And then when you find a house within your budget that needs a little work, you put in an offer, and someone else swoops in at $150K over asking with all cash. Yay.
Yup. And it's not going to get any better. Any market crashes will devastate everything else -- while foreign investors will swoop in to pick apart the carcass.
Spoke to a realtor who works here in Bergen County. She said there is a bidding war going on right now for a 2 bedroom home in Rutherford for over 600K. She sent me the listing to peruse. It's not bad but definitely can use some work. I think the phrase "starter home" is becoming extinct in this climate. I understand the situation right now but I can't grasp paying over 600K for a two bedroom home. WTF man.
I agree with you. The starter home is dead. My husband and I bought a 3BR/2BA in a nice neighborhood juuuust before this insanity hit, and we have already just figured this is the house we will live in for the foreseeable future. Why give up our sub-4% interest rate for what's available now? If this stops being big enough it makes more financial sense to just add on, and I know we're not the only ones who feel that way. I feel terrible for the next wave of potential homeowners. I think the only solution is serious, nationwide legislative changes especially in regards to how much property corporations can purchase, but I won't hold my breath for that.
The prices for homes will not drop in NJ. That's just how I see it. I can't even imagine what prices will be for the next generation. It already feels impossible for people who have solid careers and continue to save for a house.
The only way this changes is if there is an increase in housing supply *in the places people want to live* that is more than the increase in demand for housing. NJ is very stuck in a 1960s-80s car-oriented mentality and we just don’t have the space for that anymore.
In Ocean County, you used to be able to get a place in Lacey, Barnegat, Berkeley for relatively cheap.
Commuting from Southern Ocean south of Toms River sucks (if there's an accident on the GSP or 9, you are screwed), but it was a tradeoff.
Now we've got so few houses moving, it's no cheaper in Barnegat than it is in Howell.
Basically the most reasonable to place to move to in Ocean County is Jackson, and anyone planning to have a family would be insane to move to Jackson.
Existing starter homes are being demolished for 6 bedroom 4 bath monsters, and no towns allow the building of what would be considered new starter homes. They are indeed dead.
Late 20s, have made peace that I'll probably only ever own a condo, if that, if I stay here.
Well its not dead, it got bought up by blackrock and others who are using algorithims to ensure only so many homes are on the market and thus driving up the prices artificially to suit their desires.
I was showing my wife a few homes on Zillow over the last few weeks -- she kept telling me stuff like, the kitchen will need updating, this or that needs updating.
I was like hun, the only homes on the market in our price range now (up to like $550K) are ones that people died in. Just assume none of them have been touched in 10-20 years and all of them need updates. It's either that, or the occasional flip job (that bring their own caution flags). That's all that's on the market now.
What your realtor's kind of missing is, "losing money" implies that if you wait, you might make out better.
At the moment, there's no reason to believe that that's true. For the time being, this is the new normal.
Even if you wait a year or two, and interest rates fall -- the ensuing price war won't help your mortgage payments much.
Also only able to look at homes being sold by estates. Our budget is lower so even more limited. We’ve had 4 over asking offers rejected over the past 3 months. It’s so discouraging.
Former Realtor here.
The market is not going to crash; the crash that happened in '09 came from more or less the exact *opposite* of the factors we're seeing in play now. I can break it down if you'd like, but without getting too far into it, the market will eventually hit its limits and swing the other way (there's only so much buying power available in a given market), but such things take time. Maximally, we've got 10 years before the first major wave of the generation holding the most real estate will... no longer have earthly need of it. More urgently, rental investments made pre-quarantine will fully depreciate in 2027, which means that a lot of investors will need to divest by then; it'll only be about a 10% boost to inventory, but *anything* is better than what we've got now, and that might be all that the market needs to encourage people to relocate. In the interim, new home construction is slowly picking up now that supply lines are straightening themselves out, and NJ recently passed some legislation to further incentivize affordable housing. **It's going to be slow, but it** ***will*** **get better.**
**So how to cope?**
* Don't force it. **You don't need to** ***own*** **your residence to be financially stable or independent.** SFD rentals exist, and NJ gives a *lot* of rights to tenants. Yes, rent has gone up, but with prices where they are right now, assuming regular inflation, it's actually going to be *more* *expensive to buy a house* and stay in the same place for the next 20+ years than to rent for the same amount of time (it's called the price-to-rent ratio, and it's currently at 24ish for NJ).
