Looking for house info

[robsmom]

Same here. I was surprised to read your post since sometimes I also feel I am the only one in America who won't own a home ever. I also accepted it and no longer even ponder it. I also live in a high cost of living area, where starter homes are well over $300,000. I also have no parental money to help, and no dual income from a spouse. Home ownership simply is an impossibility for me. I also have a few older coworkers in the same boat - never married, no money from families, who are always going to be apartment renters. Just isn't going to happen for some of us.


I believe that homeownership is not for everyone. Sometimes my husband and I look forward to the day we can sell the house and live somewhere where repairs and maintenance are done for us!! As long as you don't want to own a house, that is great. I have to say that i find the belief that "never married, no money from families" is the key factor preventing homeownership is really not true. Many many people who are single and do not get money from their parents are able to buy homes. My husband purchased our first condo totally on his own. There was a poster above who's husband fought in hazard zones and saved all of the money. There was a poster who started in a "shack" in a rural area.

If someone choices not to buy a home, great for them. If you want a home and are willing to sacrifice and do the right things anyone can own a home. Before i get flamed with thoughts that people who could not afford homes caused the housing crisis, I am not talking about people buying homes without money. I am saying where there is a will there is a way and if buying a home were important to you, you would be able to find a way to do this someday. Again, if you don't want a home and want to stay renting, that is totally cool as well.

 

[cats mom]

I'm almost 40 and never have or will own a house. I'm getting to the point where I am too old and don't care anymore. I feel like a total loser but what can you do. Most of my friends bought their first house between 23-27. Must be nice having mommy and daddy give you a down payment. (for real, they all had houses just basically handed to them).

Unfortunately, I live and work in the Boston area and only have one income that is under 100K (and know my budget limits I've seen the repurcussions of people buying houses they can't afford...). I like my job so relocating to a cheaper area is not an option.

Same here. I was surprised to read your post since sometimes I also feel I am the only one in America who won't own a home ever. I also accepted it and no longer even ponder it. I also live in a high cost of living area, where starter homes are well over $300,000. I also have no parental money to help, and no dual income from a spouse. Home ownership simply is an impossibility for me. I also have a few older coworkers in the same boat - never married, no money from families, who are always going to be apartment renters. Just isn't going to happen for some of us.

Funny thing is, I knew when I was in high school that I would never own a home. I already knew my earnings would never be enough to make it happen. Heck, in my area you need to earn over $50,000 for afford a one bedroom apartment not in a bad area.

I guess you don't read much on these boards about people never owning a home, since most DISers tend to be "doing everything right" financially to afford trips to Disney World. Right now I am just thrilled to even have a job and some place to live.

Plug the numbers for your location into this calculator:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/business/2007_BUYRENT_GRAPHIC.html#

It might make you feel better about renting.

Especially in areas with high housing costs, buying is not necessarily the wealth builder the NAR would like you to believe.

When I look at the current real price, price to rent, and price to income numbers in our area... they're all still so out of balance, that even holding onto a house for 30 years, buying would be a very risky financial decision right now. Of course if TPTB somehow manage to reinflate the nonsense housing bubble prices of the past few years, all bets are off. I don't see how those kinds of prices are sustainable without soaring wages or ongoing affordability props though. We'll see.

 

[PaulaSue]

5 percent down a year after we married. I couldn't imagine trying to save for down payment with kids. GL!

 

[Grayce]

We bought in 1996. Put 6% down (saved the down payment ourselves) and paid our own closing costs. We were 23 and 25 at the time. We moved after 5 years to our current home. We made as little money on our first house to put towards this one. We will pay our mortgage off in 2016.

 

[Colleen27]

I think in the US too many people are fooled into thinking that owning a house is always a good thing. For many people owning is not the best financial decision. A house isn't really a great investment. Unless you downsize when you are older, people don't see the return on their initial investment.

It is so subjective. There are parts of the country where ownership is so expensive that you're never really going to see much return on the investment when you put the numbers up against the cost of renting long-term, and then there are places where renting makes little sense because it costs much more than owning.

Same goes for the idea of a house as an investment, though I don't think investment value is generally a smart reason to buy. I suspect that in the long run, our home will turn out to be quite a good investment - we bought with cash in this terrible market and plan to stay for 20 years or so (until all our kids are out on their own). But even if it doesn't, we bought because this is where we want to raise the kids, and for that this is the perfect place.

 

[Disneychix]

I bought my first house at age 24 with 5% down. However, I lived at home with no rent before that and pretty much had no other monthly expenses besides besides a small student loan. My parents helped me a ton.
I sold that house 2 years later after meeting DH and we decided to buy a different house together. In 2 years I made quite a lot off the sale of that house!

 

[Handbag Lady]

I'm almost 40 and never have or will own a house. I'm getting to the point where I am too old and don't care anymore. I feel like a total loser but what can you do. Most of my friends bought their first house between 23-27. Must be nice having mommy and daddy give you a down payment. (for real, they all had houses just basically handed to them).

Unfortunately, I live and work in the Boston area and only have one income that is under 100K (and know my budget limits I've seen the repurcussions of people buying houses they can't afford...). I like my job so relocating to a cheaper area is not an option.

Don't feel bad. I'm reading these posts and just guessing at the prices they get to pay for a home. It just isn't possible here and compared to what others might make, we do pretty good. There just are NO houses available near-ish our jobs for under $600-700k. And my job can't relocate and my parents won't give away money, either!

 

[tr-ray]

My husband and I just bought our first house this year. I'm 26, and he was 31. We did a FHA loan and put down the 3% Min. We have to pay PMI, but we also qualified for the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, which forgives about $15K of our mortgage after 5 years.

All told, we really lucked out. We were shopping in the $130K range in RI, which is pretty much the bottom of the market for single family residences, with HIGH HIGH HIGH competition.

