771–780 of 1001 posts
Q1: Why would one use that rate to compare?
and
Q2: Who here has ever paid that high a rate on their mortgage? We sure haven't! Signed our current floating rate 25 year mortgage back in 2008, so far the only great financial decision we've made.
My feeling is that cheap money has seeded a bunch of problems all over society, not just in the housing markets.
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Indeed. If your complaint is that you need to be a millionaire to get basic housing, it's because you live with other rich people. Since the overwhelming majority of humanity lives in houses with value far below 1M$, we can conclude that no-one really has to live in a place with only 1M$ houses, but you, for some reason, want to do so. Living in a posh neighbourhood is a luxury, like Ferrari (which, by the way, costs…
“Rich” is highly relative. If someone lives in an area where everything costs on average twice as much as somewhere else, their money is effectively equivalent to half of what it would be somewhere else. The reality is they’re probably looking to afford a upper middle class lifestyle and make an upper middle class household income. They don’t sound “rich”.
As the saying goes “I would rather be dead in than live in ”.
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> This is completely ignoring the increase in house prices Guess what, the small and lower cost place you bought 10 years ago went up in price too. So you have equity and you've been in the rising market. > The fact is, in many areas, buying any house at all is not feasible for the vast majority of young adults. 100% untrue. Buying a house in the place they feel they deserve to live is. You can buy a home that is a 3…
> the small and lower cost place you bought 10 years ago went up in price too. Exactly, that's the problem. There exist people who did not buy houses 10 years ago, due to personal failings such as being teenagers at the time. Yet the houses continued to appreciate much faster than inflation and are now out of reach. > Buying a house in the place they feel they deserve to live is. You can buy a home that is a 30m comm…
https://www.zillow.com/harrison-nj/
PATH train, 22m to WTC.
Not a bad area either, just not where the whiners who think they deserve prime Brooklyn dream apartment want to live.
> 30 year fixed rate mortgage at 7% Q1: Why would one use that rate to compare? and Q2: Who here has ever paid that high a rate on their mortgage? We sure haven't! Signed our current floating rate 25 year mortgage back in 2008, so far the only great financial decision we've made. My feeling is that cheap money has seeded a bunch of problems all over society, not just in the housing markets.
Q2: Anyone you see who is buying a house right now is paying that rate.
> 30 year fixed rate mortgage at 7% Q1: Why would one use that rate to compare? and Q2: Who here has ever paid that high a rate on their mortgage? We sure haven't! Signed our current floating rate 25 year mortgage back in 2008, so far the only great financial decision we've made. My feeling is that cheap money has seeded a bunch of problems all over society, not just in the housing markets.
Q1: because 7% is roughly the current rate for a 30 year mortgage right now. https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/mortgage-rates/ Q2: Anyone you see who is buying a house right now is paying that rate.
Who is fixing at 7% for 30 years?
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The push to spread further out makes no sense to me. Suburban communities are already unsustainable, rural communities even worse. Economies of scale matter a whole lot here. The number of miles of road needed to service a rural community is exponentially higher than urban areas. This cost is not borne by those communities, but rather is subsidized heavily by urban workers. Rural areas also have a higher carbon footp…
Everywhere was once rural(ish - depending on how far back you want to go). Nothing you're saying is wrong, but it belies the point. At some point, someone has to do the investment that makes a place appealing. I'm not saying "everyone should live like current rural residents". I'm saying the investment that should be happening is "take a rural space and make a medium/high density area". Usually by creating a foundati…
https://uschinatoday.org/features/2022/01/11/cities-lost-in-...
Edit: To expand on this, the internet has killed rural communities. There's little to no need for corner stores which used to support these areas and hell you can get alcohol shipped to you as well so you dwindle down to a few bars. Maybe one hairdresser, but everyone knows someone's aunt who cuts hair out of her house. Same with an auto shop. There's maybe one attached to the only gas station in town. Most people know someone's uncle who can fix anything with a motor so there's little demand for more. There's just not enough people there to sustain the support community that would prosper from moving in. You can't artificially create either the supply side or the demand side in rural areas short of forced migrations and the supply side is unsustainable in these areas short of banning online orders or removing mail subsidies for shipped packages so that you can force more local commerce.
