Could you afford to buy your own home now?

[HeatherC]

We could, but wouldn’t want to.

 

[mrodgers]

...

 

[808blessing]

My house more than doubled in 10 years. Taxes went up. Excellent interest rates. I would NOT buy it again. I would not be able to afford it if we were making the same amount I did back then. But now I make more so maybe.

 

[jesusfreak75]

Yes I could afford it, but wouldn't pay what it would sell for now. Price has doubled in 8 years.

 

[barkley]

We could, but wouldn’t want to.

using one of those mortgage calculators it shows i could but there's no way i would pay the going rate for it.

 

[Adelle Dazeem]

Our home has more than tripled in value since we bought it in 2004. While we could afford to buy it at the the current market price, it would make finances pretty tight - we certainly wouldn't be vacationing like we are now and we would have to watch our fun money a lot more closely than we do now.

 

[sasywtch]

We bought our home for cash 2 years ago for 297K and now houses around us are selling in days for 450K. We could afford it but don't want to as CA tax is % of what you paid for it so our taxes would go up. Right now our taxes per year are $3000, don't want them to go up to $4500.

 

[bobbiwoz]

We are retired and couldn’t buy our house at current price. We had bought it 24 years ago as a vacation home.

 

[Kimkimba]

Nope. Bought 20 years ago and it’s more than tripled. Houses still go quickly here.

 

[holden]

Yes. We bought our current home
a year ago. We have a mortgage now but owned our previous home outright.

 

[tasha99]

Nope. If I went back to work and we had 2 incomes, we could, but with just my husband's it would be pushing it.

 

[barkley]

We bought our home for cash 2 years ago for 297K and now houses around us are selling in days for 450K. We could afford it but don't want to as CA tax is % of what you paid for it so our taxes would go up. Right now our taxes per year are $3000, don't want them to go up to $4500.

we absolutely appreciated that tax law when we lived in california and our home tripled in value during the last housing boom but DANG those tax rates just make me choke when i compare them to what i'm paying now. our homes get reassessed for tax purposes yearly so since comp houses are selling in the low $800k range these days our tax basis has risen tremendously yet we are still only paying a bit more than what you are/less than your $450K neighbor

has there been anymore talk of letting seniors keep their lower tax basis value if they sell to downsize into a smaller home? i know this is one of the factors that has historically prevented allot of my friends and family from selling what would be great starter family homes for younger buyers-they would sell in a heartbeat to move into a smaller place but the taxes on the new places would kill their budgets

 

[Lumpy1106]

Kinda - but that's not the right question to ask. We didn't buy our current house right out of the gate either
Not the exact same house we live in now, no, but we could lower our expectations and buy a first house the same we we bought our first house - we budgeted and saved until we could afford it. Years later we bought a fixer-upper and bought up to our current house. I really don't think the equation has changed all that much - just takes more saving and more patience.

 

[TheIncredibles!]

Yes we could but we wouldn't. We are ready to downsize, although the 3 young adult kids won't be moving out anytime soon unless we want to help them so may as well just let them live with us (they're only 24(special needs) 21 and 18...)

 

[AurumPunzel]

If it was under my own steam, no, because that would mean I'd have to save for decades and go completely austere, and even that would still take a long time. Problem is that, here in the UK, the average price of a modest 2 or 3 bedroomed house has ballooned to the point that the average worker would need a huge mortgage, and with stagflation, they'd be lucky if they can find anything below £300k on a starter mortgage that won't leave you constantly broke every month, especially with utility prices rising.

Thankfully, I have a very supportive father who made my homeowning dream come true, and I only have to pay a peppercorn rate in perpetuity until he dies, which would then come out of my inheritance. But of course, not everyone is lucky to be in that position, and that highlights a huge generational gulf between me (a Millennial) and my dad (a late generation Boomer), because of economic factors such as stagnating wages, unfavourable interest for saving (thus leading to an unhealthy culture of lifestyle leveraging), increased retirement age, and of course, an increasingly ravenous market.

 

[SandyinMonterey]

If Zillow is correct & our home increased $500k since buying it, then no.

 

[BorderTenny]

We could barely afford the steal we got on our condo three years ago. Units are currently going for about twice what we paid.

 

[Cheburashka]

I bought my house a little less than one year ago, and I couldn't afford to buy it now, given how much it's already appreciated in the last year due to the market. It was already a stretch, but one I had no choice but to make. It doesn't get much smaller than this, and I have to live in the area due to custody and employment reasons. It's very expensive for what it is, and yes, it strains my budget. Housing costs are the #1 inflationary issue in America. Those who already own don't have to deal with it directly, which is why you hear less about it than gasoline, which everyone needs, but those who do need to buy a home and are on a budget are getting clobbered financially. There is no option to "just buy less house" (aka find something cheaper) in certain areas, and I'm not even talking about the coasts. This is in middle America, anywhere that isn't way out in the middle of nowhere. The posters who advise "just buy less house" are out of touch with the current housing market. Even teardowns are expensive, because of the land they're on. There's a lot of speculation in the market imo, with developers and other investors buying lots of American homes for the purpose of flipping them or renting them out. That drives prices way up.

 

[CdnCarrie]

Sweet! That was basically the rock bottom of the 8-year cycle here. Unfortunately, we bought in 2014, which was the tippity-top. By 2019 our condo had lost 1/4 of its value and the tax assessment that year practically caused me to hyperventilate. But since we had no intention of selling, we stuffed our panic down and carried on. It's back up to 90% of what we paid after this most recent upswing, which has not been as drastic as many parts of the country. So I guess the answer to the question is YES - we could buy it right now for less than we originally paid.

Is that an Alberta thing? Or a condo thing? We built a home in early 2000s and it has steadily increased in price. At no time has it been worth less than what we paid for it.

 

[luv2cheer92]

Yep. I bought my house about 1.5 years ago and it was really even below my low range that I was looking at then. It's now closer to the mid-price range of what I had been looking at then.