It was a lot of work - be forewarned if you go the FHA route - FHA requires special FHA inspections (read = $$$) and the FHA inspections are HYPER critical. If the house needs to be painted - it needs to be a rehab loan, and rehab loans have to have at least $5K of work, or you have to do the work OOP, before closing.

We ended up adding on about $9K of work - siding finish work, a hot water heater, hardwood refinishing & new insulation in the attic. But we also did a lot of sweat equity - spent 1 whole week, averaging 10-12 hour days, painting every room in the house, top to bottom! My husband and his dad just did some work in the bathroom, too, upgrading the cabinetry.

And that's just the beginning!

 

[mnrose]

We bought our first home with 10% down, but we had owner financing, so no PMI required. We got the down payment from my mother. We scrimped and saved once we had the house to afford it, and even took in a renter for a couple of years (renting our the Master Bedroom). We were in our mid-20's. Best move we ever made.

Good luck!!!

 

[photographymom517]

Don't feel bad. I'm reading these posts and just guessing at the prices they get to pay for a home. It just isn't possible here and compared to what others might make, we do pretty good. There just are NO houses available near-ish our jobs for under $600-700k. And my job can't relocate and my parents won't give away money, either!

Holy cow! $600-700K...I won't even retire in a house that costs that much!!! lol

I know what you're saying...no one will give me any money either. Sometimes I get really mad at people for judging...not you, I mean my friends back home...because they "think" we have all this money or something...but we don't! We bought our first house in the city (for under $50K) and our down payment money was $$$ that we had both worked for! I worked fulltime while in college fulltime...so we definitely earned what we had. A LOT of my friends had over 10 acres of property and/or houses given to them...or their parents finance their house for them. They have no clue what reality really is...I mean, anyone could build a house if they were given property! Thats half the battle...trying to find ground & pay for it! Sorry I guess I'm venting! lol

 

[DawnM]

We bought our first home at age 30 with 10% down.

The house we are currently in we put 35% down.

I really wish we had kept that first home. It would be paid off by now and we would have been able to just stay in California.

Sigh.

Dawn

 

[BellePrincessBelle]

21 20% down & to one poster it was money we saved up our families gave us nothing.

 

[cats mom]

Don't feel bad. I'm reading these posts and just guessing at the prices they get to pay for a home. It just isn't possible here and compared to what others might make, we do pretty good. There just are NO houses available near-ish our jobs for under $600-700k. And my job can't relocate and my parents won't give away money, either!

Absolutely!

Just one quick example
Putting 20% down on a median priced SFR in Abilene, TX is a whole lot different than putting 20% down on a median priced SFR in San Mateo, CA.


Median prices, existing homes, as of 6/2009, per Fiserve:

$76,000 Abiliene, TX.
20% down = $15,200

$808,000 San Mateo, CA.
20% down = $161,600

 

[hopemax]

DH (34) & I (33) just bought our first house in Oct. It was ~$225K and we put 10% down. Our housing costs are 20% of our income, so once we finish getting all the "start up" costs out of the way (we still need to buy all our lawn care/gardening equipment) we are going to start throwing money at the principle to get rid of the PMI. We didn't want to put too much cash down up front and then not have cash to do/and get for the house everything we needed(appliances, furniture, tools, new home "surprises").

We bought a house that almost fulfills our needs for a "forever home." We can make it a forever home with a small addition, which we have the space to do. We are tentatively planning to do it in about 7 years. If we decide we want to stay, we will do it, and not plan on leaving. If we decide we want to move instead, then we won't do the addition.

 

[DMickey28]

My DH and I just bought our first house in October. We were 34 and 31 years old with a 2.5 year old boy. Part of why we waited so long was due to my husband's job and our moving around a lot. Part was financial.

We put down 3.5% on a FHA loan, getting the $8K back and had an additional $10-$15K in the bank of "extra's" after closing costs and downpayment.

In our area with the costs of housing there was no way we could put down anything close to 20% ... that would be close to $60K -$70K.

ETA: Just like the poster above me, this house while it's our first house it also can be our "forever home" with or without modifications. We are hoping to put a few additions on it in time, mainly a new master suite over the family room and are planning that for about 7 years out. We picked the house, the neighborhood and the town with the idea that we would not have to move if we did not want to.

 

[ohlas]

first house was 18 years old 0down va loan house was 45k,

second house was 30 years old 0 down commerical loan but it was a hud house and the vaule was 215k but purchase price was 128k so way over the 20%.

You need to sit down and write out what you want area, prices, what you want to pay, get a plan and then do it....start saving the 20 % of going price of the area you are looking at, or find a bargain house, but then i dont mind fixing stuff.

Most adults dont buy a house till they are 30ish and some in more populated areas never do, its just as easy to rent as it is to buy....

 

[Shreggor]

Don't feel bad. I'm reading these posts and just guessing at the prices they get to pay for a home. It just isn't possible here and compared to what others might make, we do pretty good. There just are NO houses available near-ish our jobs for under $600-700k. And my job can't relocate and my parents won't give away money, either!

My fiance technically does own 1/3 of a house (does that mean once we're married, I own 1/2 of a 1/3? I don't want it!). It gives him nothing but stress and headaches. He bought it with his two brothers 5 years ago as an investment. Yikes. Now they can't get rid of the darn thing, it constantly needs repairs, they're dealing with a lawsuit happy neighbor and I have a feeling that once he's rid of it, he's going to be happy to be renting for a while anyway so he can take a break from the responsibility.

But yeah, I hear ya. I tell people what I make who are from other parts of the country and they're like "why do you rent???" and it's like HAHAHA, really? A person can't actually live of what I make HERE. If I lived in Texas or Indiana or Arizona... I'd be living the high life.