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State of housing costs in the US. Where does it end?

JR4X said:
I agree with all of that and want to add short Air BNB/VRBO investors making short term rentals out of residential properties. Some places it’s a huge problem, Tahoe, all of Florida etc.
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I bought the lot next door to my main residence just for a place to park all my shit. Then it recently dawned on me I'm only collecting more shit...:homer:

So now I'm stuffing all my shit back over at my shop and developing the lot for a mobile home that will be AirB&B focused on nursing for local hospitals. I got 2 separate hints, that was where the guaranteed easy money was at. And made total sense to go that direction. Fuk a permanent neighbor right up next to me burning trash and doing stupid shit. And... Nurses. What can go wrong with my view.:smokin:

Neighbor down the road put up a mobile home on a lot next to his house and has introduced a new meth head every single year to my neighborhood before having to evict and gut the place.

In my mind I can't see a single downfall for doing AirB&B vs. renting. Even if I only rent it for half a year and make half as much I'm most likely still coming out way ahead.
 
We bought our house 7 years ago and it has almost doubled in "value". We locked in at 2.78% interest and I will never be refinancing as we will never see rates that low again. It was nearly completely remodeled, original hardwood floors, tile/granite in the kitchen and baths, 5 bedroom, double car detached garage, etc. Owe under $200k on it now.

I worked hard to get both my daughters to buy as well once they were ready to move out. Both married and I put in the work to help find them places. We looked at probably 100+ properties over a few month period before we found an "ugly" house that had good bones. One bought a 3 bedroom 1 bath, that was ugly inside but workable. new roof, complete encapsulation under the house with new supports placed for $135k at 3%. Their mortgage is right around $850 a month. Is it the best house? Nope, but it's a great starter house that they are putting some sweat into as they have time and making it better.

Other daughter was similar. Found her and her husband a nice larger house, but older. Around $175k at ~4% w/ mortgage around $1300 I think. Again, it needs some work, but good bones and it works for their needs.

I knew they needed to get a place while the rates were low and get into something before the prices sky rocketed. A big problem is those home improvement shows. Young people see those and think they deserve that in their first house without having to do the work themselves. Sure they can get it, but they will be paying for it. Their first house needs to be in the best school district, with granite, and tile, nice lawn, etc. but needs to be the price of the shithole down the street.
 
It’s been said many times.

Large corporations buying up houses. Idk what the answer is. I hate gov intervention on Americans even though these corporations are evil.

What the gov should do is stop foreign groups from buying up US homes. It’s not the biggest factor but big enough to hopefully make a difference.


Now, it’s not “cool” but this helped me buy a home. When I turned 18, my dad said you can live in my home rent free IF you save atleast 50% of your paycheck. I also went to community college, and then a cheap local state school. It is substantially cheaper.

So, did I get the experience of getting hammered drunk and bringing chicks back to my dorm? No, but in all reality, I spent 30-40 hours a week working, going to school full time, and barely spent time at my parents house anyways while saving up money with minimal overhead. By the time I was 23 I graduated. Found a post college job. It involved traveling like 75% of the time. I stayed at their house. I saved most of my paycheck. Then I had a solid down payment and bought a house. I never had to rent.

So, I have cool parents that aren’t miserable to live with as a young adult and I stayed busy and saved. They didn’t care to have me out the door asap, I’m the oldest of 4 and my youngest sister is 9 years younger then me so they weren’t on the verge of being empty nesters so I wasn’t rushed out.

To this day, I thank my dad for “forcing” me to save 50+ % of my paycheck.

What I also see in housing is generational housing. There are so many shitholes in LA and they are valued at over 1M for shoeboxes but hoodrat people live in them. Grandma bought it for 20k 100 years ago, then the parents took it, now they live there with their 30 year old hoodlums and they will own it once their parents die.
 
If these inflated housing prices start sitting on the market maybe "they" will realize it and start dropping pricing back down. Friend of mines grandfather recently passed and they were going to put his house on the market for $415k. The realtor came back and said we can get at least $530k for it so that's what they did.
 