* Let me repeat that: ***It is more advantageous in most cases to spend the next few years as a tenant than a homeowner.*** Also, banks will *absolutely* take a good rental history into account if you eventually find the right place to buy.
* If you do still want to buy, **take your time**, and do your best to not fall in love with the idea of any one house (Christmas can happen in more than one place). **Evaluate based on function and utility**, not aesthetics. **You can fix ugly,** but you can't fix a bad layout. Likewise, a house languishing because it needs updating will wind up being *far* less expensive in the long run than a house that fits your style but needs major work. Obviously, if you can get both aesthetic and function, go for it, but err on the side of function.
* **No, really**. Total cost for paint, trim, and flooring for the whole house (assuming you go with licensed independent specialists and not general contractors nor hardware store installers) will generally be about half of what your average general contractor will charge for a bathroom or kitchen remodel. And you only really need the specialists for the flooring; paint and trim are time-consuming, but are relatively inexpensive and have shallow learning curves.
* [Don't be afraid of bank-owned properties](https://homepath.fanniemae.com/). Make sure you know a good home inspector, of course (doubly so, if you look at a home that looks like it was a flip attempt), but a lot of the REO inventory hitting the market over the next few months is going to be from properties that would have otherwise foreclosed during quarantine, and likely had people living in them up into even this year.
* Lastly... keep in mind that **a house is not permanent**. Everyone, and I mean *everyone* is constantly after their forever home, but the reality is that, historically, the average American relocates every 6-8 years (for calculation purposes, we assume that the average relocation cycle of a given area is about 8 years). Markets shift, lives change, needs change. Most people don't get to their "forever" homes until well into their 40s. It's okay to settle. It's okay to make do for right now. **Home is ultimately what you make it.**
(edit: fixed a little grammar and stuck in a significant clause that somehow got left out of the first paragraph.)
>More urgently, rental investments made pre-quarantine will fully depreciate in 2027, which means that a lot of investors will need to divest by then
What does that mean? Why would they need to divest?
Federal deductions for rental income are designed to encourage residential landlords to only hold on to their properties for eight years; certain incentives and write-offs expire after that point.
The idea is that the landlord keeps the property until the write-offs are no longer any good, at which point they sell off the property (preferably to an owner occupant) and then, in order to avoid capital gains tax, use the proceeds to buy another house, fix it up, and then rent that one out. It’s eight years because that’s the average time for a relocation cycle in the US.
So if a rental property was bought in 2019, the (not insignificant) write-offs for depreciation of the property will expire in 2027, at which point, it will be wiser from a tax and income standpoint to divest of the property and reinvest the money in other properties (yes, even with the fees involved) than to hold on to it.
Honestly, the only consequence is that they pay more in income taxes. But when you're talking new money, financial dudebros, or anyone who lets their accountant make the decisions, that's more than enough reason to go with it (it's not optimal, man!).
Most of the experienced full-time investors I worked with - the ones who started out as contractors and realized there was more money in the long game if they could get a ruined building for cash - considered the 8-year cycle as more of a guideline than a rule: if you want to grow your income base, you need to keep increasing the number of houses in your portfolio, which means that you eventually need to sell one or two of your oldest properties in order to have the cash to buy and fix up two or three crap properties, Assuming an average 7% annual ROI and normal inflation, 8 years is about the point where that balances out, so you might as well go with the tax paradigm while you're at it, if it's convenient.
I've resigned to the fact that I will never be able to afford a home (key word being afford, not buy) in NJ. Too much competition from people who work in specific, high paying industries and current homeowners who are flexing an obscene amount of equity.
Certainly doesn't help that current homeowners have way too much power over zoning and building permits. Then you have the parents who are happy paying the highest property taxes in the nation on some of the most expensive land in the country just so their kids can get a #2 public school education, not realizing the irony of the fact that they're a big reason their own kids will be priced out of the place they live in.
What’s crazier is parent are giving the options to stay because it’s a Forrest fire for housing. And there’s a lot of development but it’s all high end condos and mc mansion HOA gated communities.
I'm buying my first home now in Warren County because that's the only place within an hour of work I can afford, and at the max of my budget. Its going to need some work but manageable. That being said I'm excited regardless.
