I am currently renting, debt-free (not even a car payment), and managing to save a good chunk every month. I guess I am waiting and hoping for the cost of housing to drop enough that I feel comfortable buying a home. Even if I had the money, I just can’t imagine spending hundreds of thousands of dollars more than what a house actually costs because the market has dictated such.
The main reason that I ask this question is that I am curious as to how many are in the same position as me; in other words, how many of us are waiting to buy a home at a reasonable cost?
A side thought (and semi-rhetorical question): The news media constantly reports things like, “the average American is $9,000 in credit card debt” and “we’re seeing record foreclosures this year” and “30,000 laid off from [insert large corporation here]”. Where is the affordable housing?
We’re in good shape. We owe about 4 years on the house, have no credit card debt, paid off a couple home improvement loans (and took out a new one) and we both have jobs.
I’d definitely wait for the market to even out (though I don’t think it’s as weird here in the Chicago area as it is in places like California).
We have a home we bought three years ago (I think), with about 12 years left on the mortgage- if we keep it, it will be paid off by the time our kids graduate from high school.
The mortgage is our only debt. No car payments, no revolving credit card debt. We went down that road once (college, sucky jobs, student loans), and won’t do it again if at all possible.
I’m doing pretty good. I’ve got about £3500 to pay off on a Career Development Loan which I plan to get rid of in the next couple of months with a few large payments. Other than that I only have a government student loan which can sit for as long as it takes given the negligble interest rates.
I don’t have any other debts and I’m also saving for a house. Not in the hopes that prices will come down because I don’t think they ever will but saving for a decent deposit. I would rather stay in my reasonably cheap rented accomodation for an extra year and get a really nice property than move fast into a ‘starter’ property.
I realise a house purchase is the most debt any of us will ever have.
Nevertheless rent is an expense with no return.
About 18 years ago, I decided to get a mortgage for £30,000 ($60,000) and bought a house.
Now I’ve nearly paid off the mortgage and the house is probably worth about £175,000 ($350,000). Quite a return on payments of £2400 / year ($4,8000)…
I agree with you having as little debt as possible (I always pay off my credit card and save up for my computers), but I think you must expect the housing market to keep rising in the long run (as Mark Twain said “Buy land - they’ve stopped making it!”).
Desperate. I haven’t had a credit card in years, because the divorce and ensuing poverty have ruined my credit, so I will probably never own my own home. And I’ll be at the drive-thru at McDonald’s when I’m 85, asking “do you want fries with that?”
But on the upside, housing around here is more affordable than other parts of the country.
Just finished graduate school and a postdoc with no debt at all. Am currently renting a house (to go with the one-year postdoc), but am on the verge of signing a contract for a full-time job. I will definitely start looking for a house to buy, as soon as the job is a sure thing. Here in the middle of the country, real estate is still perfectly reasonable, and I’m tired-tired-tired of throwing away money on rent.
Good. Im still a student dependent on my parents, so they pay rent, tuition and insurance, and I have a part time job to pay utilities, internet and food. Two more years with this system, at which point I’l graduate and live a very poor life while going to grad school and working full time.
But for now no major debts, and no credit cards to incur debt. Job pays enough to cover bills and have a little money left over to save and play with. I also have various bonds and savings to accumulate interest and help out once Im on my own.
The way things are going I’m going to graduate in two years with a useless (fascinating, greatly enjoyable, immensely education, but useless) liberal arts degree and about $100,000 in debt from student loans. I’ve also got a $150 balance riding on my one credit card, but that’s pretty negligible. Plus, I’ll be racking up a whole lot more debt for grad school.
However, that’s all I’m worried about. I have no desire to ever own a house (takes too much time, effort, and money; chances are you’ll be out in some suburban hell; it basically locks you into one particular place), so I’m not concerned about that.
I’ve been told that, as soon as you can, you should start saving for “the future”. But I can’t imagine myself getting old and retiring (ah, yes, let’s throw away our careers and knit sweaters at the old-folks home!) - I hope to be a ‘work until I keel over dead’ type. I’m not going to have kids, and unless I get hit on the head very hard, will not even get married. So I’m uncertain what I should even be saving for, to say nothing of ‘how’.
We are in pretty good shape, we have a large mortgage with 27 years to go, but it is only for about a third of the value of the house. We have no other debt and are doing a good job putting away 15% of our salaries into 401Ks.
I have some hope of retiring a little early, maybe even at 62. This is still a long way off. So much could change by then.
Our biggest concern is future college payments in about 8 years.
