861–870 of 1001 posts
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I don't mean to be blunt, but if modest homes in your area are $1m, then you are in a VERY high-cost-of-living area and what you see here is not at all typical of the rest of the country. Where I live, a charming 1200sqft starter home in a blue collar neighborhood goes for $150-$200k.
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If you take your numbers at face value and don't try to cut costs, that is still 60k savings per year and would take 2 years instead of 1 to hit a down payment. If you take the mortgage interest tax deduction, you will be spending about 35k/yr less on taxes and have more disposable income relative than renting at 60k/yr rent VS (70k mortgage - 35k less taxes). If two years is too long for the road map, you can rent a…
Cost of living is definitely much bigger than you make it to be. Just paying rent, car, bills, etc. easily cost 5k a month. A good chunk of my comp is stocks, which could go up or down with time, so a bit of a wildcard there. My wife is a freelancer, and she can bring home anywhere from 1k-10k each month depending on the market (and market is REALLY bad now), so can't count on that. I might be able to save all my sto…
All I can say is that no option will be risk free and all involve uncomfortable tradeoffs. Every choice has an opportunity cost, but they are mostly financial.
5k/mo including rent actually sounds reasonably frugal in a HCOL city, about as low as my partner and I wanted to go in SF. My only recommendation would be to pick a number for your emergency fund and pick a goal for your down payment. If you have a concrete goal, you can see yourself getting closer, unlike some nebulous idea. I considered my 401k part of my emergency fund and wanted a year of mortgage because I would spend that before selling the house if was laid off. The banks will tell you how much they are willing to loan based on stock comp and variable freelance work so you my not even have the choice to worry about that.
The worst that can happen is you lose your house and all your money, haha.
My refrain remains: housing cannot be both affordable in perpetuity and a good investment. These are mutually exclusive goals. Let people build.
You, mathematically, cannot have home values continue to go up over time without prices going up by the exact same amount.
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All the economic research I’ve read says repealing zoning laws induced no meaningful decrease in home price. That makes sense - home builders build to maximize profit and aren’t in the business of devaluing property they buy to develop. They develop it in a way that appreciates prices to improve their margins. But like this piece there seems to be some view that market forces are shaped by immoral behavior on someone…
In virtually the whole of Canada and the United States, dense, walkable neighborhoods are illegal. Even if you get rid of one type of zoning, other types remain. For example, one of the Texas cities has no zoning laws, but it does have mandatory parking minimums, mandatory street setbacks, etc. Basically the city must be car oriented and low density, even if you can add commercial stuff in residential zones. Japan is…
https://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/how-much-does-an-apar...
Utopia!
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Suggesting that the conclusion is telling homeowners that their asset is now "worthless" is extreme hyperbole. Homeowners live in their house. You need only apply the same metaphor from the article. Nobody might be willing to pay money for my couch, but I still keep it in my living room and use it.
Yep. Even if I bought a house at the peak and the market tanks I can still sell it (at a loss) and buy a comparable house because those are cheaper too. The people who get screwed are the multiple-home-owning rent seekers and I'm ok with that. Treating your primary residence as an investment has been bad financial philosophy for all of time.
Well, also people who were planning on retiring to a lower cost of living area (i.e., NY to Florida) and using the difference difference in housing costs as part of their retirement income.
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You can, just move out of Capitol Hill in Seattle which is one of the most desirable areas in one of the most desirable cities located in one of the most desirable geographies in the wealthiest country on earth. This place looks nice! https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2742-Lincoln-St-NE-Minnea...
I can afford to live in Seattle because I make more than a head chef. I would like my city to be affordable to head chefs, since I have friends who are. Seattle is a very nice place and I would like it to be easier for my friends to live here and not be forced to move away, since it makes the city worse and I'd rather the city become an even more desirable place in years to come.
This is the problem and partially (mostly maybe) why Seattle and other “cool” cities are in the position they are in now. If Seattle was undesirable like, idk, Gary, Indiana then you’d be able to get your friends there and a head chef can buy a house and such. But then it’s Gary. That’s the dichotomy that Seattle and other cities face. Can’t escape it. What you are asking for and wanting just isn’t realistic.
Imagine if I came up to you tomorrow and said I’d like to live with an ocean view in Santa Barbara in a walkable neighborhood with street cars and all my friends and family could afford to live there with a 3br house and the chef makes a lot of money and has this killer restaurant… you know that’s not going to happen. Seattle isn’t any different.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me like this is a simple supply/demand issue. Increase the supply. Yes, that's detrimental to those who already have homes (like me). But if I were a dispassionate judge-of-the-world, and I were weighing these two groups needs, I'd err on the side of supporting those without homes over those who have them. Also, increase the supply of SMALL homes. Why is every new house a McMansion? Wh…
It's more than just supply and demand. There are a lot of companies and private investors buying up multiple residential properties to rent out. There are a significant amount of properties simply being rented out on Airbnb/VRBO and their ilk. This is having a measurable impact on housing prices, and making additional housing unavailable to local residents. We need to increase tax penalties on companies and individua…
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A lot of jobs are in high cost of living areas. The reason they're high cost of living is because there are jobs there, the demand to live there is high, and they haven't built nearly enough housing. Some bay area municipalities have essentially not added any housing in the last 50 years. They made it illegal, because incumbent property owners don't want more people to be allowed to live there. And it's not just the…
I would rather Google and Facebook and the other mega-hire companies would build up outside the bay area, rather than continuing to pack more people in.
Because I calculate my mortgage as being worthwhile by comparing what I pay monthly in interest vs. what I would've paid in rent. Interest payments go down, rent goes up. It's an easy comparison to make - ignoring any capital changes, which is just free money.