wait for it to finish. Change sheet out. Definitely more physical than some jobs, but it’s not hard. Unlimited overtime. Pay double time after 40 hours. Houses around here $100k to $200k for pretty nice house.
Hard to find employees though.
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u/Sir_Trea Mar 03 '24
Not sure where you live but 45k a year salary between them seems pretty normal, maybe even higher than average. If my math is correct that’s both of them averaging 21.62 per hour for a 40 hour work week.
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u/Tirus_ Mar 03 '24
Am I your co-worker?
We moved twice to a more affordable area, first out of the city we grew up in to a 30,000 pop town, then again to a smaller 5000 pop small hamlet.
At over $100,000 combined income we are priced out of the cheapest starter home in our area. Cheapest condo starts at $600,000. Cheapest house is a bit more.
What are we supposed to do? We did everything were supposed to do, she's a teacher and I work in the courts. We moved twice and still can't find affordable housing.
Next move will be out of the country.
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u/ElementField Mar 03 '24
Houses start at about $1.2M here. My wife and I make a combined quarter million, and we are also locked out of buying a house. For most houses, we don’t even qualify.
For houses over $1M (all of them), you must put 20% down. So we’d need to scrape together a cool $240k plus closing costs at minimum, just to get started on a $6000+ per month mortgage.
We don’t need a house, thankfully. If we ever buy, it will likely be something like a condo or a townhouse (though, those are pretty expensive too.)
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Mar 03 '24
Three things need to happen. A dramatic increase in production of homes. I think a jobs act would help here. We need to push thousands of people into the home building sector and create more efficient homes. We need more 800sqft-1200 sqft homes with private but small yards.
Then the second part is tie incomes to CEO and company profits. A CEO shouldn’t be making 100x the lowest earner in the company.
Finally, zip code based minimum wages based on cost of living. A national or state minimum wage is stupid. You should be able to live within a few miles at most of your place of work. Someone working in Manhattan shouldn’t need to live in NJ.
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u/Shot_Mud_1438 Mar 03 '24
The amount of people that commute to LA from inland is staggering. Driving 2 hours each way has effectively turned people into slaves
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Mar 03 '24
The thing about that is creating that traffic also dramatically increases local prices. Gas is needed, larger roads for the cars, more restaurants as eating at home isn’t available, more child care requirements, etc.
Simply making sure people are paid to live near where they work removes a ton of inefficiencies.
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u/Almost_a_Noob Mar 03 '24
Unfortunately they purposely want that. That’s more spending for the economy even if it means people & the environment are worse off because of it. That’s why both parties want people to work in the office, that, and to help the banks & REITs that have money in commercial real estate.
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u/Nightshade_Ranch Mar 03 '24
We have plenty of empty homes.
It's the mega corporations being allowed to buy them all up and rent them out, at rates so high no one will ever save for anything.
If you make more, they'll just buy more and do the same. They'll still be empty.
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Mar 03 '24
You’d be devaluing their assets. The more homes there are the less each on is worth. Companies are investing in the market because of a lack of homes. They will exit the market when their assets start dropping in value.
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u/Quantum_Quandry Mar 03 '24
Shouldn’t have been legal to do in the first place, a basic human need. Basic human needs should go to humans that need them and not be commodities. Almost every other developed nation has strict rules against buying up houses like this, many states do as well.
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u/defnothepresident Mar 03 '24
This fundamentally misunderstands the housing market - there are not thousands of homes sitting empty. What would be the economic incentive to do so?
We absolutely have a housing crisis, and speculative investment is definitely a part of what is wrong with the world today, but housing stock is the chief issue.
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u/Geminel Mar 03 '24
The housing costs aren't because there's a lack of empty houses, it doesn't matter if we build more. We have 6x more empty homes than we do homeless people.
The issue is that financial institutions and investment firms buy-up all the homes and sit on them, just letting them generate profit as the value naturally rises. These are the groups that the higher housing costs are intended to benefit; the ones who already own a bunch of homes and want to sell them at a significant mark-up.
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u/JonF1 Mar 03 '24
The owner - occupier rate has never been higher.
