Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire B&M stores closing; restaurants down.... Apartment complexes being built everywhere

When considering housing costs, one must consider;

Cost of housing you need,

VS

Cost of housing you think you need, to impress others

When one is married there is apt to be a difference of opinion as to how much house you "need".

Wimen's will keep a fella broke! 😀

The building boom around here are mostly rental complexes where they spoon feed you and change your Depends.
Having been involved in selling two houses recently, and in the process of selling a third, potential buyers don't seem to have down payment money. On both sold homes we increased the sale price and "contributed" the extra to the buyers for their down payment..... essentially folding their down payment into the mortgage. Seems like a scam to me but the realtors say it's about the only way they sell now days.

Good point, on its face, but often the areas where smaller home are available aren't places you really want to live.

I solved that by building in a new development out in a bedroom community where lots were decently large and reasonably priced, and the builder offered modest homes. I did a lot of driving for 20 years, but when I retired, I was already where I wanted to be, so no moving was required.

Paying any mortgage bi-weekly, 26 times per year, or making an extra monthly payment, 13 times per year, will reduce the length of the mortgage and the associated interest by a significant amount that shocks most people when they see the numbers and wonder why their mortgage holder didn't tell them about this "trick".

We have been seeing this for severel years. They have been building apartments as hard as they can go. Millennials and transplants really dig that kind of lifestyle. This lifestyle also lends itself to liberalism.

They don't have down payment money because they've been paying $1000 a month in a fancy apartment complex for the last eight years. 😀

Savage24,

I live just south of KC and have some experience in what you are talking about.

Yes
- there is a shortage of starter homes which drive small houses above 200k.
- Young people don't want a home, and they want some place that they can either entertain or someplace that is cool (lofty).
- Many of them can't qualify for a home loan of 230+K after they changed the bad loan rules.
So to get what they wan they have to move so far out away from the entertainment that they don't want it.

That means developers who have to build make bigger bucks building apartment complexes - so there you go.

The growing apt market may not reflect an unwillingness to buy. Millennials with chit jobs, heavy college debt, and health insurance payments can't afford mortgage payments, it takes 2 or more together to even have an apt. Doesn't pay to buy if you do not have job security. Look at all the stores closing most of those jobs are not high paying jobs.

It's amazing what some houses are valued at.

Owning a home isn't the investment it used to be, maybe not what it ever really was. Our home is paid for, my daughter and her husband are buying. My son is still renting, but working toward buying in a couple of years.

My parents built a new home in 1972, paid about $20K total for the home and lot. It sold in 2014 for $103K. Mom and dad paid off the mortgage in 10-15 years, but interest was sky high back then. Figure the interest, the property tax and insurance paid over 42 years. Plus the cost of new roof's, HVAC systems, painting, re-roofing, lawn care, new appliances, flooring, and other items I'm not sure they broke even.

We are also a much more mobile society today. Back about 8 years ago or so when the economy tanked there were thousands of people who had opportunities to take high paying jobs, but they had to relocate. They had homes they couldn't sell and were trapped into staying with a much lower paying job. Those who were renting could take advantage of those jobs because they were more mobile.

And there is a trend with the younger generation even among those who buy to buy much smaller homes. They truly are less interested in material things and a big home to show them off. Many kids today would rather invest their money somewhere other than real estate and spend money on experiences and travel rather than material things.

The trend is different, I'm not convinced it is necessarily worse.

I've heard that this practice of concealing the no down payment is not only a scam, but illegal in some places. Don't know, but it does seem like it is fooling the lender into thinking the purchaser has some skin in the game when he does not. This situation is what brought on the last crisis when house values dropped and the residents just walked out. I'd keep quiet about it at the very least.

That type of information is not hard to find In the Information Age, if people care to look. I was constantly surprised during the mortgage crisis by the number of people who blamed bankers and realtors for their poor financial decisions: "they told me I could afford this house on my income!"

Another big factor is job climate. IT industries, the average time on job is roughly 5 years. After that you may wind up thousand miles away starting over. In the ten years I've been out of college, I had jobs from 1-3 years in three different states, from south Dakota to Wyoming to tennessee, not counting travel to satellite office location on site. Assistance.

Gen-x and millennial are stuck in a market where the migration to another company is the only way to advance a career, which could mean migrating to any point in the world on weeks notice. Renting makes more sense when you don't know where next month's paycheck is coming from.

Three days of joining a company, setting down roots, and putting in your 45 years for a pension are gone.

There will always be people to live beyond thier means.

And those that are willing to risk other peoples money to make thier own.

- it's when the bankers mixed good debt with bad that people didn't know the risk of thier investments and everyone got screwed.

For much of my life Brick & Mortar has frustrated me with, "We don't have that in stock, but we can order it."

It turns out so can I.

Seems like over the past several years, often what available jobs that pay enough to even possibly consider buying a house, including some that require college degrees, are limited term contract jobs and/or through temp services with little if any benefits, and neither offering enough long term job security to confidently allow for major debt commitments.

I have made those calculations also and there is much truth to it.

Just off of a mortgage calculator:
300K mortgage 30year 4% with average Ins and average taxes 30 payout would be about $680k. And that's without the repairs, appliances, reroofing, etc.

And I don't know how realtors come up with the amounts that they say you qualify for. Most are totally unrealistic. I feel that taking the figure they say you qualify for and halving it is more realistic.

In today's job market you have to be mobile, ready to go where the job is, can't wait to see if house sells.

I'm sad for people living that lifestyle and raising children. I went from kindergarten thru high school in the same school district and lived in the same house from 1st grade thru HS. I attend class reunions because I know every one of those people and I've known many of them since grade school. I have a hometown. If someone asks me where I am from, I have an answer! I am sure there are positives to living in lots of places and meeting new people all the time, but I'm happy not knowing what they are.

I am aware that people who change jobs every 3-5 years are seen as "go getters" by management in a lot of fields these days. That is also foreign to me. I am a building engineer and in my work the longer you are in one place, the better you know it. I have been at my current job 6 years and work with a guy that has been there for over 30. He is a wealth of information and whenever he is off and there is a crisis, he is the first person management will call and ask 'how fast can you get here?"

When I was laid off in 2009 I went to work for a real [bleep] property management company. I was in charge of an 18 story and a 5 story office building. Most engineers last about 2 years there. I lasted 22 months. As a result of that high turnover rate, (and really bad upper management/ownership) the place is in complete disarray. The same old problems were being addressed by a new guy who had no knowledge of how guys before him had tried to rectify the situation. Equipment was valved off and out of service and no one knew why; some said it leaked, others said it was plugged up. Everyone agreed that it had not worked for years. Projects were abandoned half complete because the guy doing the work had left for a better job or been fired