And now it's nearly impossible to get a down payment. Houses are 30x more than the average salary instead of 5x more in the 1980s. Your interest rate could have been above 50% and still wouldn't exceed prices now.
You didn't know it, you was struggling but those were still golden years for building up assets.
Correct and over the target. I swear half the people in here aren't only financially illiterate, they're economically illiterate as well (arguably the greatest contributing factor).
Zero big picture awareness nose to the ground dollar amount is all that matters no wonder corporations locked this country down so fast lmao.
Yeah median house sales price is about $420k, so 6.5x median salary.
Mortgage affordability is often 5x earnings, so would require a $95k downpayment
It's odd the amount of pure nonsense that gets up voted. 30x salary just isn't remotely feasible and anyone with a basic grasp of maths should see that
Go to this article and jump down to the section "Generational Analysis of Housing Affordability" and you'll see how far off you are. You've been sold a lie. While it is definitely harder now, especially in the last decade after the Trump years began, but it is nowhere near as extreme as you believe.
You can get a 500 square foot portable building made to much better standards for 15k and easily finish it out yourself for another 10.
Most of the homes people want here have been built in areas where everything grew up around it so the land value is far higher.
There's still tons of land 20 minutes outside of capital cities for 3-5k an acre. If the water table isn't deep it's like 3k for a well. And solar is probably around 15k for that size with a 20 year warranty on all the main components, can be done cheaper but that price is for high quality parts that can easily be expanded upon.
I know because I have done it and it's completely off grid. Also a "portable" building does not increase taxes. My property tax is $6 a year at the cabin.
I’m not discounting people’s complaints about the economy. But there are complaints like “it’s expensive in NYV/SF” yes it is. Those are desirable places to live that are now full and developed. They can’t be easily expanded anymore.
Houses back then had single sink masters etc. obviously standards and automation have made things cheaper now, but nobody was buying balling mansions for cheap back then
If you really want to buy a house/live well in today’s economy off your own back, you have to find a “undesirable” place to live that isn’t near a pollution source, and live there. Finish it out and live off grid. Hell with climate change it’s probably the smartest thing to do. You need a good job and the right location though.
Also take some foresight. Many of the “desirable” places people live now were not desirable in the 80s.
My buddy bought land 5-8 yrs ago. Built his own dirt road and lived in a yurt he bought online. No internet, all power was a portable solar battery. Weather is good at the site. City kept building out. His undeveloped land got power, sewer, water and paved road. He built it out a little more, rented some of the space and had the option to build a real house with saved money/equity from the land or sell it for 5x profit.
Worse, a lot of houses built in the 70s-mid 90s were built with poly-B plumbing, which is why most of the houses from that particular era are not as desired as the one that came before it.
But almost all the houses built in the southeast in that era had air conditioning.
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u/Additional_Pickle_59 18h ago
And now it's nearly impossible to get a down payment. Houses are 30x more than the average salary instead of 5x more in the 1980s. Your interest rate could have been above 50% and still wouldn't exceed prices now.
You didn't know it, you was struggling but those were still golden years for building up assets.