Bahahaha, if I save all my income, for 3 years, I will not be able to buy a house. I may, may!, be able to collect enough for a down payment on a very shity apartment that will cost more over time as it’s already breaking down.
I actually have an engineering friend who did this and he did it in 2 years. Dude had no life, but he put a full down payment on a 750k house in two years. So I guess technical jobs just pay well enough
Well and the OP says he paid for the house in cash, vs just the down-payment, which could be as low as $37.5k for a $750k house. That’s a lot of money but across 2 years that’s $1600/mo, basically exactly what you’d expect to save on rent. Could also be significantly higher obviously too, if they went for 20% or something.
Thats a down payment, anon bought that shit straight cash. You figure the average down payment is 20% so… 150K+ for your friend, thats no chump change either. Does he stay out late at night, maybe looks frazzled all the time?
Multi-generational homes are as old as the human race. Everybody being expected to leave when you’re 18 is an incredibly new concept in the grand scheme of things.
North American individualism. The path we were promised was get education, get job, get apartment, meet so, merry so, buy house then have kids. The American dream is very 1D. Let alone paying taxes, “If they take one dollar off my wages, I’ll vote that bastard out!!” . We’re a very individually selfish people…
Yea I called it “North Americans” we Canadians are quite guilty as well:C. Ontario killed subsidized housing… I got a 5k down payment for my first home and they cut subsidized housing by 40% bitter pill…
Coincides with how small living arrangements got so that more houses could be sold. Any relatively new concept should be cross checked with how capitalism has been fucking up what should have been a liveable society.
It cost $20K to fix the plumbing in my house. Didn’t want to put it on a credit card, so instead took out a 0% loan. I’ll be done paying it off in November. That’s $20K in debt in one day.
It was financing through the plumbing company, so I guess not a true loan in that sense 😬 Sorry for the confusion!! They just gave us 2 years to pay off the balance interest free.
Where do you live to be able to buy a house in cash after 3 years of working? Where I live the average appartment is about 400K euros and the average house is closer to 500K euros.
Maybe you can find something for 250K if you really buy something small that needs lots of work. But you still need over 80K a year excluding taxes, probably closer to 120K before taxes.
I interpret this as you either make less than $60k and live in an absolute shit hole or you make more than $120k and have no right to speak about affordable areas of the country.
$60k will get you a liveable house in certain parts of the country. Even in walkable, friendly, safe towns. The problem is that they’re not near jobs that pay more than $8/hr. I was lucky to get a fully remote job before Covid and bought a tiny 800 sqft cottage for a year’s salary. I just checked and see that homes of that size are still just as cheap in that town.
I live in a Philadelphia suburb (in one of the state’s top school districts) and just bought a modest two-bedroom house for $142K. While this represents almost six years of my current income as a school bus driver, I used to make $150K a year as a software developer so the house would have cost me less than one year’s salary. As it is, I was able to buy it outright from my savings. TBF the house is 80+ years old and was in need of some repairs, and the average house price in this district is over $500K, and Philly is not Toronto or Los Angeles - but the house-buying situation is not completely hopeless everywhere as long as you’re not expecting to live in a brand-new mcmansion.
I got laid off from my job with a big silicon valley company and was just too sick of the whole industry to even try getting another coding job. I randomly bought a used school bus to convert into a motor home, and when I got to the point where I needed to get another job to avoid paying $1000 a month for shitty health insurance, it turned out owning and driving a school bus made me eminently qualified to be a school bus driver. I really love doing it - it of course doesn’t pay what programming pays, but I get the middle of my days off to go on long bike rides, and little kids aren’t that awful to be around.
A house not a condo? Was it a major fixer upper? Do you have a inside track with a realtor or someone?
Cause bucks and Mont Co aren’t the best district, but a good one and their prices are 2 to 3 times higher right now. According to a quick and lazy web search the Radnor district is the best in the philly area. Me and the SO have NOT been watching homes in that area, but I know Radnor is a nice area and can’t imagine the housing being a 3rd of the price as bucks/mont Co.