06h3 said:
Large corporations buying up houses. Idk what the answer is. I hate gov intervention on Americans even though these corporations are evil.
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This is a catch 22 for me too. Government regulation makes me nervous and I know they'd end up fucking it up because ultimately they always work in the interest of their donors and feeding an endless bureaucracy. But these corporations buying up housing as fast as they can are absolutely trying to turn us into a renter society. There will be a significant downturn (possibly a crash) in housing at some point. It feels inevitable. Hell, the corporate outfits snatching stuff up is probably floating the market at the moment. But when the downturn comes they're REALLY gonna be snatching shit up.
 
2big bronco said:
Around here the average lenders don't know or look at the condition of the home besides maybe the appraisal report. Turnkey has nothing to do with it.
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They have criteria. You generally can't get a typical loan on something that isn't theoretically habitable on paper.

Maybe things are different in the parts of the country where the climate is set to idiot proof mode and the bank isn't one winter with a leaky roof away from being very in the red on your mortgage but in the northeast you basically can't get anything other than an FHA on a shit-pile that needs work before it can be lived in
 
arse_sidewards said:
You cannot get a "normal not ass-rape" loan product on a home that the lenders don't consider to be turnkey. Shit that isn't turnkey isn't actually cheaper because between the fixes, the debt-rape and the refi costs you wind up paying the same money over a several year period and doing more work.

Edit: and by turnkey I mean whatever the lender considers turnkey, functional hvac, not broken windows, basic habitability, etc. not whatever some out of touch shitbird in a retirement community who won't consider anything that doesn't have granite counters and stainless appliances considers turnkey.
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Not true. We bought an unoccupied foreclosure from a bank and got a good rate.
 
bad zuki said:
. Lack of Middle class jobs. If you get a USEFUL degree and use it, if You start your own business in the trades, or If you can carve out a Nitch market, you will be at least middle class.
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Or just don't be the fuckwad who sleeps through all your math and science in highschool, parlay that into a bachelors in <pick anything "difficult"> and enjoy your six figure office job
 
arse_sidewards said:
They have criteria. You generally can't get a typical loan on something that isn't theoretically habitable on paper.

Maybe things are different in the parts of the country where the climate is set to idiot proof mode and the bank isn't one winter with a leaky roof away from being very in the red on your mortgage but in the northeast you basically can't get anything other than an FHA on a shit-pile that needs work before it can be lived in
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Yeah not sure what you're on about. Most houses are "habitable", even foreclosures. As long as the appraisal is good, the lenders I've dealt with don't really give a shit.
 
arse_sidewards said:
They have criteria. You generally can't get a typical loan on something that isn't theoretically habitable on paper.

Maybe things are different in the parts of the country where the climate is set to idiot proof mode and the bank isn't one winter with a leaky roof away from being very in the red on your mortgage but in the northeast you basically can't get anything other than an FHA on a shit-pile that needs work before it can be lived in
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Yeah, banks are generally pretty careful on writing mortgages on shit holes. They're a lot more lenient on letting stuff pass on the financial side of the buyer as long as they're reasonably confident they're getting a sound real estate investment in their portfolio. No, they really don't want to repossess. They'd much rather you just pay the loan on the terms. But I'm just saying they're a lot more willing to take risks on the finances of the buyer side than they are on the quality of the real estate side.
 
1oddtech said:
If these inflated housing prices start sitting on the market maybe "they" will realize it and start dropping pricing back down.
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That's not going to happen any time soon. There's major housing shortages in every mid size and up market in the country and construction is only slowing down due to interest rates, banks demanding larger down payments from investors, and general lack of faith in the economy.

Single family home construction is already dead around here despite enormous demand. Last year in Richmond and Raleigh I was bidding multifamily stuff non-stop. Both markets are well under where they need to be for available housing. Raleigh is something like 100k apartments short of where they need to be over the next decade. Only a handful of the stuff I was bidding is going forward because banks went from requiring 10-20% down from investors to 60% down inside a year and most of these investors don't want to have to get in bed with outside money to secure enough capital to get a loan so they're just not building despite demand. We went from 14 major projects this year to less than half that next year. Not because we're not landing work, but because the GCs just don't have the work because construction is slowing that much. And that's in 2 of the most explosive growth markets in the country.

No one wants to admit it, but part of that is also due to being such a turbulent election year. If Trump gets back in and can turn the economy around and people have faith in it again things might turn back around. But none of these "smaller" investors want to start a $100m project at 60% down if we're looking at another 4 years of bullshit under Harris. Then again, if Trump gets in an does actually manage to deport a sizeable chunk of all these illegals, demand for housing may not be nearly as big as it is now.
 
