Yes! It shouldn’t be difficult to purchase a house, but when we were looking, none of the seller agents would even talk to us until we had a buyers agent 🙄
Years ago my dad was fed up with realtors and you couldn’t list a property for sale without a realtor license. So he figured it’s probably as easy as it seems, seeing how many airhead realtors he’d met. He was right. He read a book and then went and passed the exam to get licensed. Sold his own property himself and never used the license again.
The agent we have used for several houses has been indispensable. He got us into our current house before it was listed, and before that he knew all the issues with every house we looked at because he’s been in the area for so long. You may have had bad agents, but some of them are really good at their jobs and add quite a bit of value.
In property markets where prices are reasonable they can be alright, but up here in Toronto where detached houses go for 3 million plus, there’s just too much incentive for greedy parasites
Went into 30k debt thanks to school and being injured and getting 1/3 of what I use to make. Had to use CC and other means which in itself was digging a bigger hole. I am 3k away from being done with fuckin debt. No house since this all happen during 08-10 fall out. 13 years. FML
I have around 5k€ left to pay for my car, for the rest I just spend what I know I can. I have a credit card but I just keep it there for emergencies or to pay in installments when the seller doesn’t allow it, everything else goes to the debit card.
Edit: for context since I just read “in the US”, I’m italian. My school was 150€/year so I saved myself the school debt thing.
health insurance provides a legitimate service to society. not a bullshit job. i get you have political motives to project but it’s not a bullshit job.
If by “job” you mean being a middle man sucking money and effectiveness from people and getting in the way of actual health care, then I agree. It’s a “job” in that people show up and get paid, but it’s 100% a bullshit job.
All dicks and no holes. Just a big pile of fuckery and greed in a big circle. The fed fucks big pharma. So the pharma company fucks over the hospitals. The hospital turns around and fucks the insurance. And the insurance companies are legally justified to square the difference from out of your asshole. And since some of that comes from the fed via state run marketplaces, the cycle of fuckery is complete.
If anyone’s offended by my language there, I apologize and assure you, it’s an entirely gender neutral and accurate metaphor.
I like how an annual doctor’s visit and a biannual dental cleaning are supposed to be 100% covered by insurance.
But every time I go, I get a bill later on with the explanation that “the provider is asking for too much money for the services so we are refusing to pay the full amount”. Fuck off. That’s not how that’s supposed to work.
I live in the Midwest region of the United States.
$55k in student loan debt, down from $100k eight years ago. $10k auto loan. $210k on the mortgage, which I honestly can’t believe I was ever approved for. No credit card debt.
There have been some very scary moments, but I’ve somehow managed to keep my head more-or-less above water so far.
Credit cards are a little high but that’s just because I just took a vacation to Japan. I feel like I’m in a good place otherwise. I was lucky enough to buy my house before the pandemic when interest rates were super low and prices hadn’t yet spiked so I’m hoping to sell it in a few years when the interest comes back down. My loans are 50k I took out of my 401k as a down payment on house, 35k for a heloc to fix the house, and 20k on a personal loan.
I have made it a point to live a debt free life as much as possible. My only debt is my mortgage. I’ve had a couple of car loans in the past, but nowadays not even that. I have quite enough wheels; If I buy another vehicle it’ll be with cash. If I can’t do that, I don’t need it right now. (2 cars, 1 truck, 7 motorcycles. It’s going to be a cold day in hell before my ass is out of transportation options.)
I’m almost 3k behind because my parents forced me into choosing college or the military at 18. I wasn’t remotely ready for either (was dealing with extreme gender dysphoria at the time) and I’m deeply opposed to the army but sometimes I wish I had chosen otherwise… I don’t know if I’m ever fixing this. All my cash goes to survival and everything I own is constantly breaking. Poverty is a vicious cycle…
It’s crazy that parents are still forcing kids to go to college when it’s been documented a billion times how often people are getting no benefit but tons of debt.
None that I would call bad. Less than 10k school loans, about 3K on a new car I a bought a few years back, and 110K on my mortgage. It’s all under 3% fixed rate and well within my budget though, so I’m not too worried.
