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SERIOUSLY - how are people affording these $1Mil+ homes with $8,000+ monthly mortgages!?
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Anonymous
| I must be doing something wrong. My household income is $300K and with two small kids, I want to live in a good public school zone. It feels impossible! My mortgage budget is $4k…which is maybe a $600K home. My research says if I want a good school with that budget, I’m buying an outdated 1500sq ft home with 7.5 foot ceilings. I need to leave Montgomery county! |
Anonymous
| Are you a first time buyer? It's because most people are coming in with a bigger down payment due to equity in previous house(s). |
Anonymous
| A lot of people bought when interest rates and prices were lower. People move up the property ladder. |
Anonymous
This. |
Anonymous
| This is why I have told my children that they need to buy as early as possible. Beyond making celebrity salaries or lots of family money, that's the only way to buy into the kinds of neighborhoods OP wants. |
Anonymous
| We saved for years and bought a little later in life (still lived in a SFH in a good school district, just paid under market rent for it for a long time). We were able to buy a house that was valud at 1.1 for just under 1M due to a desperate buyer (had to go to meet seller demands on another house) and we brought close to 40% down due to our savings. Which got us to a $4,500 mortgage on a house worth a little more than 1m. And that's even with higher rates. Had we bought a year earlier it would have been closer to $3500, but we have brought less savings to the table so it is what it is. |
Anonymous
| It’s an equity game. We make about the same as you, and bought our home for 1.4. However we had 800k in equity from 2 previous homes. Gotta start somewhere. |
Anonymous
| Those people have much higher HHI. |
Anonymous
+1 most people buy starter homes and keep rolling their equity forward. I started with a condo, then a fixer upper, which allowed me to cash out ~$250k for my current home. |
Anonymous
This plus equity is the answer. |
Anonymous
|
Do you have $400k to put down? I do. $100k grew into this $400k in 5 years in some individual stocks and crypto. I got the money from my condo sale. It didn't appreciate. I just my equity back after paying it for 11 years.
$2k month invested into VOO the last 10 years would have given you $450k. Had you or your spouse also owned property, you'd have some more money from it. Consider renting. I did the math. If I rented my home instead and invest the extra, I could by my home and the one next door cash in 30 years, and have some money left over. And rents went down in my area. I have extra $200 a month to invest and buy up shares on discount. |
Anonymous
| I don’t really know why you are confused - those people have equity and higher HHI. Ours is around 2 million and we live in a 2 million dollar house as first time home buyers. Most of our friends with the same income live in much more expensive homes because they moved up the property ladder. |
Anonymous
| How long have you been in the work force? Beyond buying into real estate earlier (which has a higher entry point), the basic market indices have double in the last 10 years. You could have been in stocks for nearly no up front costs and doubled your money, helping with the down payment. |
Anonymous
|
We have a lower HHI. We bought later in life have a mortgage right around what you're saying. Like a PP we rented way below our means for a long time to save.
We don't live lavishly otherwise. Old car, limited vacations, limited extracurriculars, but we are happy. If rates go down we will refi and get some of our equity out of the property and our cash flow will modify in a life altering way. Housing prices aren't going down. Limited inventory and zoning rules that keep the nice areas nice. Make it work. |
Anonymous
| Family help, crypto, bought smaller house first, or higher HHI |