DMG said:
Not true. We bought an unoccupied foreclosure from a bank and got a good rate.
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Did you buy it using the bare minimum down on a first time home buyer mortgage product? Somehow I doubt that.

Foreclosure and "does not meet the criteria for the kind of mortgage we're trying to originate" are not the same thing.

There is a world of difference between some CA shitbird buying some property that some other CA shitbird was gonna VRBO until they stopped m asking payments and some first time buyer trying to scrape up the only thing in the county that's under 200k because it's been fermenting since the cat lady hoarder keeled over a year ago and the reverse mortgage company that now owns it doesn't wanna invest a cent in it.

Romogo said:
Yeah not sure what you're on about. Most houses are "habitable", even foreclosures. As long as the appraisal is good, the lenders I've dealt with don't really give a shit.
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Habitable to you and me and "checks the boxes" are different things.

Like I had to cajole the seller into putting a $20 2x4 railing on a 2.5ft porch in order to not cause last minute problems when I bought my house.

My impression was that most of these dumbass rules came about after '08
 
Here4memes said:
I bought the lot next door to my main residence just for a place to park all my shit. Then it recently dawned on me I'm only collecting more shit...:homer:

So now I'm stuffing all my shit back over at my shop and developing the lot for a mobile home that will be AirB&B focused on nursing for local hospitals. I got 2 separate hints, that was where the guaranteed easy money was at. And made total sense to go that direction. Fuk a permanent neighbor right up next to me burning trash and doing stupid shit. And... Nurses. What can go wrong with my view.:smokin:

Neighbor down the road put up a mobile home on a lot next to his house and has introduced a new meth head every single year to my neighborhood before having to evict and gut the place.

In my mind I can't see a single downfall for doing AirB&B vs. renting. Even if I only rent it for half a year and make half as much I'm most likely still coming out way ahead.
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I didn’t say it’s a bad idea. In the investment aspect it makes sense. It’s obviously working out for a lot of people. Who it’s not working out for is idiots like me who just want a place to live and die and almost 1/3 of all US housing is tied up in investment properties.

So I hope your investment trailer only has male nurses come to rent :flipoff2:
 
Romogo said:
Yeah not sure what you're on about. Most houses are "habitable", even foreclosures. As long as the appraisal is good, the lenders I've dealt with don't really give a shit.
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This, as long as the utilities are still on, it's not actually condemned, the insurance company will write it, and the appraisal comes back above the loan value, the bank is perfectly happy.

That said, I've seen some insurance wrangling to where the mortgage is quite affordable until the insurance line item comes in--friends were forced to sell their "forever" home because it was in a zip code that had a fire and a flood in nearby years, their actual place was a gently sloped grass meadow for acres with almost no fire or flood risk. But local events and "too far to the nearest fire hydrant" jacked their insurance premium over 3x their p&I and they couldn't swing the new payment.
 
FleshEater said:
<snip>

Also, move out of California…obviously.
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Muckin_Slusher said:
Move out of the cities and let them implode. Housing is still affordable compared to incomes where I live.
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Outside of the cities is relatively affordable in California. Sure there is more mileage to drive but commute time average is roughly the same:eek:

Also not having one's heart set on McMansions 'magically' makes a house affordable.:shaking: A two/one house still works well.
 
Motorcharge said:
Single family home construction is already dead around here despite enormous demand. Last year in Richmond and Raleigh I was bidding multifamily stuff non-stop. Both markets are well under where they need to be for available housing
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Some of that came down to zoning changes with Femar. I'm waiting to see how much they can bribe them for an exemption.

arse_sidewards said:
Or just don't be the fuckwad who sleeps through all your math and science in highschool, parlay that into a bachelors in <pick anything "difficult"> and enjoy your six figure office job
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Hey now! I played video games in those classes. English killed me.
:flipoff2:

Another question to add:
Since wages haven't increased, when will the boomers realize that there aren't as many kids out there to afford the lifestyle houses that they owned and they will take a bath with current interest rates?
Nobody I know is buying these $600k+ houses on the golf course. They have been sitting for 3ish months with a few price cuts.
 
bad zuki said:
Another question to add:
Since wages haven't increased, when will the boomers realize that there aren't as many kids out there to afford the lifestyle houses that they owned and they will take a bath with current interest rates?
Nobody I know is buying these $600k+ houses on the golf course. They have been sitting for 3ish months with a few price cuts.
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It'll take a few years yet. I still see $400-600k houses moving here, there's still some money out there.
 
