I know I’m supposed to want it to keep going up as a wealth generator or whatever.
But like… I wouldn’t be able to afford the monthly payments if I bought my house right now and it’s scary. Also none of my friends are buying homes, none of them are even renting full places. Just like renting rooms.
So what are your feelings home owners of lemmy?
Meh I don’t care. We bought a couple years ago when rates were super lower but prices were high. Our mortgage is less than rent would be and we’re not going anywhere for a long time. I think of the house as a place to live, not an investment really. Like a car. It serves a purpose and I’ll use it until I can’t anymore.
Yup the people that are mostly disadvantaged by (and cause) a housing crash are the people that treat houses like stocks.
Same boat. Got a 10 year lock in at ~2% interest and now the rates are more then double that.
Going to do everything we can to keep that rate although we doing extra repayments just in case.
I hate that we lost sight of what wealth really is and replaced it with the idea of profit. I bought my house to provide myself with financial security, not profit.
My monthly “rent” (mortgage payment) is locked in for the next 25 years and will not go up. At the end of those 25 years when I’m ready to retire, I’ll have housing with only taxes and insurance payments. THAT is wealth. THAT is what home ownership is meant to be. If housing prices fall, it won’t change my life a bit.
That’s why I bought a house instead of renting. One day it will be paid off, and from that on, as long as I keep paying the property tax nobody can kick me out. They can cut my water and electrcity, but the house and the plot remains mine.
You point out the Catch-22 that a lot of people miss on this stuff. They get so fixated on increasing their property values because they want to screw someone over when they finally sell their house…not stopping to think that the same thing is about to happen to them when they go to buy one. Not to mention, higher property values means higher property taxes (in some places, anyway).
Yeah like it’s cool my 200k town home I bought 4 years ago is now selling for 400k (neighbor just sold for that much).
Except that means that the 350k home I was thinking might be a nice upgrade one day, is 700k.
Like I’m way more screwed over now unless I intend to like sell my home then move to the middle of nowhere. All that higher value means is property taxes like you said. But of course renters are the most screwed.
This is precisely why your home price won’t crash. You are locked in and so is everyone else. You literally can’t do better, so selling is a bad move.
Yep. Nobody’s buying, because they can’t afford to, and nobody’s selling because they can’t afford to.
I just sold my condo and went back to renting. Best choice ever. Feels great to be free.
If it makes you feel good, I’d say congrats. I’ve never owned a condo and it has different considerations than a home. I sold my first house in March 2021 after I bought our current house in 2020. Both felt like some of the smartest, best times moves. I actually do wish I would have bought a more expensive house in 2020, but we’re likely buying more land in the next 2-5 years. Not holding some kind of property right now (again, idk about condos), feels like leaving stupid money on the table.
This was actually my thought process when I got divorced. It probably would have been prudent in many ways to downsize to a condo, since it’s just me, however I could afford to buy my ex out of the house and any percent gains will be off a much higher base. I’m hoping that when I do eventually downsize, that my equity will be higher than if I had a paid off condo. In your example, doubling prices gained $200k inequity for the condo owner, vs $350k gain for the house owner (of course it’s more complicated when you factor in the mortgage)
… so yeah, it would suck for the housing market to crash, or stay down
A housing crash is only bad for you if you’re either outright selling, or moving to a less expensive house.
A bad crash can make you owe more than you can get for the house, which can make it impossible for you to move without losing money. If you lose your job or have to relocate involuntarily, property being cheaper elsewhere isn’t much consolation if you are under water on your existing loan.
I have like 15 years left on a 30 year fixed rate. I’d like to move closer to where I work, but I don’t want another 30 year loan and a 15 year would currently be a much higher interest rate, so I’m stuck with my house until it’s close to being paid off. Doesn’t really matter what homes are costing when you have to buy another after selling. Expensive houses only help people who own multiple homes and aren’t replacing what they sell.
We need a housing market crash. My pocket book be damned. We’ll figure it out. The next generation won’t.
Ain’t that the truth.
I live in Orem, a city you probably have never heard of. Population of under 100k, not a rich city by any means. Median individual income of 26k, median household income of 65k.
There are no single family homes for sale under 400k, and all apartment/condos for sale are 300k.
Just picking a random apartment for sale for a little under 300k and doing an estimate of 10% down with current rates is a mortgage of 2.2 k a month on 30 year fixed. So of course whoever buys and rents these out are going to do so at AT LEAST that number.
With JUST taxes taken out of 65k bringing it down to 45k, the mortgage/rent alone would be well over half the median house hold income for these things. But of course there would be HOA, withdrawals for 401k, withdrawals for medical care, etc. Meaning it would probably be closer to 70% of median household net just to pay mortgage on the cheapest apartment for sale.
