Ask Lemmy

Meh fuck it. Everything else depreciates so I don’t see why a house should be any different.

I play around with mortgage calculators every so often and look at houses in my area. One of them at current rates would have someone paying well over $10k per month at 20% down, not including utilities, food, water, gas, etc. (it is a 1.4 million home). My wife and I were speculating on the type of person who could even afford that, if you follow the rule of don't spend more than 50% of your monthly on rent.

I'm just trying to build wealth and just entered the market, so I'm not too excited for me, but it needs to happen. It's a basic necessity that the majority of people can't afford, how is that okay? I will lose a bunch if the market crashes and probably never be able to achieve my goals, but its not very feasible right now anyway. I wanted a hobby farm, thats never going to happen regardless. Something has to change.

I dont want to pay more in property taxes.

Bought my house in 2019, and it's apparently worth 30% more than what I paid for it if my rates bill (local property taxes for the US people) is anything to go by.

Problem is, it's all paper gains. The only way I see any of that money is by selling my house - which I kinda need in order to live in - and buying something else that has also gone up by 30%, so I'm net-even, less increased property taxes which I directly benefit from via improved infrastructure.

Now if I was a blood sucking parasite and bought a second house as a rental property by using my increased capital to muscle out first home buyers with less capital, then the gains might be enough to allow me to sleep at night under the weight of my own crushing dread at the person I had become. Maybe.

I don't really care if it crashes, but it would be a great time to buy a cheap second house. Right now I live in a cottage that is 500sf

Bring on to crash!

The only way this benefits a home owner is if they can live somewhere else for cheap or free. If you can't do that selling is pointless.

Once things come down then I could potentially afford a second home on my income. Additionally people less financially fortunate can afford the first house (or at least see their ridiculous rent prices drop).

It will be unfortunate for people who bought at an inflated rate so naturally those people won't be so crash happy but that's just the nature of it. If you are someone in such a situation then selling now and paying high rent elsewhere may be a wise decision. Not that prediciting a crash is a simple task.

I bought this year in the US w/ my partner. Thanks to my credit union, got a rate about 1% lower than average at the time. Mortgage payment is significantly less than rent and most importantly: it's going to be way, way, WAY less than rent in 10-15 years. Sure, we'll have other associated home ownership costs, etc etc, but it's worth it to us. Also, honestly, we LOVE this house. Took our time to find the right place and it has paid off, much happier here than any of the places we rented.

I'm torn, I really want to move but don't want to play the current interest rates. I bought high but have that great interest rate. I'm also looking to move again since my job is not fully remote and my girlfriend hates my house.

The house I live in is paid off and it’s supposed to be our forever home, so market value doesn’t matter much. For my two apartments I rent out it is more relevant. On those I have a fixed interest for another 5+ years still ahead of me. After that I‘m hoping that I’ll still be able to afford the higher interest rates on the by then lower balance.