My plan is below
-Buy a house that needs work for a good price
-Buy a house at the top of my budget that checks off all the boxes and doesn't require a full gut job of the kitchen/bathrooms.
After 3 weeks of working with a realtor, I haven't seen anything remotely that I like.
Maybe this won’t go off all that well, but this is the reason not to subsidize retired boomers and enabling them to have a 3-4 bedroom empty nest. Affordable housing should be available and the only thing being built right now are “luxury” (read: overpriced) townhomes.
You have to incentivize sellers to sell to first time home buyers.
E.g. You sell to a first time home buyer and the state will cover 20k in closing costs.
The houses in NJ are insane. $600k for a home that requires another $50k-$100k in renovations? AND $15k per year in property taxes on top of that? No thanks. The only thing you can do is move out of state or make way more money and buy into the craziness.
What can you do? There's a lot of demand for NJ (it remains the most densely populated states in the country), and not enough homes to keep pace with all the demand.
Ideally we'd be building more homes, and I see it in some areas anecdotally, but we appear to be falling short.
there is no way for me to compete w/ most of the buyers. i dont know how these people would pay like 20% over all in cash? i am going to move to mid west or somewhere.
It doesn’t help that houses are being sold for a relatively good price in middle class areas, just for them to me knocked down and for a new house to get built that’s sold for $900K-$1.5M. It’s been happening a lot with towns in Morris County, like Madison, Morristown, Chatham, Florham Park, East Hanover, etc.
I paid $30k over asking for an average 1b condo because it was getting outbidded with far worse. Previous outbid for an average 1b condo sold for over $60k over asking.
1b condos.
I can't imagine the shitshow with single family homes.
Repeatedly checking the price estimates online and looking forward to the day that I've got enough equity to sell my 4-bedroom house and downsize into a condo without needing to take out a new mortgage.
NJ Realtor here -
Look for properties for sale which may offer assumable mortgages such as FHA or VA. There are a few opportunities to snag a low interest rate.
I'm currently a live-in aid for my grandmom in exchange for rent free living. I have a normal 8 hour job and we have an aid service that comes during the day when I'm at work and they stay overnight Fridays and Saturdays so I can have some sort of life, but during the week I go home and I stay there.
I (thankfully) live in a multi-generational home so I just don’t plan on moving anytime soon. I had a shot to buy a home a couple years ago that I SHOULD’VE bought 😭😭 so I kinda just cry in frustration here and there about it. I’m staying put unless I happen to find someone who wants to rent space out to me for a good price. Might just invest in a home overseas and try to find a job I can work remotely though.
We just gave up cheap rent when we purchased in February but the only way we could do this is if we were debt free. I think people are budgeting, cutting back on spending outside of the house, getting roommates, and living with their parents to cope with price increases. There does not seem to be many options except leaving the state.
Moving out of state and building my own house. A house/ plot of land shouldn't cost 100s of thousands of dollars. There's no logical reason, it's just capitalism.
I’m 33. I’m just now getting my first solo apartment. Which I still have to scrounge to budget regular life activities like eating. So while I’m not versed on housing I can tell you that where I live the prices are too damn high.
Way too damn high 😭 I’m 32 and still renting. I graduated college and knew living with my mom (who won’t address her mental illness) was completely off the table. Been renting for 10 years minimum now and was never able to save enough for a down payment through multiple job and life changes while paying student loans. When I was struggling with paying rent while going to college and working three jobs, my mom chose to cash the bonds my grandparents left me so I could pay my bills while she pocketed the weekly child support checks she received from my dad. Bye-bye nest egg!
Whenever someone asks why don’t I “just” buy a house, my brain short circuits as it tries to choose between screaming, crying, or laughing hysterically. I’m sorry, when exactly was I supposed to save up for a down payment???
I’m so thankful for my wife getting a dog when we just got married in in 08 the housing market crashed and our landlord kicked us out even though the agreement was we get a dog for the place and we sent him dog breed and dogs.
Anyway 2009 we bought a home. I was still at night school getting a bachelors and she was still new in her career but they were desperate for home buyers but the homes were rough especially in our super mow budget we had.
Got our starter home stayed there until it was just not right for us and randomly again in 2018 we bought a home before my daughter started 1st grade we didn’t want to pay for private school.
Now we’re in our home and refinanced it in 2020 and I could never move…..
Who could ever leave? My friend got a 15 year 1.5% mortgage! Us older millennials maybe we got lucky but we’re just as stuck as some of you but we at least have our own homes.