TrailTamer said:
Basically. I remember rentals used to be known as a ‘cheap’ thing when I grew up.

I honestly think the wide open borders letting all of immigrants to walk right in weren’t an ‘accident’. It’s to enrich the rich. Housing demand all time high with the ongoing housing shortage guaranteeing their (and lucrative) investments on real estates.
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What compounds the issue is the gov paying to put all the "asylum seekers" up in the fleabag hotels & motels that used to be the weekly rentals for the poor's. There's a college that just closed up in Boston that is still keeping its dormitories because they leased them all to the state for immigrant housing. In its quest to house the illegals the state has set the floor of the market, and since its run by out of touch wealthy liberals they set the price too high.
 
Another thing I forgot to add….a friend in the new build construction side of things said the big home builders are controlling how much they build to keep demand high.

Not sure how true it is but he works in that business and probably sees it daily
 
Motorcharge said:
That's not going to happen any time soon. There's major housing shortages in every mid size and up market in the country and construction is only slowing down due to interest rates, banks demanding larger down payments from investors, and general lack of faith in the economy.

Single family home construction is already dead around here despite enormous demand. Last year in Richmond and Raleigh I was bidding multifamily stuff non-stop. Both markets are well under where they need to be for available housing. Raleigh is something like 100k apartments short of where they need to be over the next decade. Only a handful of the stuff I was bidding is going forward because banks went from requiring 10-20% down from investors to 60% down inside a year and most of these investors don't want to have to get in bed with outside money to secure enough capital to get a loan so they're just not building despite demand. We went from 14 major projects this year to less than half that next year. Not because we're not landing work, but because the GCs just don't have the work because construction is slowing that much. And that's in 2 of the most explosive growth markets in the country.

No one wants to admit it, but part of that is also due to being such a turbulent election year. If Trump gets back in and can turn the economy around and people have faith in it again things might turn back around. But none of these "smaller" investors want to start a $100m project at 60% down if we're looking at another 4 years of bullshit under Harris. Then again, if Trump gets in an does actually manage to deport a sizeable chunk of all these illegals, demand for housing may not be nearly as big as it is now.
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Quoted for truth.
 
Around here easily 90% of what they're building is apartments, duplexes and condos and they're doing it like crazy. The town I work in hasn't had enough water to sustain the residents in a decade or more. They keep drilling deeper and adding water tanks on every hill as a surge tank during the day but the end will happen one day when that won't be enough.

Prices are insane too. Half a duplex on a postage stamp starts in the low 200's. I wish I could have bought the house we rented from 2006-2012. They offered it to us for $117 but my credit was fawked and stayed fawked the whole time I was married so I missed all the opportunities when prices were reasonable. :homer:
 
the conservative atheist said:
Bought my first house in 2017. I kinda regret not going straight to the top of the price range the bank approved me for, especially when rates were so low. But, I wanted to live cheaply, and didn't really anticipate prices doubling in 7 years. Basically what I'm saying is I should have bought the forever house back when it was half the price and I could actually afford it.
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So much this. Bought when rates were at all time low without thinking much about the function of inflation going full speed. Should have blew out the budget instead of being frugal. Now I feel stuck like everyone else looking for that next place. But things probably aren't going to slow down either.
 
Motorcharge said:
We are when it comes to weaponry, but it's irrelevant because after WWII we started stockpiling all the shit needed for war. There won't be a some miracle manufacturing boom if another world war broke out because all that equipment already exists. We're already making all that war manufacturing money because we're the ones already supplying the equipment for all these wars other countries are engaged in.
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I thought we used most of it up "saving" Ukraine?
 
Slander said:
Sounds like OPs son needs to pull himself up by his bootstraps, and give a few form handshakes to hiring managers and get a higher paying job.
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Sometimes it isn't that simple. Everyone has a max earning ability.

And some (like my son) have a spending problem just like the .gov. Still haven't figured out what happened, but that is not the way we raised him.
 
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