The first time I applied for a loan, I didn’t have a credit card yet. And they were like:
How can we know you’re responsible with money?
Because I haven’t needed credit in the past and I’m still alive, idk? Having enough liquidity to not need credit would seem to suggest I’m good with money.
But maybe your parents are paying for everything
Ok? How does using a credit card change that?
They are NOT looking to see if you are responsible with money. They are looking to see if they can make money off of you, so they want you to be a heavy credit user. Before I bought my house I made sure to take out two credit cards and just buy random shit on them for a few months because that boosts my credit score drastically which then made it easy to get the loan. Banks HATE people with limited debt because it means you are not a loyal customer that they could make money off of. Yes, it makes no sense but that’s just how the economy works. Even if you don’t have any reason to buy things on credit, you still should. Even if you are very financially responsible, you should always have “stupid debt,” by that I mean debt for the sake of debt, because banks love that shit and it’ll help you out if you ever actually do need a loan for something.
Because people that quickly pay off their principal and avoid accruing interest don’t make the Credit Card companies as much money. They prefer people that are bad with money, sort of like how police departments don’t accept applicants that do too well on the tests.
That’s the impression I get too
But it’s plausibly deniable enough because you can still get decent credit score if you pay off your credit before you pay interest. It’s a numbers game for them, I expect, but still.
I went from an apartment that cost ~$1250/mo. To a mortgage that costs ~$4300/mo. Just got the “privilege” of owning a home (and paying for all repairs myself).
I can only afford this because of the people I’m sharing that cost with. We’re all on the deed, and we all have a stake, and claim to, the house. Four of us.
My payment didn’t really change.
The only way we could get to the point of a down payment is that one of the four of us has been saving for something like this since they were in highschool. Because of their effort, we had enough for a down payment.
And I’m lucky to be in this position.
What a fucking crock of shit.
Despite all of this, I’m hoping the market takes a dive so the rest of you can do the same at a much more affordable rate. I’ve already spent the money and I’ll be spending years paying it off. I didn’t buy a house up objectively save money, I bought a house for stability. I never want to move ever again. There are good reasons for that which I won’t get into. I promise that I will have ZERO issues if you all get a better deal than I did. I hope you do, and I hope the housing market, specifically the rental/flipping/“income property” markets crash, hard.
In the same way, I’ve paid off my school debt, I’m in favor of school debt forgiveness. I also enjoy pretty good health, I’m in favor of universal healthcare. I’ve never caused, not been the victim of a fire, I’m in favor of fire departments.
I could go on.
Good luck everyone.
Damn $4300 a month. I thought my $2600 was steep.
Right before we moved my rent had gone up to $2500 so it was a push. Now when we first started living there the rent was $1400 and the landlord had even refied so his mortgage was cheaper at the end. When we were moving out and he drove up in a brand new Rivian that I’m pretty sure I basically paid for…
To be fair, it’s a pretty large home. I’m living with my SO, my brother and his wife and there’s a couple of offspring that needed space too. Our house has ~5 ish bedrooms. Considering the number of people who live here, it can feel small. If it was just me and my SO, this would be humungous.
But that also means that we have four fully grown adults helping with the mortgage. So my share of the mortgage is around $1100 ish, per month, and we split most of the household bills, so I usually throw in about $400 more to help with that. I personally pay about $1500/mo.
My SO does the same, and we’ve encouraged my brother and his wife to also do the same. If everyone pays $1500 towards the house every month, we have more than enough to cover all the bills (electric/gas/water), as well as shared things like the Internet. Also that’s enough to cover the house insurance.
Yeah that actually sounds a little better than me. I’m the main bread winner and I’m responsible for almost all of it. It can be a little stressful at times
Yeah, I went from $1200 rent to a $1300 mortgage but the city added $50k more value to the assesment so between taxes and insurance it’s going up to $1700/mo next year so that’s fun. I don’t know how many more years of that I could afford cuz $2600 just isn’t doable for me :/
I saved up a big (to me) chunk a few years ago, thought I was there. Expected the red carpet to roll out. Nooooope. There were people buying houses for $100k more than the asking price, sight unseen, within a week or two of the house being listed. My little $40k deposit was adorable, in comparison. I had no chance. Then Covid, life, etc…
Was it in a desirable location? Our tourist town went out of control with our of state buyers during the pandemic, but property values have adjusted back some and the market competition is gone. If you still have some of that $40k now might be a better time. My wife and I just did the federal First Time Homebuyers class and wound up getting a USDA rural development loan, they wouldn’t even let us put a down payment to lower our payments.