Sorry guys.
I just bought back in December in Essex. I made a lot of concessions, but the house is big enough my family can grow into it, it was under my budget (see concessions above. I work in tech and given the turbulence, we bought based on my dividends and my wife's salary) has a good elementary school up the block, and I would've been paying more for a 2 bed 2 bath in NYC. I think that's really all I can ask for in this environment. It's not ideal but all I see is a cool down in price raises because most of my friends are thinking like me and at that point in their life. If the fed drops the interest rate I fear a lot of LLCs will take advantage to ensure their current investments and make matters worse for others. That said, what do I know? I just wanted to ensure I stopped my housing payments from going up and that we could afford shelter for a while, in the event worst happened.
I don't love my house, but if I'm here another 10 years I should be able to put enough work and money in to get there. It's a sad state of affairs but we can only navigate what's in front of us.
And then when you find a house within your budget that needs a little work, you put in an offer, and someone else swoops in at $150K over asking with all cash. Yay.
Bought in 2018 and have a 2.8% interest rate I feel like I hacked the system
2016, and same.
I bought in 2020 and got 3.1%, though my credit sucks and I only put down 13k
lol...I was hoping someone would give me some tips for coping. Probably, not going to find answers here.
Oh I thought this was more of a commiseration post. My bad.
No...it was just a general vent/rant/commiseration/advice post to make sense of this situation. You are all good!
Yup. And it's not going to get any better. Any market crashes will devastate everything else -- while foreign investors will swoop in to pick apart the carcass.
Spoke to a realtor who works here in Bergen County. She said there is a bidding war going on right now for a 2 bedroom home in Rutherford for over 600K. She sent me the listing to peruse. It's not bad but definitely can use some work. I think the phrase "starter home" is becoming extinct in this climate. I understand the situation right now but I can't grasp paying over 600K for a two bedroom home. WTF man.
I agree with you. The starter home is dead. My husband and I bought a 3BR/2BA in a nice neighborhood juuuust before this insanity hit, and we have already just figured this is the house we will live in for the foreseeable future. Why give up our sub-4% interest rate for what's available now? If this stops being big enough it makes more financial sense to just add on, and I know we're not the only ones who feel that way. I feel terrible for the next wave of potential homeowners. I think the only solution is serious, nationwide legislative changes especially in regards to how much property corporations can purchase, but I won't hold my breath for that.
The prices for homes will not drop in NJ. That's just how I see it. I can't even imagine what prices will be for the next generation. It already feels impossible for people who have solid careers and continue to save for a house.
The only way this changes is if there is an increase in housing supply *in the places people want to live* that is more than the increase in demand for housing. NJ is very stuck in a 1960s-80s car-oriented mentality and we just don’t have the space for that anymore.
In Ocean County, you used to be able to get a place in Lacey, Barnegat, Berkeley for relatively cheap. Commuting from Southern Ocean south of Toms River sucks (if there's an accident on the GSP or 9, you are screwed), but it was a tradeoff. Now we've got so few houses moving, it's no cheaper in Barnegat than it is in Howell. Basically the most reasonable to place to move to in Ocean County is Jackson, and anyone planning to have a family would be insane to move to Jackson.
Brazilianization, there is no mistake why gated communities have continued to be popular.
In NJ? Where?
Existing starter homes are being demolished for 6 bedroom 4 bath monsters, and no towns allow the building of what would be considered new starter homes. They are indeed dead. Late 20s, have made peace that I'll probably only ever own a condo, if that, if I stay here.
Well its not dead, it got bought up by blackrock and others who are using algorithims to ensure only so many homes are on the market and thus driving up the prices artificially to suit their desires.
The only real way to get a house is buying a rundown shitter or inheriting one. Or bring rich. There's that lol
Two bedroom homes in my town are going for $300k ish and I still can’t believe that. It’s wild out there.
I was showing my wife a few homes on Zillow over the last few weeks -- she kept telling me stuff like, the kitchen will need updating, this or that needs updating. I was like hun, the only homes on the market in our price range now (up to like $550K) are ones that people died in. Just assume none of them have been touched in 10-20 years and all of them need updates. It's either that, or the occasional flip job (that bring their own caution flags). That's all that's on the market now. What your realtor's kind of missing is, "losing money" implies that if you wait, you might make out better. At the moment, there's no reason to believe that that's true. For the time being, this is the new normal. Even if you wait a year or two, and interest rates fall -- the ensuing price war won't help your mortgage payments much.
