Houses in my area increases 82% in just 4 years
Houses in my area increases 82% in just 4 years
My salary didn't change at all, but homes went up 82%. The money I saved for a down payment and my salary no longer are good enough for this home and many others. This ain't even a "good" home either. It was a 200k meh average ok home before. Now it's simply unaffordable
I like the utility feed hanging off the front of the house going straight through the roof and blocking them from installing the other fake shutter. I wonder what other construction horrors lurk inside.
Being able to buy a $200,000 house in the town I live in would change my life so much.
This won't change as long as property ownership and property renting is unified. There's just to much of a business incentive from renting, even if it takes decades to make it back. Worst that can happen is that it can sell it back to a market that criminalizes homelessness instead of treating it or its causes.
Not that this is "ok" but it's why "buy whatever you can as soon as you can" is good advice. If you'd put whatever you had into a shitty condo four years ago, and kept saving at the same rate, you'd likely be in good position to trade up soon.
I see a lot of people I know end up in the same position because they've been waiting for either the exact right circumstances or for prices to "crash." All the people i know who started with anything they could afford now have a huge amount of equity in nice homes. The difference is real and primarily about timing more than income or location.
My janky duct tape together house I bought in 2010, that was built in '58 was 98k. In 12 years I sold it at 280k, with it still technically being out of code. My house was the cheapest sold in the neighborhood, some selling for 320k. It's insane.
So occasionally I look out of curiosity and the reason is pretty plain.
I look for houses for sale in a suburban area as public listings, and there's like 1 within a few square miles of the area.
I switch over to renting, and there's like 12 houses just like the one for sale available, all owned by companies. I also know a coule that aren't listed that have no tenants, but are still owned by one of those companies. You can tell because those yards are now waist deep grasses (in an area where HOA throws a hissy fit if your yard looks just a smidge unkempt).
Don't know why the companies find it more profitable to buy houses people aren't looking to actually move into, at least at the rent they are willing to accept. If I fully understood why, it might just piss me off more. Like maybe the houses work better as a loan basis than other assets, so even empty and unused they are valuable as some sort of financial trick.
Houses in my neighborhood are up 150-200%.
It’s the same in Kansas City. I just checked a random house in my city and it’s up almost $100k in 4 years.
3bd, 1bath 976 sqft
Yep, that's on track! My house has almost tripled in price since I bought it 12 years ago. Denver metro. No way I could afford it if I had to buy it today.
Didn't think I'd ever see Waleska on Lemmy... but, yeah. This is just the story all over North Georgia right? No one wanted to live in the mountains until all of the sudden you could work from anywhere. Now everyone earning city and suburb pay is happy to live an hour farther out than they were before.
Keep in mind that inflation has risen over 30% in just the last 4 years, which explains at least part of the rise in prices. I wouldn't be surprised if inflation is even higher in certain areas of the country. I'd also not be surprised if Georgia is getting a lot of natural disaster refugees from places like Florida.
:laughs in Australian:
Real talk, forget about a down payment. There are a bunch of different ways to get a 0 down mortgage with varying qualifiers so that chances you qualify for one of them is quite decent.
Even if not, there are still a bunch of other ways to get low down payment mortgages for ~3% down or less.
Toss out the old adage of "20% down or bust" and keep any money saved towards it for savings for all the other costs of home/closing
You want to know why? Start at the bottom and look at the price of land only blocks in the region. More than likely: its the cause. The answer then becomes very simple.
In my area, it's a 100-150% increase in four years.
It doesn't sound like much until you see numbers.
A $350k house is now $700k for no reason.
A $400k house is now a million.
It's depressing.