I am a skidmark that cannot believe that I live in a house that I “own”(have a mortgage). And I am so much less pessimistic about anybody’s potential to do what I did. I am happy to answer some questions. I make $22 an hour and my wife makes $17, the loan officer told me I almost make too much for the program.
Yes, at the time, I was hoping to buy in the Salt Lake Valley and it just wasn’t feasible. Thank you for the tip, I will read up on the USDA loans.
The 100k+ over asking was the big deal because that never made it into the housing data properly so prices looked like they were lower than they were and we don’t have accurate comparison data now
I am coming to realize that my rural perspective is pretty different, and that lots of people live in way higher cost of living areas than I do. My biggest suggestion is if you don’t like expensive housing, get out of the city.
This really isn’t as easy as it sounds. Moving means you lose your support system of friends and family etc. Some people have children and need the grandparents to help watch them during the day as just one example. Job opportunities are likely not the same. While their current city job may not pay a lot the opportunities from that job could lead a lot higher but of course life choices can be a gamble. On top of all of that, moving long distance is difficult and expensive.
I have a highly intelligent friend from a small southern town and he moved out of there because he recognized there weren’t any opportunities for someone with talent but no capital. Sure he could have stayed and bought a cheaper house but he’d still struggle to make the payment on his small salary.You realize the headquarters of Walmart are in Arkansas? There are plenty of very high paying jobs in significantly more affordable places. Also if you pay 1/4 less for a house, and add daily childcare it’s still gonna be cheaper. People literally do it all the time, the whole concept of the suburbs was created so that people could afford houses.
I moved to the small town. I’m a college drop out, there’s always labor in the country, and I guess I just don’t want as much from life as other people. I’ll be happy working maintenance the rest of my life of it keeps providing.
This is an unpopular take, but that is reality. It really is affordable out here! If you want more income, learn to repair reliable japanese beaters and commute a little. It’s less busy than the city, and it may bore some, but it keeps the bills paid, the kids fed, and the 401k growing.
I tried and here are some places I have looked where the average home is $810,000 come to find out.
Pinedale, Wyoming, USA Ennis, Montana, USA
These are in the mountains about 1 hour from the nearest big city of Jackson, Wyoming and Bozeman, Montana. I guess I need to look in the deep sticks.
Are you really confused why those properties are expensive? Those are both desirable locations in regions with quickly growing populations. How about Livingston, or Butte?
I am as there isn’t anything here. Cows and mountains. I am staying here passing three and it’s just nothing. Normally you would get water front and community features to set the price but none of that is here. I guess the confusing part is what is attracting people here. It can’t just be the mountains.
The problem is some jobs are only inside the city
Very dependent on the field. A lot of jobs are concentrated in a handful of major cities, mostly very HCOL but with high salary. That’s why remote work becoming bigger partially caused the housing surge nationwide.
We know.
There are a number of people that have a home in the country with their family, and they travel to the city to work. Sometimes they are homeless during the work, or rent a small room.
No, it is not the ideal solution, but it is a solution. Fixing the housing situation is beyond most people’s power, and it will take a long time for those trying to fix it to actually fix it.
You can’t even get an apartment here without making a ton of money. Cheapest studio apartment here is $1,500 a month. I have to prove i make $4,500 a month just to barely qualify, which i don’t. Then they charge you so much for application fees, and then utilities they overcharge for, it’s all a scam.
Then there’s all the expenses you didn’t know about before you bought the house. If you don’t have at least some DIY skills, you get to pay people a lot of money to fix things for you.
…BTW, the county just did a reassessment on your property and your property taxes have now doubled. In exchange, you get nothing. Congratulations.
Also, the 500 is just the mortgage payment. It doesn’t include the insurance and property taxes and, at least in the USA, private-mortgage-insurance (pmi) if the down payment isn’t at least 20%.
The monthly obligation can easily be more than that 1000. The savings is in locking the first half in at a set amount.
Yup. Oops, you need a new roof and a water heater, that will be $34,000.