That said I won’t be taking out any new loans or refinancing for quite some time thanks to current interest rates.
I’m in the exact same boat, to the letter. It’s been great watching interest rates and inflation eliminate 60% of my home buying power in the last year.
In 2008 the economy tanked because the banks had made a habit of cough approving mortgages that they knew people couldn’t afford in the long run. Then they auctioned off those subprime mortgages to smaller banks, and played hot potato until oopsie, economic depression.
If we’re in this boat, who the fuck is buying a home, who approved their loan, and how the fuck is 2008 not right around the corner again?
Thankfully, we are not at risk of another 2008 housing crash at this time - or at least not for the same reason.
The extremely (almost irresponsibly) abridged version of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis is that banks were giving out loans to people who could not afford to pay them.
The similarly simplified version of what’s going on today is that people cannot afford to take a mortgage and aren’t getting them. Back in the bad old days loan officers would have given out the mortgages anyway to boost their numbers and the bank would have bundled that loan with others to hide it and started the game of hot potato. That isn’t what’s happening today.
That’s not to say a market crash the size of the '08/'09 crash won’t happen, or won’t happen soon, or won’t be caused by the housing market. It’s just that the circumstances that triggered the 2008 crash aren’t present today.
The extremely (almost irresponsibly) abridged version of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis is that banks were giving out loans to people who could not afford to pay them.
This is the comparison I’m drawing, because it’s what is happening again.
A 200K home mortgage isnroughly 2000/mo. It’s not doable for median income, and the .median house price is like 380k right now. The math doesn’t check out.
Yes. Today you’ll hear people online talking about how mortgages are unaffordable. If they somehow decided to apply anyway the bank would reject them.
The difference between now and the years leading up to the 2008 crash is that loan officers would have given people those mortgages despite the payments not being doable as you said.
A lot of banks were offering variable rate mortgages that had lower interest for the first few years of the loan and advertised this lower monthly payments. This would get applicants in the door. When they asked about the later interest increases (that would bump the monthly payments higher than they’d be able to afford) they were assured that they’d be able to refinance their debt.
This and other shady sales practices are not happening today largely because federal regulations and oversight placed after the fact.
The TL;DR is that the math on mortgages doesn’t check out for a lot of people. In the early 2000s banks were more than happy to give you a mortgage anyway. That simply isn’t happening right now.
It is, though. People are buying homes who cannot afford them all over the US right now. It’s not as though home buying has ceased with the interest rates.
Can you provide a reputable source that large numbers of people are taking mortgages they’re likely to default on?
I have not heard any reporting saying that is happening. I do, however have a family member who works in banking and interfaces with federal regulators that enforce the laws passed to prevent future subprime mortgage crises.
No. My source is basic arithmetic. The math just simply doesn’t check out. Banking isn’t rocket science.
A 200K home mortgage is roughly 2000/mo mortgage. It’s not doable for median household income if about 75k, or about $4200/month after taxes, while grocery prices inflate over 10% year in end, and the median house price is like 380k right now. The math doesn’t check out.
There’s no subprime market ready to collapse. This isn’t a housing bubble. The increase in prices is partially demand and partially inflationary imo.
Interest rates will keep prices level but we aren’t going to see a crash cuz all those companies are cash flush after the ppp fraud and rental Rates skyrocketing. The only houses on the market are ppl who have to sell or ppl who died.
No one wants to jump out of a 3.2% mtg and into an 8% one
I think the interest rate has a lot to do with the declining value of commercial real estate. I think the banks are trying to cover losses. Small businesses going fully remote makes it difficult to sling commercial real estate at the old rates.
I think this is also behind the odd fetish of returning to the office we read so much about.
Oh, I “can”. I just know that $4000/mo is not what we can “afford”. We’d sooner squeeze into her apartment for $1000/mo and not be responsible for anything.
I mentioned in this thread somewhere that I believe we’re in for another 2008 collapse. If I cannot afford a mortgage who the fuck is signing those papers? Same uneducated buyers and predatory lenders as in 2003-2008. I predict a collapse starting this time next year based on I’m high and I just woke up.
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