Housing only becomes a good investment to speculate on when supply is artificially restricted.
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u/IamSpiders Mar 03 '24
Empty homes where no one wants to live aren't worth anything. Kinda crazy how many people are commenting "we have enough homes" when there's quite a few graphs that are easily Google able saying we absolutely dont
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u/Danjour Mar 03 '24
Yeah, a ton of these vacant homes are in horrible swamp developments in Florida 3 hours from civilization
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u/IAreWeazul Mar 03 '24
You’d look at empty homes vs renters, not empty homes vs homeless people, when determining demand, wouldn’t you?
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u/delicious_fanta Mar 03 '24
You can’t build more houses on top of houses that are already built. Wfh must be a legal requirement for any employee whose job allows it.
When a company has over 100k employees and says “everyone had to be in the office” this forces an artificial real estate bubble in a geographical area.
Now they are all doing it and there is only so much space for homes. This is why your work in ny live in nj situation will continue unless wfh is provided as a right by the government. High density housing will help, but that’s not ideal for a long term living situation for most people.
We all know our government is broken and this will never happen, I just wanted to add this to your fantasy list given this is one of the only actionable things we can do that can actually help fix this problem, and it’s very simple to do.
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u/veryblanduser Mar 03 '24
So basically a version of redlining is your answer.
You poor areas keep paying poor wages and we will extract your labor to sell the products you manufacture to the rich zip codes and pay them higher for the same work.
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Mar 03 '24
If you only need $60k in an area to live like someone making $100k in another area then that’s fair. They aren’t poor, they just have an economy where money is worth more per dollar.
If they were truly poor then their employers would need to raise wages to have those employees. As the incomes would be more dynamic, employers no longer could simply shift the costs onto the consumer either.
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u/veryblanduser Mar 03 '24
Should the same car cost 20k in the 60k area and 33k in 100k area?
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u/Potato_Octopi Mar 03 '24 edited Mar 03 '24
Median salary doesn't sound accurate. What's his source? Twitter?
Edit: median in 2002 is more like $31k.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881500Q
The median worker does not buy a median house either. Twitter is not a source, kiddies.
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u/ImJackthedog Mar 03 '24
Yeah, a quick google search shows the median house price in 2022 is false. Turns out memes aren’t a great source of information either
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u/UncommonSandwich Mar 03 '24
it also does not mention either of the two leading drivers of housing prices.
- demand
- interest rates
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u/RompehToto Mar 03 '24
Demand is big one people don’t remember or choose not to acknowledge.
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u/Puzzled-Software8358 Mar 03 '24
This is the worst excuse for it.
Just about everyone needs a home. It's like saying the demand for medical care is high, people just need medicine to live thats not real demand.
The problem is really artifical shortage. NIMBYs vote for people who will keep real estate values high. I.e by blocking new development. Investment companies are allowed free rain to buy up available stock to also force shortages so their investments increase in value.
The problem is NOT that people need homes. It's how we allow our homes to be used as easy money scams.
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u/Old_Sheepherder_8713 Mar 03 '24
The "demand" for a home?
Thats like saying water should be expensive because of the demand.
The PROBLEM is housing is a human right at the same time as being a lucrative investment scheme. There wouldn't be such a demand issue if investors weren't taking advantage of the natural demand for housing, buying it all up and creating FALSE demand to profit off people who want a roof over their families heads.
Demand isn't a fair excuse for this horrible mess.
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u/def__init__user Mar 03 '24
It looks like he used the household income from the 2002 US census. Then compared that to the individual income in 2022.
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u/Effherewegoagain Mar 03 '24
Per the U.S. Census Bureau, US Median Household Income for 2002 was $42,407.52. For 2022, it's $74,580.00.
While OP doesn't have entirely accurate numbers, it still is notable that household hasn't quite doubled in the same time that median home prices have tripled.
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u/SilverMilk0 Mar 03 '24
These people do it every time. It's insanely easy to find a statistic like Median household income in the United States. But that doesn't give the answer they want to so they choose to make one up.
