Reply to Is 300k the bare minimum income to buy a single family now?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We bought our house in McLean in 2019 for 1.25 mil, our income at that time was 300k, we are paying 2.65% interest and it’s easily manageable. Our income has increased over the years but even at 300k our mortgage was not a problem. I cannot believe how much homeownership landscape has changed in the last 6-7 years.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind prices stabilizing or even coming down somewhat, current situation is not sustainable for young people. We had no down payment help from parents but [b]the current situation only favors people with sizable family help.[/b]

It’s not in our interest to create a society of haves and have nots.[/quote]

The bolded. There has always been a bifurcated system for first time house buyers based on this, but now it's even more pronounced.

Also, how much money people have from parents makes a big difference. A 20% down payment on an 850k home is 170k. Even for people making 300k, who presumably haven't been making 300k for the last decade, that's a huge chunk of cash to put together. So the difference between people with parents who can kick in 20k (which used to be a massive boost) and those who can contribute 60-100k, is massive.

We bought our condo with no help from parents while most of our peers bought houses with parental assistance. And then that benefit compounds, because those SFHs have appreciated way, way more than our condo over the same time. So our peers who got a 40k boost from parents to buy their first home now have several hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity more than we do, even though we bought around the same time and had similar incomes at the time.

At least we were still able to buy something. We bought at a 3% rate and were able to put down just 15%. Now the rate would be more than double and with higher prices... I just don't know if we could swing it in today's market without parent help. I think we'd have just kept renting. I would have been willing to move to a lower COL area or live far out, but I know my spouse would not have (we discussed it at the time, it was a hard no for him). So we'd likely have continue to rent and save, but our savings would not have kept pace with housing costs, so we'd probably still be renting now. Ugh.[/quote]

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