Hey, I just did these things! Water heater i was ripped off, which cost me $2600, and the roof i actually thought was a good deal at 17k. Not fun but the roof made me happy. The water heater actually destroyed my basement by leaking out…
I’m guilty of ignoring my water heaters. Had my backup start to leak and it cost $1500 to replace. So I immediately bought a new anode rod for my primary tank. Drained/flushed it and replaced the old rod which was completely gone. It was an easy task but you will need a cheap impact wrench, 1 1/16" socket and chain link anode rod to make it easy.
It’s something you need to do every couple of years. But I never do it.
And so now you’ve learned that you need to regularly flush the water heater and change out the anode rod every few years, right? I just bought my first house. Hot water wasn’t working right. Heating element was dead. Why? There was so much scale that the lower element was covered in it. Replaced the element, flushed as much out as I could reasonably remove, and then flushed again six months later while replacing the anode rod. This keeps the corrosion at bay.
As long as you didn’t get a rental water heater, you did not get fucked.
I have no idea what that is, but I dont think I wanna know. I did want tankless on demand, but the service guy convinced me it’s not worth it, and I regret my decision. Said I won’t save much because the power draw is much higher than a water heater, so even though the heater is always keeping it warm, the on demand still takes more. I think I may have needed additional wiring for the electric and believe that’s really the reason he swayed me away.
Sounds like it is not common where you are, consider yourself lucky. Where I live, all new houses are built with predatory rental water heaters. $50-100/month forever. You end up paying the purchase price many times over. Electric tankless heaters use an insane amount of electricity when they operate. Overall they are more efficient, but the wiring needed to supply it will greatly increase the price, often requiring a panel upgrade and possibly an upgrade in service to the house.
What happens if or when it breaks? Since it’s rented, is that at the very least not on you? I would imagine any or all work on it shouldn’t cost you anything since you’re paying monthly for it? Not that I want that, but do you get anything for this rental fee?
Yes, if it fails, they will either repair or replace it at least.
Rental water heaters are some weird Canadian scam.
My ~70 year old water heater failed 5 years ago. I drove to the nearest hardware store, paid $700 for a new one, and installed it myself.
Comparing efficiency between electric and gas is complete nonsense. You need to compare operating cost. In my market, with very high electric prices, it’s $60/yr for gas tank, and $1,100/yr for electric tankless.
Ooof.
I tell my soon-to-leave-the-nest kids:
Rent is the most you will pay every month. The mortgage is the least you will pay every month.
I’m loving them being here as full grown adults and enjoy my time with them and with our particular house they are seeing that lesson play out in real time. Some big expenses and I am the DIY dude. I don’t fuck with (big) electric or gas though, that shit can really backfire.
Rent vs mortgage - gotta put a caveat on that one.
Renting = landlord gets all the money but has to maintain the property.
Mortgage - bank gets all the money and you get a partial refund if you sell. You pay for the upkeep. A mortgage is not really an “investment”, you usually lose money on the deal if you live there. It’s cheap rent from the bank.
It basic math to see which one is better long term. Usually the mortgage wins because of of the partial return. However if you can’t do the upkeep yourself, renting is often a better financial decision.
There have been times when renting was the smarter financial decision. Like the housing bubble in 2003-2007. You could rent places for 1/2 what it would cost to buy them per month.
I think people should listen to this user.
The other side of that is that my mortgage, even with rising property taxes and my house appreciating wildly in value, tracks less than renting.
If I could rent a place for the price of my mortgage with the cost rising at the level my mortgage does … I’d rent all day long
Yeah, that’s the thing. The market went upside down. Maybe 1993? Before that renting made sense even from a financial perspective in many areas. But now when housing is double or treble inflation? Nope. Sink money into real property at your first opportunity.
We have fucked up the entire “developed” world so much that if you start poor you stay poor and housing is a large part of that equation.
In my lifetime interest rates on mortgages went from high teens to the 3.whatever I have.
Home values skyrocketed and now the expectation seems to be this must continue.
Honestly I’m happier to pass my house on to my kid than turn a profit on it.
Now if HE buys a house and inherits mine … I hope he turns a fat profit on it lmao
Right? My parents were ecstatic to get 11% on the home I grew up in. Now my mom’s retirement condo? three dot whatever like you said.
That decision is true today, but realistically your rent will grow much faster than your mortgage (plus escrow) payment, and your mortgage payment goes away.