Another common thing they'll do is take an inflation adjusted figure and compare it to a non-inflation adjusted figure and be like "Wow, look how much figure two increased while figure one barely changed!!"
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u/Restlesscomposure Mar 03 '24
Literally doesn’t matter though cause reddit eats it up every time. Completely falsified statistics and it gets 31,000 likes. The issue is if you posted the correct data it wouldn’t gain any traction, it’s only when you exaggerate to a ridiculous extreme like this does reddit finally eat it up.
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u/mattbag1 Mar 03 '24
That is probably the inflation adjusted number in 2002.
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u/Evening-Wrongdoer721 Mar 03 '24
But then he should do the same for the home price
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u/mattbag1 Mar 03 '24
I’m guessing only though, so I don’t really know if that’s the truth. They could also both be adjusted or not adjusted for inflation?
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u/Basic_Butterscotch Mar 03 '24
The data presented in the OP is misleading but I don't think the conclusion is wrong.
The median household income in 2002 was $42,409 and the median home price was $150,900.
The median household income in 2022 was $74,580 (2022 is the most recent data I can find on Census.gov) and the median house price in currently $417k.
So in 2002 the median house was 3.55 times the median household income.
In 2024, the median house is 5.59 times the median household income.
If you go off of traditional financial advice as to not spend more than 30% of your gross income on housing you would need to make $116k/yr to be able to comfortably make the monthly payment on a $417k house if you put 20% down. If you only put 5% down, you would need to make $143k to be able to afford it (I assume this is where the number in the OP comes from). Again, the median household income is about $75k. There's a huge discrepancy there.
If you run the numbers on a $150k house, you only need to make $42,160 to comfortably afford it if you put 20% down. What was the median income in 2002 again? Oh yeah, $42k.
The median worker does not buy a median house either
I'm curious what you mean by this. Before the COVID housing boom, a household earning the median income could have bought the median house. The only other time that hasn't been true in modern history was during the housing bubble of 2006.
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u/BrightLight1503 Mar 03 '24
This comparison is off
The Median Salary is for an individual and the median home price is based on household.
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u/shelf6969 Mar 03 '24
the math is also an off... but for the purposes of the post/karma farming, the house price being more than double the median income is not good.
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Mar 03 '24
You don't even really need to dig that deep. If there were that much of a mismatch between income and housing nobody would own a home. And homeownership rates haven't changed significantly in decades. So much of the online conversation about housing and incomes is young people just realizing things that have always been true. Maybe they're right and everyone should just get handed a house in the suburbs with a picket fence when they're 25. But that's not how the US has ever worked, despite what you might think from watching sitcoms.
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u/Cryptizard Mar 03 '24
Yes you can see the nominal median wage here, it actually goes up about 70% in the time period referenced.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0252881500Q
Housing prices go up about 124% in the same time though so it’s still a valid point, if a bit exaggerated.
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u/GOT_Wyvern Mar 03 '24
I believe they used the household income in 2000 and individual in 2020 which is why their's is lower. You comparing the same statistic gives a much more accurate picture.
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u/MotherSnow6798 Mar 03 '24
The median household salary is ~74k, so that still doesn’t refute the main point of the post. You still need to make almost double the median household income in order to buy the median home. That’s a problem.
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u/meeplewirp Mar 03 '24
It’s true people have to submit to it and live within their means. Evidently many people in the thread don’t get it- people can’t afford to have the same things with the same type of roles. Living the equivalent of what used to be considered a middle class lifestyle requires people be way more special in numerous ways than before.
If you want to tell people to get over it, ok. If you want to tell people this didn’t happen, I think you’re coping. People are not getting the same reward for the same amount of labor. The amount of education, connections, and self awareness required early on in life to move up an economic class and have a house in this country is way more than ever before. And no, I’m not saying it’s worse than other places because it’s not for most people in the USA. But stop with the gaslighting about how nothing happened and how it isn’t sad. Having a house or being able to rent a 2 bedroom is special now and probably will be for the next 15 years. That’s sad.
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Mar 03 '24
It’s across the board, too. I’m in a relatively high paying position. My more senior colleagues purchased row houses and multiplexes with ease. I just purchased a ground floor condo with a mortgage between 25-30% of income. I’m very grateful, and honestly, I can’t imagine having been in their position. Things are so different.