Forget about anything culturally divergent. Theaters require specific tastes which require a significant enough of a population to support performances outside of a churches Christmas pageant. Same with food. You'll get a few mom and pop shops one Mexican restaurant and maybe a Chinese restaurant if you're lucky. Otherwise it's chain stores like McDonald's and Pizza Hut. Oh and gas station pizza is popular. There just isn't a large enough of a population to support more eclectic food options. There's no draw to providing these services to a population too small to create a living off of.
And company towns aren't the solution either. Very, very few companies require enough people concentrated in an area to justify building a town much less a city around. And it's been shown time and time again that companies are perfectly willing to abandon areas when they can find more profit elsewhere. See the entire history of cities built around shipping and mining and logging and automotive construction being completely wiped out when the sole industries which supported them collapse or move elsewhere.
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I just love this quote from Sid Verma: "A lot of Americans are bragging that in their country they can get a fixed mortgage for 30 years. But it's worth remembering that for cultural and historic reasons, a lot of Europeans choose to reject socialism." https://twitter.com/_SidVerma/status/1575185906218442752?s=2... Note that the mortgages aren't even fixed rate, since you can replace them with a lower rate mortgage i…
Insignificant penalty?! Maybe if all you think about is your monthly payment and not the total payment amount over time. You should check the amortization schedule of a typical 30 year fixed rate loan. You are paying nearly nothing but interest for about 10 years, THEN you start paying down the principal balance significantly more. The first ten years you are basically renting your property from the bank. When you re…
Just like renting vs. buying there are times where refinancing to a lower rate will save you money in terms of total paid, and times where you may a similar or higher amount but will save in monthly payments. Like everything else you just need to do the math and see if it's worth the fees to get the new loan or not.
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I'm a new immigrant to the US, and housing is my single biggest worry together with my work visa. Our household income is north of 300k, but housing still seems unaffordable. It might sound like whining, but we only achieve this level of income recently, so our lifelong savings are in the low 6 figures. We got no assets or property abroad, and no family that can help us to get in the property ladder. Even old, basic…
What exactly seems to be the problem or concern? With 300k income you should be able to save a 200k/20% down payment in a year, especially if you have 6 figures already. With todays rates you looking at 70k/year mortgage and <25% of your income.
300K post taxes is basically 150K, the are probably paying 60K+ in rent and another 30+ in other basic cost of living expenses.
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Insignificant penalty?! Maybe if all you think about is your monthly payment and not the total payment amount over time. You should check the amortization schedule of a typical 30 year fixed rate loan. You are paying nearly nothing but interest for about 10 years, THEN you start paying down the principal balance significantly more. The first ten years you are basically renting your property from the bank. When you re…
I think the point was that people with mortgages will opt into lower interest rates but will clearly not opt into higher rates. (Assuming the interest savings is greater than the refinance cost.) I'm not sure why you bring up the amortization schedule since since you definitely save on the overall interest side of the mortgage. Put another way, if you get the lower interest rate and keep paying the same monthly payme…
> Some people say home prices rise because of “sweat equity”, i.e., the work homeowners do improving the house. > With all due respect, this is a crock of shit. Don't agree. Well, I'm from the UK; authorities are introducing more and more regulations requiring significant improvement in the housing stock. These kick in when you let the place or sell up; they are to do with insulation, damp and mould, fuel efficiency…
Maybe in specific places (like Detroit), but generally, no. Most new houses are built on empty lots that never had a structure on them. Though I've heard that cheap McMansions built 20-30 years ago are deteriorating alarmingly fast, so demolition might be more common in the near future.