And of course we can repeat this exercise for just about any city and get the same result. It’s scary.
Howdy neighbor. Things are pretty bad up here in SLC too. I’m just gonna keep renting until it all comes down, or the lake dries up.
Howdy neighbor! Fingers crossed it comes down, I know parts of SLC are becoming a nightmare to rent. So hopefully you have a safe and cheaper place to live.
Your pocketbook will be fine, unless you’re flipping houses. The only thing affected by the price of your primary residence is your borrowing power.
Yes, and it will cost me some money as I’m getting ready to put mine on the market in the coming months.
But I don’t give a shit, the current conditions are unsustainable and I have great empathy for the generations behind me that are excluded from what is a fucking FOUNDATION of getting a stable life going. The shit has to come tumbling down at some point, otherwise our social structure will continue to degrade. The people who will bitch and moan about it are so out of touch they should be ignored anyway. Bring on the crash.
There are too few people like you in the world. I appreciate your attitude.
Where are you located? How much do you think you’ll lose. 30-40%? Or are you willing to lose even more?
I hope whoever buys from you is appreciative and understands your position too.
Colorado. I’m not going to really lose money over what I paid because I’ve owned it for almost 20 years. But it will be way down from the market high here and I think that’s peachy. I’d guess I’ll make 20% less than if I had sold 1-2 years ago. If the market really does crash like 2008 then 30% or more. But Housing prices have got to come down still, a lot. Banning corporations from owning single family residences would help a ton.
I care more about houses being affordable for everyone than I do about turning a profit. Greed is a huge sickness in our world. Hell I don’t think houses should be an investment vehicle in the first place. It’s a place to live not a goddamn wealth generator.
Houses should have never been an investment.
Burn the entire fucking thing down.
If I burn my house down then where will I live?
In your new Wells Fargo Lifepod™! 160 sqft of essential living. Conviently stackable. Durable metal construction. Only $3900/mo!
*Doors sold separately.
I mean things can get way worse. Look at Canada and Australia. No sign of a crash in either yet, prices just keep climbing. Homeless encampments and the like were alien to us up until recently. The median Aussie household income is ~$65,000. Homes start at about $600,000 and at that price a lot of them are teardowns, you’d be spending at least $200,000 in repairs.
Banks want 20% down.
It is scary, definitely.
I rent a nice house, I’m lucky. I’ve also not had a holiday in over a decade…
I feel the same.
I have a ton of equity in my house, but my house was overpriced when I bought it. It’s depressing thinking that I am “fortunate” among my peers to own a home.
I ranted to my mom and some older family members and none of them get my frustrations. Seeing the mobile home from 1974 down the street on the market for half a million is depressing and angering. Seeing million dollar homes were once bought for $250,000 10 years ago is angering and depressing.
I just wanted a nice home in the suburbs and live a boring life. But all I could afford and didn’t get outbid on was a home built shortly after WWII ended and incredibly small. My monthly mortgage is “low” as is my interest rate. But rent is outrageous and not at all fair or reasonable.
The ratio is way off compared to 20 years ago, for income to housing costs.
I want to cash out my equity, but then I’m just going to have to start all over again, compete against “investors” who offer outrageous amounts for homes, and have to have an insane interest rate.
If the market crashes hard enough these huge corporations that have been sucking up all the single family homes will probably start unloading them at lower and lower prices to pay their creditors. It could be good for people who want to buy. Couple that with the coming crash of corporate office space and it could be quite an interesting time.
The real truck is going to be coming up with legal/constitutional bans on corporate ownership of single family houses.
And other big corporations will gobble them up unfortunately. We saw this already lol
yea they will be packaged in giant batches with no mortgages, of course.
Your HOME is not an investment. Unless you’re planning to sell and live in a cardboard box.
The interest on my mortgage is fixed for the next 10 years, so I’m more than OK with a crash. In fact, I hope it crashes hard so those who own properties as investments burn.
Someone is renting out a duplex by me for $2700 a month.
I hope it crashes and burns so they have to sell at a heavy loss for the crime of trying to rent out just a normal home for so much.
Like this was supposed to be the affordable part of town with small homes, town homes, and condos. Now investors are like… what if revenue stream?
I don’t really know what people are expecting to happen?
It’s true that the housing market does not represent real value of the asset at all. You pay double or triple ‘real’ value, and it seems that OP is suggesting a market correction is due.
Whilst that may be true in some areas that are actively collapsing with major population drain due to crime, lack of work etc (I’m certainly not familiar with the USA or its cities) - overall the supply of houses is still vastly outstripped by the demand of people that would like to own one. The population continues to grow via immigration and births to prop up the never ending shell game of annual GDP growth.
