Could you afford to buy your own home now?

[china mom]

My primary residence? If I wasn't selling and using the equity for a large down payment? Based on the neighboring house list price, I could find 20% cash for down payment and could afford the mortgage payment but would not want to.

My recently purchased investment property - a 3 be/ 3 bath TH in Kissimmee - I closed Feb 20/21 for $230k. The exact same houses have been closing for $430k as of a month ago and there are two on the market for $450k and once listed at $530k.

As an investment, after putting $80k as a down payment, my income has barely been covering my expenses. I could not afford to buy again at $450k

 

[goofytinkerbell]

Not a chance, and with rising costs I can barely afford to pay for it at the price I bought it for

 

[AnnaS]

I guess it all depends on what our/or DH's income would be today. I think we could since we started with a small/starter home with just my DH's income - we stayed. Never built up and never moved. Came close to building up years ago. We are here about 37 years. Bought at $142K and can sell for at least $600K. And it's tiny/tiny.

House has been paid for a long time after 20 years - well before our 30 year fixed rate. We sent in extra payment each month and applied to principal. We also did not take out Mortgage Insurance and were not required to have it (put down about 1/3) - but we did take out a small whole life insurance. The mortgage insurance would end when mortgage is paid. Life Insurance always good to have (especially with a young family) and can use it towards house or anything else if house is paid.

Whatever works for each family - hopefully we all make/made right decisions - but one never knows what life has in store for us.

 

[punkin]

We could afford it, but I don't feel it would be worth it at the current market value.

This exactly!

 

[BillSears]

I could. I bought this house in 92 for $92,500. Thirty years later it's probably worth about $250,000. I'm retired now and just taking a 20% down payment from my 401K and paying the mortgage from my pension I could do it. But I'd be house poor at that point and not going on many vacations.

I hear about all of these huge increases in house prices. But my house really hasn't increased all that much over the years.

 

[AustinTink]

No, we have owned it for 9 years. It has gone from $335k to $870k. It’s just crazy in the Seattle area.

Exactly the same thing going on here in Austin. Zillow says our house is worth $1million. This is a nice house, but no way in heck a million dollar house. So, no, I could never afford this house in today's market.

 

[mrodgers]

I could currently pay cash for several more of them, but I also paid $9000 cash 5 years ago and it's a 1976 mobile home

 

[Nennie]

We purchased our home in June 2021. It's now worth $900K more than we paid for it, less than a year later. It's crazy! I would sell it for a profit, but then where would I go?

We are planning on reevaluating when we get closer to the 2 year mark (for tax purposes), and might sell if we can buy a slightly bigger home in our same neighborhood. Of course we are closely watching the prices go up on the model that we want to purchase as well! Need it to stay within $200K of our current house to make it work.

Houses were selling within 1-2 days here a couple months ago. Prices continued to soar, and now there are houses that have been on the market for a couple weeks (which seems like an eternity), so perhaps we've finally reached the ceiling on prices.

 

[BK2014]

I sure hope so . . . we just closed on it two weeks ago.

 

[chickapin parterre]

no...bought it at auction 2018....now everyone wants to buy an auction house.....40,000 in 2018 4 years later 80,000

 

[RamblingMad]

So where are all the kids going to move to?

 

[EACarlson]

They're either going to rent or live with their parents forever. I've got friends that lived with their parents into their mid 30's while being married with three kids.

 

[jerrywilliams]

Not at the moment. Was still possible few years ago.
I guess our only options at the moment is to take a mortgage and i am already checking the reviews of rise credit on this site.
If everything goes well we will be able to move in in our new house by the end of this year.

 

[mrsheppo]

Not at all We bought our house in 2009 for $115,000. Last week a house 2 blocks over that is the exact same floor plan as mine went on the market for $450,000. Our house was paid off 2 years ago so we are staying here.

 

[OrangeBirdGirl]

Afford to, yes. Want to, no. We bought our home (a spec home) 16 years ago and the price has doubled. When we bought our home, our priority was to have a decent middle of the road house, but not stretch ourselves where we were working to pay for a place to live. We don't have kids so our current home was the 2nd home we bought. What worked for us 16 years ago will likely work for us the rest of our lives, as no reason to downsize when kids are gone.

I really feel for people starting out now and wondering how they are even able to afford to buy now.

 

[Memorymakerfor4]

Yes... but we'd probably do a longer mortgage term than what we did before and I definitely wouldn't be happy about it. Our property taxes are going to be painful this year. We've been in our house less than a year and it would easily sell for $100K more than what we paid. Our neighbors across the street have doubled their value in 3 years.

I recently saw a developer ad for duplexes meant for multi generational families and could totally see the appeal.

 

[RangerPooh]

Yes, but we just purchased our house this past fall for $335k. We started saving and planning to purchase five years ago when the same house would have been closer to $200k. Setbacks delayed doing so. Our house is 40 years old, so that explains the lower price. Newer homes built within the last 15 years go for $450k-750k. While we could afford to spend more we chose not to.

We left CA almost 20 years ago because we would never be able to afforded to purchase a home where we lived. I looked up my childhood home and the neighborhood homes are selling for $950k for 1200sq ft and 50+ years old.

 

[MikkyMar]

I wish I could by it without any loans or mortgages.

 

[ronandannette]

Our house has just about doubled in value since we bought it in early 2019. No, we would not have been able to buy it at what it costs now. In fact we would have been completely priced out of this part of the province.

Sweet! That was basically the rock bottom of the 8-year cycle here. Unfortunately, we bought in 2014, which was the tippity-top. By 2019 our condo had lost 1/4 of its value and the tax assessment that year practically caused me to hyperventilate. But since we had no intention of selling, we stuffed our panic down and carried on. It's back up to 90% of what we paid after this most recent upswing, which has not been as drastic as many parts of the country. So I guess the answer to the question is YES - we could buy it right now for less than we originally paid.

 

[sheilafri]

We could but we wouldn’t. We had a chance to make a lateral move, geared slightly more to empty nesters which we are. We passed. Just couldn’t see spending more for essentially the same thing. We’ve gotten used to being mortgage free.