As long as interest is lower than stock market return your mortgage should never go away
Sure, but when you refi to invest, it’s not really “paying for somewhere to live” any more
Well OK. Will not help anyone paycheck to paycheck. If the person can get out of that trap, then into the market they go
Then there’s all the expenses you didn’t know about before you bought the house.
The cost of owning is significantly less than renting over the life of the unit. Repairs happen, but most of the time they aren’t time critical, so you can budget out the repairs over months.
Unless the house was old when you bought it, you aren’t going out of pocket on any big purchases inside the first years of ownership.
…BTW, the county just did a reassessment on your property and your property taxes have now doubled
Idk where you live, but most states limit the rate at which an acessor can raise your housing price. In Texas, the cap is 10%. So your property taxes can rise, but the won’t double overnight.
You can also contest the increase. Harris has been fairly receptive to a simple “my neighbor’s house sold for X so my house should be worth about X, not X+20%”
The cost of owning vs renting can be very different depending on where you live and work and the amenities you want access to. Renting somewhere centrally located with good access to high quality transit and other amenities would likely be cheaper than owning. Unless we can start normalizing owning apartments again. You could own for cheaper on the outskirts of downtown, but you’ll likely be sacraficing access to some amenities by doing so.
Renting somewhere centrally located with good access to high quality transit and other amenities would likely be cheaper than owning.
I’d need to see an example. I’ve never heard of a place that was cheaper to rent than own after five years. The break point on rentals tend to be short term stays, and mostly because of the cost of real estate transactions themselves.
For public housing it can be cheaper. But that’s never going to be a centrally located high-rise.
“Landlords” are probably one of the oldest grifts in the book.
if you can’t afford to own a home would you rather have no options to use one temporarily while you get back on your feet?
That’s not the point, and I can’t tell if you’re being genuine or arguing in bad faith. Do you want me to take the time and effort to explain why what you said is capitalist BS? I’m happy to if you’re genuinely interested in learning.
I’m aware it’s capitalist, however the alternatives tend to restrict what individuals can own significantly more than what I find acceptable
Should corporations be allowed to own private housing?
if residential properties are cheaper per square foot than storage units, then absolutely
Yep, that was a litmus test to determine if you’re worth my effort. You failed.
Mao did nothing wrong.
except for causing that famine.
Eh, what’s a little famine among friends.
And while we’re ranting about this, can we throw PMI and whomever came up with it on the bonfire where they belong?
Your telling me that I need to pay for you to have insurance in case I default while your also charging me interest who’s very purpose is to offset risk? Why am I paying to offset your risk FUCKING TWICE AND HOW IS THIS FUCKING LEGAL.
Shit infuriates me. I want all the bankers to get William Wallace on live TV, recorded and played back once a year during a mandatory viewing window so that we never, ever, forget.
Its legal because value comes from ownership, not from doing things.
And if that sounds insane; you’re a fucking commie.
Also if you were to default they would take your house and get the insurance money
Interest is not intended to offset risk?
Interest provides a return on capital.
If you have $1 youre not using you might let someone else use it if they incentivise you by giving you an interest in their need.
If you give $1 to 100 different people you might increase the rate for some of them to offset your additional risk, but thats not the purpose of Interest.
Part of interest calculation is risk. That’s why higher credit score leads to lower interest, it’s less of a risk to the lender.
PMI is double dipping. They can pick one, either a flat across the board interest rate for all borrowers or PMI.
Didn’t mean to imply it was entirely about risk.
The financial illiteracy of lemmy users always amazes me.
PMI is not double dipping.
It keeps the risk reasonable so that interest rates can remain reasonable.
With no PMI there’s extra risk that would need to be priced in to interest.
No one likes PMI, but it’s not evil.
Ok, your loan has been determined to be higher risk therefore you have to pay more. Why did we need to invent a second payment called PMI instead of just charging a higher rate to higher risk borrowers? Why do interest rates need to remain “reasonable” ?
That’s a good question actually.
In Australia, some 60 years ago, banks wouldn’t lend over 80% of the purchase price for a property.
The federal government created a government department to provide lenders mortgage insurance. It wasn’t a free government service, but a good example of the federal government stepping in to do something private enterprise wasn’t able to.
Since then of course that department has been privatised, like everything else, so private institutions provide that service now.
There do remain some differences between LMI and just simply extra interest. Notably LMI is a once off payment, and it can be included in the loan.
