Americans are living through the toughest housing market in a generation and, for some young people, the quintessential dream of owning a home is slipping away.
Mortgage rates surged in recent years, hitting the highest levels in more than two decades last fall. While rates have come down slightly since then, home prices remain painfully elevated and a limited inventory of housing is still failing to keep up with demand. Such conditions mean that housing has become woefully unaffordable.
Falling mortgage rates in recent weeks have helped, but home prices could remain sticky, according to economists. It’s still a cruddy time to be hunting for a home, but it’s even worse for young, first-time buyers who need to save up for a down payment and build up their credit score during a time when Baby Boomers are refusing to part with their big houses.
The situation isn’t a whole lot better for renters, with rents barely coming down from record highs and half of tenants in that market saying they can’t even afford their payments.
The uneasiness over America’s affordability crisis is captured clearly in surveys and polls, but data that outlines the sentiment specifically among young people is limited.
Some?
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Renting is literally paying for someone else to own a house or apartment or whatever. It guarantees that the landlord will always be able to make a killing by commoditizing a need for shelter. It’s sinister, and no matter how you paint it it remains sinister.
Renting isn’t sinister. You’re paying for a roof over your head without any large up front investment or maintenance costs. But it should be affordable, and owning should also be affordable. Neither are at the moment.
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I’ve had landlords get pussy about portable AC unit exhaust hoses sticking out of the window. That needs to be banned, and AC needs to be mandatory in new rentals (new builds and new leases on existing housing units.)
Aren’t portable AC units very inefficent?
Yes, espically one hose models, bit sometimes that’s all you can use
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Renting isn’t bad. Being a landlord is bad.
The problem is that renting is just pissing money away to the wind, and you are at the mercy of your landlord as far as how acceptable and affordable your situation is over time.
Renting is fine if you are looking to stabilize and (hopefully) accrue some savings, but renting anywhere halfway decent is often more expensive than a mortgage is in the same area.
It’s completely insane that rent is more than a mortgage.
If you live with someone and pay towards their mortgage, you can rightfully claim a share in the equity of their house. Yet, if you rent somewhere and pay your landlord’s entire mortgage, and then some, you get nothing.
Renting should be far less than mortgage rates. You get something out of a mortgage - ownership of a property.
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Just gonna skip the sunset years myself and am gonna retire on a .38
Look into Habitat for Humanity. Pick up the phone, call and inquire. Just do it.
Attend the first meeting where they give a general outline of the program and put in your application.
5 of the 13 homes on my block were built by Habitat, and none of us would have got a mortgage without them.
Be glad to answer general questions, but the program rules vary by area.
My mother is rich. Not filthy rich, but rich enough that I will inherit a decent sum of money and a gigantic house and my daughter will get a trust. If my mother dies before my daughter is out of school (a distinct possibility since my daughter is 13 and my mother is in her 80s), we all want to move to the town where she lives because we all like it there a lot. And if we sell her house, we’ll likely be able to afford to.
As far as her trust, it will likely cover her college education if that’s the route she wants to go down, but probably not enough to get a house for herself.
Please don’t think I’m being selfish here. She wants to move to that town with us as much as we want to move there. It’s where both of her grandparents and much of her mother’s family lives, it’s where both her mom and I were born and went to college, and it is, for now, where she says she would like to go to college. She has never lived there and every time we visit she talks about how much she wishes she did.
From what I can tell, if she doesn’t use that money for college, she would use it to travel over using it to buy a house. And frankly, I’m fine if she wants to live with us indefinitely once she’s out of high school. We have the room.
BuT tHe EcOnOMy iS GrEaT rIgHt NoW, EvEN FOx NeWS HaD To AGrEe.
That’s how you know they are conspiring.
I never dreamt about owning a home. For me, living in the same place for decades is boring. I want to live spontaneous and free. If I would get something for free, i could rent it to someone else after moving? I’m no wannabe landlord.
You can sell your house before the mortgage is paid off. The longest I’ve ever lived anywhere is ten years and I’ve owned three houses.
Some? Lol
You can still buy a house in rural America. A simple ranch house is still $150k in many small towns here in Kansas. Jobs do not pay as much, and there are few amenities, but normal people buy a house, get married, and have kids.
What are you saying right now lol
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Is there any hope that it might get better in a few years, like downswings & upswings kind of a thing?
Nope. If you don’t already own a house you very likely never will.
W-w-well, I n-n-never wanted one a-a-anyway!
I dunno man, i have a feeling we’re in for a Depression level event, the bottom might fall out of the market.
Wait, I heard this one before…
lol No shit CNN. What story is next, Water is wet, or maybe, Don’t stare at the sun?
I was going to post a similar sentiment. Maybe I’m being overly critical, but I remember when news was “new”. A version of this article comes out every other day.
Um… It’s perfectly fine to look at the sun with your naked eye. Ask our last president.
And the majority of those who haven’t given up yet are simply delusional.
I’ve gave up. Now it’s just racing the clock to make sure I get something for my kids to live in. Even if it’s a bit of a commute.