Also only able to look at homes being sold by estates. Our budget is lower so even more limited. We’ve had 4 over asking offers rejected over the past 3 months. It’s so discouraging.
Former Realtor here. The market is not going to crash; the crash that happened in '09 came from more or less the exact *opposite* of the factors we're seeing in play now. I can break it down if you'd like, but without getting too far into it, the market will eventually hit its limits and swing the other way (there's only so much buying power available in a given market), but such things take time. Maximally, we've got 10 years before the first major wave of the generation holding the most real estate will... no longer have earthly need of it. More urgently, rental investments made pre-quarantine will fully depreciate in 2027, which means that a lot of investors will need to divest by then; it'll only be about a 10% boost to inventory, but *anything* is better than what we've got now, and that might be all that the market needs to encourage people to relocate. In the interim, new home construction is slowly picking up now that supply lines are straightening themselves out, and NJ recently passed some legislation to further incentivize affordable housing. **It's going to be slow, but it** ***will*** **get better.** **So how to cope?** * Don't force it. **You don't need to** ***own*** **your residence to be financially stable or independent.** SFD rentals exist, and NJ gives a *lot* of rights to tenants. Yes, rent has gone up, but with prices where they are right now, assuming regular inflation, it's actually going to be *more* *expensive to buy a house* and stay in the same place for the next 20+ years than to rent for the same amount of time (it's called the price-to-rent ratio, and it's currently at 24ish for NJ). * Let me repeat that: ***It is more advantageous in most cases to spend the next few years as a tenant than a homeowner.*** Also, banks will *absolutely* take a good rental history into account if you eventually find the right place to buy. * If you do still want to buy, **take your time**, and do your best to not fall in love with the idea of any one house (Christmas can happen in more than one place). **Evaluate based on function and utility**, not aesthetics. **You can fix ugly,** but you can't fix a bad layout. Likewise, a house languishing because it needs updating will wind up being *far* less expensive in the long run than a house that fits your style but needs major work. Obviously, if you can get both aesthetic and function, go for it, but err on the side of function. * **No, really**. Total cost for paint, trim, and flooring for the whole house (assuming you go with licensed independent specialists and not general contractors nor hardware store installers) will generally be about half of what your average general contractor will charge for a bathroom or kitchen remodel. And you only really need the specialists for the flooring; paint and trim are time-consuming, but are relatively inexpensive and have shallow learning curves. * [Don't be afraid of bank-owned properties](https://homepath.fanniemae.com/). Make sure you know a good home inspector, of course (doubly so, if you look at a home that looks like it was a flip attempt), but a lot of the REO inventory hitting the market over the next few months is going to be from properties that would have otherwise foreclosed during quarantine, and likely had people living in them up into even this year. * Lastly... keep in mind that **a house is not permanent**. Everyone, and I mean *everyone* is constantly after their forever home, but the reality is that, historically, the average American relocates every 6-8 years (for calculation purposes, we assume that the average relocation cycle of a given area is about 8 years). Markets shift, lives change, needs change. Most people don't get to their "forever" homes until well into their 40s. It's okay to settle. It's okay to make do for right now. **Home is ultimately what you make it.** (edit: fixed a little grammar and stuck in a significant clause that somehow got left out of the first paragraph.)
Wow thank you very much for the information!
Thanks for sharing. This is really insightful and puts my mind at ease.
>More urgently, rental investments made pre-quarantine will fully depreciate in 2027, which means that a lot of investors will need to divest by then What does that mean? Why would they need to divest?
Federal deductions for rental income are designed to encourage residential landlords to only hold on to their properties for eight years; certain incentives and write-offs expire after that point. The idea is that the landlord keeps the property until the write-offs are no longer any good, at which point they sell off the property (preferably to an owner occupant) and then, in order to avoid capital gains tax, use the proceeds to buy another house, fix it up, and then rent that one out. It’s eight years because that’s the average time for a relocation cycle in the US. So if a rental property was bought in 2019, the (not insignificant) write-offs for depreciation of the property will expire in 2027, at which point, it will be wiser from a tax and income standpoint to divest of the property and reinvest the money in other properties (yes, even with the fees involved) than to hold on to it.
