121–130 of 191 posts
Jumbo loans were people wanting more than they could afford and the bank hedging that they could actually afford it. Ends up that they can't.
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> Otherwise you could say that just about any American middle class family is wealthy — just look at the entire world’s population Any middle class American is wealthy by the world's standard. The quality of life provided by middle class America is the life of the 1%. To not see this is to not understand how most of the world lives, and the challenges people face from being less lucky.
This is exactly my point though. If you look at averages, a jumbo home owner in the US is considered wealthy — but only if you ignore their local market. Like in the Bay Area where you could earn $100k a year and still be considered “low income”. These people may be huge earners compared to the average American. It doesn’t mean they’re living the lavish lifestyles of the rich and famous. A lot of them are living payc…
People who own homes in the Bay Area do not have massive disposable income. But they do have wealth.
I'm not sure what qualifies as wealthy, but most houses in the SF Bay Area bought in the past few years are probably financed with jumbo mortgages. E.g, 20% down on a $1MM house leaves $800k to be financed, which is greater than the $765k criteria stated in the article.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Otherwise you could say that just about any American middle class family is wealthy — just look at the entire world’s population Any middle class American is wealthy by the world's standard. The quality of life provided by middle class America is the life of the 1%. To not see this is to not understand how most of the world lives, and the challenges people face from being less lucky.
This is exactly my point though. If you look at averages, a jumbo home owner in the US is considered wealthy — but only if you ignore their local market. Like in the Bay Area where you could earn $100k a year and still be considered “low income”. These people may be huge earners compared to the average American. It doesn’t mean they’re living the lavish lifestyles of the rich and famous. A lot of them are living payc…
There are definitely subtleties, like how feasible it would be for you to reduce expenses while keeping your income the same. Life.. gets complicated.
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Do you know why does it work?
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That’s good. That means the banks are rational and exercising caution to avoid risks.
This is creating a distortion in the mortgage market that isn’t rational.
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Agreed. The notion of wealthy needs to be calibrated for local cost of living as do statistics like the CPI.
Sure. But San Jose's median household income is almost double that of the US as a whole. Is its COL double than national average? I don't believe it is.
- Gas: is still $3 a gallon here while a majority of the nation enjoys close to $1 a gal.
- State taxes: run close to 10% on professional salaries, most other states have 4-5% or no state taxes.
- Housing: This one is the big one, try finding a 3 bedroom house for less than $1M in the san jose/pennisula area, it just isn't possible (I am excluding parts of east san jose where housing is cheaper). A typical house in the US goes for roughly 350k. rent is no better, a 3 bdrm rental in a half decent area runs you 3.5k on up.
- Property taxes: this one is tied to housing, enjoy paying 1.5% a year forever on your $1M+ house, that is 15k+ a year
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly my point though. If you look at averages, a jumbo home owner in the US is considered wealthy — but only if you ignore their local market. Like in the Bay Area where you could earn $100k a year and still be considered “low income”. These people may be huge earners compared to the average American. It doesn’t mean they’re living the lavish lifestyles of the rich and famous. A lot of them are living payc…
If people are choosing to live in the Bay Area and spend all their money on COL expenses, that does not mean they are not wealthy. It just means they are choosing to spend all their wealth to stay there. Believe me, those of us who live a state or two east of there see plenty of people who have left after a few years of paying on those jumbo loans, and the equity from those homes sets them up quite nicely in another…
Now that same family, income and house with a paid off mortgage is in an entirely different situation.
The difference is the wealth they accrued in paying down their mortgage. They claimed value in doing so. But merely having a massive mortgage in the Bay Area does not _inherently_ equate to wealth.