I am taking care not call you a liar, but that price seems very unusual (too low) for any area I can think you are talking about.
Sometimes you get lucky. Where i am the housing market is batshit insane. Managed to get a classic quarter acre block in a decent area under the average - and the house isn’t a classic postwar piece of shit
I did say “one of the best school districts” and it’s in the same ballpark as Radnor, at least (but not Radnor). It is a full-on house, a semi-detached with a sizable yard in a weird neighborhood of smallish houses that were built during WWII to house workers at the Navy Yard in Philly (the neighborhood is known as “Garden City” in Wallingford). These houses were never intended to last 80+ years but they’re still better-built than today’s pieces of shit. The house was not a complete gut-and-rebuild project but it wasn’t move-in ready, either (although the seller thought it was despite collapsing ceilings, a 25 yo water heater, and not a single door that closed properly - including the front door). It was a private sale brokered by a coworker of mine who knew the seller, but the price was in line with recent sales of other houses in this little neighborhood. In fact, given what I’ve spent so far on the renovations (and not counting my sweat equity at all, having done all the work myself) I think I overpaid a bit.
I’m careful to avoid being the kind of moron who says “I bought a cheap house so I think the housing market crisis is a complete fiction”, but I do think in general that having the willingness (and the skills) to fix up a less-than-perfect house can mitigate the problem somewhat. Just not in LA or Toronto.
I gotcha. I still think you did very well. I can see that yea, no one factor shaved 150k off the price. Sagging (you called em collapsing) ceilings does want to make me assume you are already a contractor or super handyperson type.
More importantly, this thing you said,
in a weird neighborhood of smallish houses that were built during WWII to house workers at the Navy Yard in Philly (the neighborhood is known as “Garden City” in Wallingford).
Philly has a lotta neighborhoods and none of us know the names of all of em, but “Garden City” is not a Philly hood. If the people of Wallingford think otherwise, good on em.
Navy Yard is south philly. And as said I once I aint south philly. But, Jim’s finally opened back up so let us give praise to one of the few cheesesteak places I’d ever give a tourist directions too…
I agree that the Navy Yard is south Philly and Wallingford ain’t Philly, I’m not claiming otherwise (nor do Wallingfordians ever make such a claim). I do not know why they decided to house people who worked in Philly in a place that is so far from Philly - that’s part of the story I’ve never found written anywhere. I can only surmise that since Wallingford is so close to Chester, the workers were able to ride a commuter train to and fro. Or maybe they ran special buses, I dunno.
Jim’s finally opened back up so let us give praise to one of the few cheesesteak places I’d ever give a tourist directions to
So, I actually used to live on South Street, right next to the Jim’s. When I got a steak from there, I always had to order it with marinara because it was too dry otherwise. How a sandwich with that much grease in it could possibly be dry is not something I can answer. I know this exposes me as non-native, but at least I wan’t ordering it with bell pepper.
My mom charged me from 18 because of how much she was getting before. My dad passed away in military service so my mom was getting checks from the VA for me and my sister until I turned 18. At 18 she lost that, and thus rent was due
I was able to live rent free with my parents until I was 25. I just took my paycheck every week and put it towards my loans while in college. By 27 I was debt free with a bachelor’s degree.
My options were paying for my tuition or paying rent. If I was paying tuition. I got to live for free at home. 6 months after I wasn’t paying tuition rent kicked in… I moved out instead of paying to live in my mom’s basement. I’m very very grateful for that arrangement, otherwise my student loans would have been significantly higher.
When I was working, I was paying rent but it was much lower than if I had been on my own. Plus it was a flat rate so I didn’t have to add utilities or even car insurance.
Now that I’m not able to work I give them my food stamps. So I still contribute just not much unfortunately.
But yeah, I am thankful that my parents allow this arrangement.
Omg, this is destroying me rn. 21, living with my parents in quite an isolated neigborhood. I wish my parents moved somewhere where I could still live for free while actually having a social circle whilst I worked on becoming independent.
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