Reply to We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes.

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Reply to "We need homes. A lot of homes. Not just affordable, but also middle-income homes."

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't know if this is a fair comparison. But I could not afford my house when I bought it more than 25 years ago for $350k at a 7.5 percent interest rate. It was an absolute struggle with little kids. We had to have a yard sale once to pay for groceries. We had no furniture for several years. But my salary eventually caught up with the mortgage payments. Now it's almost paid off. I don't know if people are willing to make that kind of sacrifice now. That said, when an entry level home is $900k, it completely throws off the equation that helped me enter the market. I'm glad it worked out because my house ended up being one of the best investments I ever made. [/quote]

It would be extremely hard to qualify for a mortgage now if your income was that tight. It's less that people are unwilling to make the sacrifice as it's not really in their hands. Plus anyone who watched the subprime crisis knows that if the housing market takes a hit and the economy collapses, the bailout will go to the banks while any homeowners who can't make their payments get foreclosed on and their credit ruined. It makes people less willing to risk buying at the very top of their budget (at least it did in our case). [/quote]
No it’s not. If anything, underwriting requirements have gotten substantially looser, although there was some pull back after the GFC. Everyone who buys a home today is equally broke for a while.

Our family had a similar experience. We slept on a mattress on the floor for a year after buying our house in 2011.

What is clear to me is that there are just a lot of people today who don’t feel that they need to sacrifice. [/quote]

+1. We, an immigrant family, lived in a horrific roach-ridden rental apartment for 4 years to save up for a modest house, purchased for $150K. We ate a lot of bread and potatoes. Our furniture was made up of things other people had thrown out and we'd picked up from the curb. I used babysitting money and cash made delivering pizza flyers to pay for things like school field trips, or I just didn't go.

I'll argue 'til I'm blue in the face for the right to things like access to healthcare. But home ownership is not a right. [/quote]

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