Whilst there may be regional blips, unless there are massive social housing programs that flood the market with cheap, desirable dwellings then I’m not sure why anyone would expect the housing market to crash. Until the shell game and the table they play on is flipped and burned, the housing market will not crash. It’s the most basic supply/demand equation out there.
I mean we had those same situations, and we still had the collapse of the housing market in 2008 in the US, because everyone defaulted on loans at once on overinflated houses, then houses shot back to proper value. Losing an estimated 25% value.
So it just feels like that might happen, because housing prices are soaring and interest rate is so high. So I mean, if it happened once in similar situation, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to say it might happen again.
In what way did the housing market collapse? The only thing that changed was the availability of irresponsible loans to people that can’t afford them. Tighter regulation of lending.
The effect on housing prices was a mere blip, and banks are back to their old tricks again. You’re right about the same crisis repeating: there’s more packages of bad debt that have been sold and re-sold as if they have any value, this will almost certainly come home to roost again but on a longer timeline it’s not something that will ‘fix’ the global housing crisis because supply:demand has not changed in any meaningful way.
If you are a private investment company with wads of cash, you’ll take advantage of the temporary instability and buy up massive amounts of private land and housing. Problem just gets worse in the long run because we keep propping up the system that rewards this behaviour.
One of the major things that is different is that loans are a lot different from what kicked off the '08 crash. We didn’t see a flood of interest only, 5/1ARM or other exotic lending setups. Yes, there are some out there but they aren’t as large of a slice of the market. Banks have to keep more capital than when WaMU crashed and we even saw some larger regional banks fail this year with only a rather minor impact outside of SV angel investor lending.
This isn’t going to be like '08, There would need to be a major situation to cause house pricing to fall like a depression level downturn or industrial level of house construction destabilizes the market.
Line goes up? My housing payment stays the same. Line goes down? My housing payment stays the same. I was lucky inasmuch as I borrowed back when banks were practically paying us to take out loans, so if I ever have to refi I’m gonna eat shit, but I also bought what I needed instead of what I could afford and I put more than my mortgage payment into savings every month so shit is gonna have to go real bad before I’d ever be forced to refi. This is my place to live and buying it wasn’t so that I could leverage it to get into the aristocrat class. I bought it to protect myself from those same aristocrats who would raise my rent every year until I’m paying twice as much as I am now for half as much house to actually live in.
The only real bummer about a housing market crash is that it will accelerate us into being a renter society overall. A few people might claw their way out, but if prices dropped by half tomorrow all that would mean is the predatory megalandlords can take twice as many houses off the market with the same money.
I also got a great interest rate, and tried to continue my practice of paying extra every month to end the mortgage early. However interest is so low that it’s just not worth it. Pre-paying makes very little difference, and I can put it to better use elsewhere. It’s crazy that even a simple savings account pays me higher interest right now
I talked about this in a different thread: the value of owning your own home isn’t just a number. There’s a certain psychological value to knowing that, when things seems to be going off the rails pretty regularly nowadays, they’re gonna have to go off the rails, over the cliff and into the river before you can lose your home. I overpay every month too, and I see my aggressive savings plan as essentially a self-funded mortgage insurance. It’s a 30 year loan, and every month I save the value of the mortgage, so I really only need things to be okay for 15 of those 30 years and I still walk away with my house.
I dunno. I calculated that paying an extra $200/mo on my $240k loan at 3.75% would wipe about 8 years off the 30 year loan. I think the interest savings is a good chunk but not a life changing amount of money when spread out over 30 years. In my view I’d rather have the security of a paid off house than the marginal potential gains from investing that money (in addition to my other investments) over the same time period.
I’m sure on paper it makes more sense to pay the minimum and invest the rest, but again I’d rather be more conservative and it’s likely I’d just spend that money on something else like a new car.
The one good thing about a housing crash is that our taxes would decrease dramatically.
I’m paying about $6,000 a year in real estate taxes right now and a crash could drop that by four grand or more which would be nice even if it hurts my feelings a little bit
Usually things crash when enough people capitulate and think it won’t crash. Gotta maximize the pain so that those with money can swoop in and gobble up all the assets. Most likely the crash will be combined with mass unemployment so that even people who have bought into a home risk losing it by not being able to make mortgage payments.
I mean, a crash is usually used and abused by the big players to gobble stuff up if they survived and didn’t go bankrupt (hell even if they do another whale usually swallows them) yet I don’t see another way for most people to afford a home. But then again, the area I’m in isn’t crashing even if the rest of the country does. If it resulted in lower rates would love to refinance tho, 5% isn’t great.