I have no debt except the mortgage. We bought a fixer-upper home in the Boston area and it worked out well. We could sell now, move to a different area of the country and buy an extremely nice home outright if we wanted. I fully intend on being a multi-millionaire one day and constant investments should make that happen. My wife’s family is very wealthy and she is an heiress. I recently found out that I am too on a slightly smaller scale. I don’t even think about inheritances though. Anything could happen and I only think about the things that I control like myself and my kids. We are cheap in a deceptive way but it looks like we live a rather opulent lifestyle from the outside (it would take time to explain but we figure out how to get nice things for less than others might pay). I am very financially responsible and read both Money and Fortune magazines every month as well as financial websites. I like to think that I am immune to financial scams and do almost everything like investments the textbook way.
Same here - no debt but the mortgage, and we have about two and a half times more in equity than we have left on the mortgage. We could, in theory, sell, pay off the mortgage, and buy a town house with the remainder. (Real estate is hothothot in our area.)
And we just met with our financial guy last week. We did well in our investment funds - holy bejeebers, did we do well. In theory I can retire in about seven years with no drop in income.
My son’s college is all taken care of, if my daughter continues to get straight A’s as she has for the last three years running, she will be in good shape for scholarships, both cars are paid off. And we are looking at ways to pay off the house in full in the next year or so. And the market is making threatening gestures at 13,000.
I can give you one piece of advice. If you wait for a house to be had on your terms, you may never get one. We thought houses were too expensive in the Boston area when we bought in 2001. That is why we had to resort to a fixer-upper with a monumental amount of labor required over 5 years to get what we wanted. Housing prices have almost doubled since them. I doubt (but I don’t know. that is the point) that housing prices may just see a moderate decline of 10% or so or they might just hold steady for a number of years. You are better off just jumping in and building equity if that is what you want to do. However, saving a sizeable down payment first and getting a traditional fixed mortgage are definitely wise goals. The problem is that interest rates could rise and housing prices drop but mortgage payments would stay about the same. The only way around that trap is raw cash to lower the mortgage payment from the start.
I’m 25 and fresh out of an internship. It looks good on a resume, but I’ve still got an English degree when it’s all said and done. I’m living at home, got light-to-moderate school loan debts, about a hundred bucks in credit card debt, and I’d love to have a job. I haven’t been able to save a penny, really. Each time I get something going, I get some unforseen expenditure knocking me back. I’ll have a nice little nest egg after my bonus check and last paycheck come in from the internship, though.
No debt. I went through a near-bankruptcy due to plain old emotionally-driven stupidity, and ruined my credit rating, then took five years to pay it off. Not a lot of savings yet; I’m busting my butt paying for courses and books and a new computer, things I hope will lead to greater income in the future. I rent, but ideally would like to build a house in about five years. That depends on such a ridiculously-optimistic financial forecast, though (or meeting a rich wife), that it may not happen.
I have a mortgage with about 25 years to pay off - I knew it when i signed into it. Hopefully I’ve made a good investment on my unit which will allow me to eventually sell or take out a second mortgage to buy a house.
Debt free home and vehicle owner with 5 figures in the checking account. I need to save more for retirement and get some better insurance though. I only recently started doing both.
That looked like an excellent piece of advice. Nice post Shagnasty.
The additional concern is do be aware of where you are buying. If you have no kids, look for a town/neighborhood that is currently redeveloping. The increase in value is likely to be much greater than an already well-established town. There is the other side of potentially buying in an area that due to long-term job forecasts in the area, might not see much increase in property values. Locations that rely heavily on a single industry are always more vulnerable then bedroom communities where people commute to a large variety of jobs/companies.
Are you still looking for something in the assisted care field? You might need to look at a relocation. I know Detroit is not on of the more robust economies in the US.
I didn’t want to live with my parents forever, and being ‘in the market’ for a house for about a year, it became clear that
[ul]
[li]Housing prices were going up faster than my down payment was accumulating[/li][li]My realestate agent was right when he said I should just jump in and get something.[/li][li]I wasn’t going to arrive at a house to swelling music, wide-angle/soft focus camera angles and swarms of butterflies, and know that I had to have that one.[/li][/ul]
so I grabbed one of the last places I could still afford.
My only debt is my mortgage, and the extra $$$ I had to borrow from my parents to meet the downpayment at the time. I’m only slightly north of clueless on financial matters, but my bank balance is slightly larger every month, and with the job market as it is today, I’m not in danger of being unemployed for an overly scary length of time.
A person in your position here would do well to buy any property at all; due to housing shortages and the rise in wages, the price of renting is quite close to (and sometimes higher than) the monthly cost of a mortgage, one reason I still feel I made the right decision, if only a little late.
- I knew it when i signed into it. Hopefully I’ve made a good investment on my unit which will allow me to eventually sell or take out a second mortgage to buy a house.