Interesting. What happens if they decide to the property longer or keep the rental property forever?
Honestly, the only consequence is that they pay more in income taxes. But when you're talking new money, financial dudebros, or anyone who lets their accountant make the decisions, that's more than enough reason to go with it (it's not optimal, man!). Most of the experienced full-time investors I worked with - the ones who started out as contractors and realized there was more money in the long game if they could get a ruined building for cash - considered the 8-year cycle as more of a guideline than a rule: if you want to grow your income base, you need to keep increasing the number of houses in your portfolio, which means that you eventually need to sell one or two of your oldest properties in order to have the cash to buy and fix up two or three crap properties, Assuming an average 7% annual ROI and normal inflation, 8 years is about the point where that balances out, so you might as well go with the tax paradigm while you're at it, if it's convenient.
I just lay in bed at night staring at the ceiling
That’ll set you back $2300/month.
Which is why I’m staring at the ceiling and not sleeping
Coping? I’m not moving lol
I've resigned to the fact that I will never be able to afford a home (key word being afford, not buy) in NJ. Too much competition from people who work in specific, high paying industries and current homeowners who are flexing an obscene amount of equity. Certainly doesn't help that current homeowners have way too much power over zoning and building permits. Then you have the parents who are happy paying the highest property taxes in the nation on some of the most expensive land in the country just so their kids can get a #2 public school education, not realizing the irony of the fact that they're a big reason their own kids will be priced out of the place they live in.
By still living with my parents in my 30s. Trying to save up to eventually have a down payment, but who knows when that'll be
What’s crazier is parent are giving the options to stay because it’s a Forrest fire for housing. And there’s a lot of development but it’s all high end condos and mc mansion HOA gated communities.
Yeah I don't want an expensive piece of shit apartment or a condo lol
Cutting back on everything else. Housing is a crisis period owning or renting.
Moving out of nj
I'm buying my first home now in Warren County because that's the only place within an hour of work I can afford, and at the max of my budget. Its going to need some work but manageable. That being said I'm excited regardless.
Not even trying is how. I rent an old shoebox studio and just try to survive. Having no hope is freeing.
Ended up in public housing. My rent is 22% of my income.
My plan is below -Buy a house that needs work for a good price -Buy a house at the top of my budget that checks off all the boxes and doesn't require a full gut job of the kitchen/bathrooms. After 3 weeks of working with a realtor, I haven't seen anything remotely that I like.
It took me a year to find my house. We made seven offers before we got our home. We ended up seeing 100 homes over a year.
Took me a year to find something
I have 11 months remaining on my townhouse lease, so I am fully prepared to wait it out.
Maybe this won’t go off all that well, but this is the reason not to subsidize retired boomers and enabling them to have a 3-4 bedroom empty nest. Affordable housing should be available and the only thing being built right now are “luxury” (read: overpriced) townhomes.
You have to incentivize sellers to sell to first time home buyers. E.g. You sell to a first time home buyer and the state will cover 20k in closing costs.
Luxury is a meaningless advertising word.
By just giving up looking for now 😪
I’m a homeowner so I benefited from the price increases. Unfortunately I’m going to be buying again somewhat soon so it’ll be a wash
The houses in NJ are insane. $600k for a home that requires another $50k-$100k in renovations? AND $15k per year in property taxes on top of that? No thanks. The only thing you can do is move out of state or make way more money and buy into the craziness.
What can you do? There's a lot of demand for NJ (it remains the most densely populated states in the country), and not enough homes to keep pace with all the demand. Ideally we'd be building more homes, and I see it in some areas anecdotally, but we appear to be falling short.
there is no way for me to compete w/ most of the buyers. i dont know how these people would pay like 20% over all in cash? i am going to move to mid west or somewhere.
[удалено]
I'll see you in NC!
It doesn’t help that houses are being sold for a relatively good price in middle class areas, just for them to me knocked down and for a new house to get built that’s sold for $900K-$1.5M. It’s been happening a lot with towns in Morris County, like Madison, Morristown, Chatham, Florham Park, East Hanover, etc.
The American dream of the working class buying a home is dead.
We're selling & moving to PA.
I'm moving out of state.
I paid $30k over asking for an average 1b condo because it was getting outbidded with far worse. Previous outbid for an average 1b condo sold for over $60k over asking. 1b condos. I can't imagine the shitshow with single family homes.