More recently, the Australian Federal Government has rolled out a scheme to pretty much abolish LMI. They’re just going to guarantee the loans for free.
My issue wasn’t getting pre-approved, it was being able to actually afford the mortgage amount I was pre-approved for. A lot of these companies don’t give a damn if you can actually afford the mortgages they offer, because they know you’ll either figure it out or go homeless trying.
We probably live in different countries, but where I live it’s more like you can’t get pre-approved for anything unless you either have a large amount of money saved up, or your salary is high enough that it’s far beyond what you would reasonably need to get paid to afford the mortgage.
You live in Germany don’t you
Is it a thing to find German mortgaging standards whacky?! I finally feel heard! Basically everyone here seems to pick up 35+ year mortgages with seemingly low monthly expenses, but the overall amount of interest they accumulate over that time is absolutely insane! And still, everyone says that you shouldn’t pay more than 30% of your monthly income into your mortgage. It’s hard to even find a bank that allows you to pay for a decent Sondertilgung each year. And don’t even get me started on that whole Bausparvertrag system, because I have no idea what is going on with it or why anyone would ever do that
Yeah that was my experience as well. Mortgage companies were happy to pre approve me up to like 75% of my monthly income. Not even close to enough to buy even cheap food.
I can’t believe someone watermarked their worthless reply to a post that said the same thing more subtly and smartly.
Covid was the wake up call I needed to realize that while I understand the nuance many others need the point made for them to understand the point of the scenario. We understand Eleanor. Some understand Callum.
I’d wager a lot more than some need a Callum to explain what they should think about anything, given the state of things.
Going to be wild when people just give up on society and just start eating the ruling and ownership class. I tried warning these assholes if they didn’t give something. Then they would doom their existence. And now you have more people radicalizing everyday because they are being put on the streets.
The corrosive corollary to ever-rising real estate valuations is that there is no incentive to keep buildings like condos nice or neighborhoods clean, someone will buy at the inflated price anyway since they all are inflated.
So basically I feel in Canada we live in a system that pulls valuation out of thin air, produces nothing, incentivizes no one, yet allows everything.
They don’t actually need regular payments for 10-30 years. They need you deposit that down payment cash ASAP so they can lease it to billionaires and crypto exchanges.
Idiocy.
The bank doesn’t get the down payment. The person selling the house does.
You pay that person the down payment, and the bank pays them the rest.
Honestly there’s loads of great reasons to hate banks but lots keep it real and avoid making up nonsense.
Banks typically ask for you to have cash in hand (deposited), or equivalent leverage, to qualify for loans in the first place.
The bank I used actively tried to get me to go with less down payment, and subsequently take out a larger loan.
But yes it is the height of idiocy to say, ‘down payment deposit’ when ‘qualifying assets’ is a more accurate term for the transactions function.
They need you deposit that down payment cash ASAP so they can lease it to billionaires and crypto exchanges.
No, this is patently false and borne of a misunderstanding. Idiocy.
When providing a mortgage, how does a bank get money to lease to billionaires and crypto exchanges?
Banks do leverage mortgage debt. Essentially the same process, in turn.
But how do they lease your deposit to billionaires and crypto exchanges?
Actually i guess the bigger issue is that we’re gonna be unemployed in 15 years due to a declining demand of human labor and then who pays back what?
Today you could afford the pay-back rate, but not in the future, and the banks are well aware of that.
Right? You don’t need to exist long term. Fuck off and die, meat.
Edit: by which i of course mean ‘i dont need you to exist’. Which is the same thing, right?
There is no declining demand of human labour, and there is no indication that it will ever happen. The way the labour is performed is changing, just like it always does
Joke’s on them, I have a 15-year mortgage on my condo. (Lower interest rate than a 30-year mortgage, USA, ymmv)
Where y’all finding houses for 500/month with a 25k downpayment?
Seems cheap af. If you only did a 25k downpayment the mortgage would certainly be more expensive than rent where I’m at.
There will be shitholes in bum fuck nowhere but in this area rent will not be 1k lol
I bought a 2 bedroom single family home in South Carolina last year for $86k with only $11k down, 7 minute drive from the city center of the capital city (Columbia). Mortgage is $480/mo. Cheap houses absolutely still exist if you’re willing to live in areas where “nobody wants to live”
Would have been standard fare in Sweden until recently, but that’s obviously an outlier