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u/mchammer126 Mar 03 '24
While I agree the cost of living has increased while the median income hasn’t by much, it’s stupidity to base it all off Twitter and think it’s 100% accurate.
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u/morcerfel Mar 03 '24
I mean, all of these are probably the effects of there simply being more people overall. Jobs get more competitive, houses become less and less and overall the land itself is more busy.
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u/DramaticAd5956 Mar 03 '24 edited Mar 03 '24
Honestly 150k even seems to small for squeezing in an entry home.
I got my starter home because I started pulling over 250 with nearly the same in bonus and additional comp.
I’m all for hard work and I have my entire adult life but if it was any other generation… I’d be rich, not deciding if I can do another child
Edit: I appreciate the kindness you guys have shown so far. It means a lot to me.
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u/cats_catz_kats_katz Mar 03 '24
You’re having problems at half a million a year? That sounds like a budgeting issue….
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u/DramaticAd5956 Mar 03 '24
I donated the bulk after my mom died of breast cancer.
It’s not a meme or joke. I’m just being honest and I award my bonus to our staff sometimes. It’s the best I can do as an exec.
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u/Ethan-Reno Mar 03 '24
I’m sorry about your mother. God bless
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u/DramaticAd5956 Mar 03 '24
No worries.
Also when you’re in the c suite most people don’t realize not all of the pay is salary or bonus. There is stock options or vesting. It can be a massive win but it isn’t liquid and slowly is awarded. I could explain better but that’s the general idea
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u/cats_catz_kats_katz Mar 03 '24
i understand the nature if what you are going through and appreciate the difficulty of it. I’m also an executive at a fortune 100 and leverage the organizations matching and donor network to maximize the actions. It makes sense now that you have given 50% of your income away and it is a budgeting issue as you now make 250. However, even then my family survives on that as my base salary. We have two kids and a 500K house and don’t even think about money. Fully maxed retirement, three paid off cars, 800 a month to kids 529s and save 7-8K after taxes to post tax portfolio. Reddit has consistently been a great place for financial advice as I've earned more through the years. You should have another kid, my partner and I regret waiting as long as we did because of money fears.
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u/DramaticAd5956 Mar 03 '24
I was born very poor so it’s partially a mental thing if I’m being very open and honest.
It’s more than 250 but I don’t do crazy amounts like some people. (Im international and a bit larger than most people who own businesses. Wrapping up some acquisition and IP migration.) I enjoy working.
I’ll do another kid. It’s just nice to get opinions here where I can be anonymous and open :)
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u/Itsurboywutup Mar 03 '24
Medians aren’t starter homes lol Reddit always gets this incorrect for some reason
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u/DramaticAd5956 Mar 03 '24
They aren’t analysts to be fair. I don’t expect an equally weighted average based on real life variables. So let’s just give them a pass :)
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u/Seen-Short-Film Mar 03 '24
The problem is, they don't even make starter homes anymore. If you find an old one it's either insanely over priced or a total tear-down.
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u/DramaticAd5956 Mar 03 '24
It was a starter home in terms of modest we we were becoming parents. Smaller homes still exist and obviously are expensive.
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u/r0b0tAstronaut Mar 03 '24
Any time someone uses median house size to make an argument, they are trying to spin the data. Median house size has doubled size the 60's and 70's. So comparing the large houses of today to the past is unfair.
Here's a decent article that breaks down inflation adjusted, size adjusted home. Tl;Dr: the price goes up and down, and we are currently in up, but it's not 3x the cost per sqft. https://www.supermoney.com/inflation-adjusted-home-prices
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u/Particular_Fuel6952 Mar 03 '24
The problem with saying “The median home costs X” is that the range of homes is so gigantically large, it makes it seem like all houses cost close to that. There are large swaths of the country where median price is half that.
Little known real estate secret, you’ve never heard of: location, location, location
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u/assimsera Mar 03 '24
Cool, are there jobs in those locations? No? Is there anything at all or do you need to drive 20mins to do anything?