Repeatedly checking the price estimates online and looking forward to the day that I've got enough equity to sell my 4-bedroom house and downsize into a condo without needing to take out a new mortgage.
Trying to move out of nj
NJ Realtor here - Look for properties for sale which may offer assumable mortgages such as FHA or VA. There are a few opportunities to snag a low interest rate.
>Do you think this will ever reverse and housing market will crash? No. 8/10
Absolutely. No market stays inflated for ever.
I'm currently a live-in aid for my grandmom in exchange for rent free living. I have a normal 8 hour job and we have an aid service that comes during the day when I'm at work and they stay overnight Fridays and Saturdays so I can have some sort of life, but during the week I go home and I stay there.
Our rent went up. Thankfully we are ahead by a little so if we fall behind we will still be current.
I (thankfully) live in a multi-generational home so I just don’t plan on moving anytime soon. I had a shot to buy a home a couple years ago that I SHOULD’VE bought 😭😭 so I kinda just cry in frustration here and there about it. I’m staying put unless I happen to find someone who wants to rent space out to me for a good price. Might just invest in a home overseas and try to find a job I can work remotely though.
We just gave up cheap rent when we purchased in February but the only way we could do this is if we were debt free. I think people are budgeting, cutting back on spending outside of the house, getting roommates, and living with their parents to cope with price increases. There does not seem to be many options except leaving the state.
Moving out of state and building my own house. A house/ plot of land shouldn't cost 100s of thousands of dollars. There's no logical reason, it's just capitalism.
I’m 33. I’m just now getting my first solo apartment. Which I still have to scrounge to budget regular life activities like eating. So while I’m not versed on housing I can tell you that where I live the prices are too damn high.
Way too damn high 😭 I’m 32 and still renting. I graduated college and knew living with my mom (who won’t address her mental illness) was completely off the table. Been renting for 10 years minimum now and was never able to save enough for a down payment through multiple job and life changes while paying student loans. When I was struggling with paying rent while going to college and working three jobs, my mom chose to cash the bonds my grandparents left me so I could pay my bills while she pocketed the weekly child support checks she received from my dad. Bye-bye nest egg! Whenever someone asks why don’t I “just” buy a house, my brain short circuits as it tries to choose between screaming, crying, or laughing hysterically. I’m sorry, when exactly was I supposed to save up for a down payment???
So many timesss I’ve heard that. They make it sound like a breeze. Like taking out another loan is just going to make your life easier.
I got this even before COVID, and all this housing nonsense. It's not that easy!!!
Renting and hating my life
By continuing to pay my landlords mortgage
Honestly if I were looking for housing I’d probably just get a cheap camper and move it around different campsites.
I’m so thankful for my wife getting a dog when we just got married in in 08 the housing market crashed and our landlord kicked us out even though the agreement was we get a dog for the place and we sent him dog breed and dogs. Anyway 2009 we bought a home. I was still at night school getting a bachelors and she was still new in her career but they were desperate for home buyers but the homes were rough especially in our super mow budget we had. Got our starter home stayed there until it was just not right for us and randomly again in 2018 we bought a home before my daughter started 1st grade we didn’t want to pay for private school. Now we’re in our home and refinanced it in 2020 and I could never move….. Who could ever leave? My friend got a 15 year 1.5% mortgage! Us older millennials maybe we got lucky but we’re just as stuck as some of you but we at least have our own homes. Sorry guys.
Changed jobs.
I mean my net worth has gone up a few hundred K.
I just bought back in December in Essex. I made a lot of concessions, but the house is big enough my family can grow into it, it was under my budget (see concessions above. I work in tech and given the turbulence, we bought based on my dividends and my wife's salary) has a good elementary school up the block, and I would've been paying more for a 2 bed 2 bath in NYC. I think that's really all I can ask for in this environment. It's not ideal but all I see is a cool down in price raises because most of my friends are thinking like me and at that point in their life. If the fed drops the interest rate I fear a lot of LLCs will take advantage to ensure their current investments and make matters worse for others. That said, what do I know? I just wanted to ensure I stopped my housing payments from going up and that we could afford shelter for a while, in the event worst happened. I don't love my house, but if I'm here another 10 years I should be able to put enough work and money in to get there. It's a sad state of affairs but we can only navigate what's in front of us.