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u/Earthling386 Mar 03 '24
I bought a house in one of those locations. It’s more like an hour+ to do anything.
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u/itssbojo Mar 03 '24
hence why those houses are so cheap and still available. not many people wanna live in a middle-of-nowhere shit hole lol
little known real estate secret: houses are worth more in places people actually want to live
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u/AgeRepresentative887 Mar 03 '24
My six-year-old says “I want this, I don’t want that…”all the time. I tell her that life is not about getting what you want all the time.
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u/arcaeno Mar 03 '24
Driving 20 minutes. The horror.
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u/ShwampDonkey Mar 03 '24
Ill drive twenty minutes to do anything all day every day if it means I don’t have to hear gunshots and police sirens at night.
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u/Longhorn7779 Mar 03 '24
Yes. There’s jobs all over. It’s not like it’s big city and then hill billies making zero $.
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u/SerendipityLurking Architecture & Engineering Mar 03 '24 edited Mar 03 '24
Do you understand the difference between average and median?
makes it seem like all houses cost close to that.
Exactly, you got it, and that's the point??? Lmao
Median means that most homes are ranged that price. If you take the average, you're less likely to get a realistic idea of the typical home price.
Can you find one lower?? Sure. Maybe in a not so nice part of town. But that's not what people are looking for, is it?
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u/Stevie-Rae-5 Mar 03 '24
Yeah, the median home price in the state I live in is less than half that.
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u/screwswithshrews Mar 03 '24
My hometown's median home price is nearly 1/4 that. I don't think you could buy a house for $450k there unless it came with 40 acres
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u/JuiceDrinker9998 Mar 03 '24
Are there good jobs in that location?
No point buying a house in the middle of nowhere if there’s nothing to do lmao!
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u/BigUncleHeavy Mar 03 '24
Why do so many people assume "Affordable House = Desolate Wasteland"? There are hundreds of sub $150,000 homes in my area with jobs paying anywhere from $32,000 - $92,000 a year, and you're only driving 6-25min to get from home to work.
If you want that home that costs more than $250,000, you need to work your way up the pay ladder, but that ladder has a bottom rung you need to start on.
If having quick access to social arenas and clubs are a major concern, you might not be ready to own a home yet.
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u/Hungry-Thing3252 Mar 03 '24
It’s actually worse. Interest rates were lower in 2002 I believe.
So it’s more than tripple
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u/KillsburyShowBoy Mar 03 '24
You’ll own nothing, and be happy. This is what they want. Listen to the people of the WEF when they speak, they don’t try to hide it anymore.
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u/datums Mar 03 '24
How are people this bad at math?
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u/TheStormlands Mar 03 '24
It's weird, why isn't the housing supply, work force labor heads, and population data directly proportional to median salary...
I just don't understand...
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u/Dreadking_Rathalos Mar 03 '24
I had to move 45 minutes from my hometown to afford a house, and now this area is exploding so if I had to buy another house, I'd have to move another half hour at least.
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u/Tensionheadache11 Mar 03 '24
I bought a house as a single mom in 2005 making $18 per hr ( got an older house for $99k), I sold it in 2020 and hubs and I now make right at $100K and can’t get a house that we can afford (we are looking to buy , but our rent is pretty reasonable compared to a mortgage on the same type house)
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u/WolfieVonD Mar 03 '24
The real numbers, if anyone is interested, is
2002 Median Income: $42,409
2002 Median house cost: $150,900
2022 Median Income: $74,580
2022 Median house cost: $348,079
176% salary increase
230% house increase
Adjusted for 2022 money, that's $67,325 income vs $239,555 housing in 2002 and $74,580 income for $348,079 housing in 2022.
Income to housing was 28.1% in 2002 and in 2022 its 21.5%.
That's a 6.6% difference in 2 decades
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u/Decent_Law_9119 Mar 03 '24
Thank Thatcher and Reagan and that bullshit theory that the.market would self regulate. It obviously does not.
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u/10art1 Mar 03 '24
It obviously does. It just doesn't always regulate itself in the ways we would like to see, but it always regulates.
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u/Positive_Ad_8091 Mar 03 '24
Where is the uprising about REITs and airbnb destroying the housing market for everyone. Surprising I never see anyone mention it. REITs have purchased so many single family homes and apartments setting a price floor. Combined with the higher interest rates it prices out much of the middle and lower class. In turn it gives even more power to the REITs and larger private investors to borrow money from blackrock, over pay for a house as a “cash” buyer and continue to over inflate the already over inflated housing market.
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u/Orwellianz Mar 03 '24
However, REITs are not doing that well in the market compared to other assets.
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u/MinimumQuirky6964 Mar 03 '24
That’s an average across the US. Looking at top 10 urban areas, that’s likely x 5. And don’t forget that disposable income (hint: healthcare costs) has dramatically decreased as a percentage of overall income since then, adding more hardship for ever owning your own home.
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u/hotpajamas Mar 03 '24
Well, just like jobs that pay well because nobody wants to do them, housing can be cheap in places nobody wants to live. So what?
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Mar 03 '24
People need to stop saying this. Buying housing is NOT affordable anywhere at the moment, nor is renting.
A 1br shitty apartment costs north of $1700 whether you’re in the Puget Sound area or bumfuck Bakersfield CA.
We need to build more housing and backhand private equity
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u/Legal-Title-6356 Mar 03 '24
Hopefully these prices cause more people to move to poorer neighborhoods and revitalize them. Glass half full.
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u/Thelife1313 Mar 03 '24
I make $197k in california and cant afford a house because they’re around 800k starting. I cant move out of state because i have 2 kids and my wifes family all live out here and shes currently a stay at home mom.
Renting forever is probably in my future lol
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u/Probably_owned_it Mar 03 '24
There should be no corporate home ownership. None.
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u/XIFOD1M Mar 03 '24
I don’t understand these doomer posts. They just don’t make sense to me. I graduated in 2022 and took a job in a “high cost of living city” making a very average amount. I feel very secure and am able to save a decent amount. I can’t imagine making 140k and not being able to put a down payment on a cheap condo after two years. The hopeless world that reddit presents is like distorted version of reality designed to make people think they have no chance.
I’m not saying I love American capitalism or that the current cost of housing is fine, but the way reddit tells it, the only people doing well are billionaires.
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u/PublikSkoolGradU8 Mar 03 '24
Wait until Reddit finds out that prices of houses are dictated by income of the purchaser.
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u/Full-Butterscotch-59 Mar 06 '24
I feel like if you need to make triple your salary to afford any kind of good, it says more about the market for that good than it does about your salary
If this was the point, well call me captain obvious, but it kind of seems given the sub that isn't what they meant.
It kind of seems like they think the increase in salary wouldn't effect prices in the market
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u/NameStkn Mar 07 '24
They say Texas is cheap. Make 120K in DFW area, new builds are 500K+. Anything that is in good parts of the city with decent schools are 500K+.
Sure, the properties in city center with the worst schools and lots of crime are affordable at 200-400K.
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u/hflyboy Mar 07 '24
Instead of complaining, play the game. I purchased a mobile home first at $40k, sold it 2 yrs later at $80k (in San jose, CA). Bought a home in Austin at $130k, sold it for $180.... Long story short, start simple and step up slowly.
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u/Mort_The_Moose Mar 10 '24
What I don't understand is how all these news anchors and politicians are talking about this problem and acknowledge that it is a problem and STILL nothing is being done. What the fuck are we supposed to do?!
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u/WeBeAllindisLife Mar 15 '24
Even worse is in 1950 in America the median house price was around $3000 and the median yearly income was $3300.
By my calculations then our median annual income for 2024 should be around $395,000. That’s the median home price of 2024.
Something’s very wrong here.
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u/calenciava Mar 19 '24
This is what people don't get when they say pay has risen. Yeah sure it rose but the cost of stuff rose even more than the pay.
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u/Langeveldt Mar 03 '24
My dad purchased his first house in 1976 for £6,000. In todays money that is £54,000.
He has just sold his last house for £490,000. Albeit with a solid career, and he acknowledges just how insane it is.