Denver's #1!!

This past weekend I was talking to a neighbor who is a realtor. I asked him how anyone can afford to buy a house in the neighborhood. His response: "buy it 15 or more years ago".

Yeah, the place I just bought cost more than my parents' place, and is quite a bit smaller. Still, for the area it was a pretty darn good buy.

It's my #1 too; my #1 shithole in Colorado.

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Originally Posted by KestrelBike

(this may invoke some "Duh" replies) I think the system's kind of set up so people basically become wage-slaves when they sign up for mortgages to cover the $400,000 home prices. Makes them quite obedient and indebted to the government (got a bridge to sell to those who don't think the mortgage companies & banks are basically 1st cousins of the fed government) and less likely to start trouble or quit their jobs that are increasingly becoming entrenched in government programs in order to exist via tax-discount programs (women-owned business, "diversified employees" business, located-in-a-warzone [the hood] business, etc).

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I see it going this way too. Not just with mortgages, but school loans, etc... There is a push to get as much present/future value out of people as possible. Another reason the Fed rate is 0% for bank/Wall St while everyone else pays a retail rate for borrowing.

The problem we're going to have is people have no wiggle room so if they do lose a job they can't weather the storm. Another sad reality is multi-generation housing (not by choice). Obamacare is going to take care of that though (gov will seize homes for Medicaid costs).

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Originally Posted by Dave

That's why there's so much new construction in apartments and condos. Though even the rent here is rising just as fast as detached home prices, which concerns me a lot. Better get a job you like in the next year or two, because of we come to resemble San Fran too much we'll get even more illegals and H1B visa types coming in to do the jobs cheaper. Just hope you don't get laid off for one of them to take your position.

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I call these "stick-built ghettos." My wife and I spent several years in them renting a condo. Long enough to know continuing to rent didn't make sense. A modest two BR in our area costs $1,500+/month. Well over our mortgage.

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Originally Posted by fj605

A lot of people don't have a choice but to figure out how to afford it. Mortgages + costs associated with homeownership are less expensive than rent in several places. That's the reason we bought a house last fall. Our rent was increasing to that breakeven point. Fortunately, we had been good little savers so that we could pull the trigger on a home purchase.

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I don't know how you get blood out of a stone. I guess we can become like California where people live on their phantom equity and cash out (re-fi) every few years. I also don't know how younger folks are saving. I had some hard times with hard lessons when I was younger and the cost of living was nowhere near where it is today.

Congrats on buying! It was a hard decision for us but we are very thankful we did it.

Glad many of you recognize these pitfalls. They are pretty easy to avoid and just not participate. The upside of this, is jobs pay a lot of money and saving money is very easy.

I don't see buying a house as a bad thing assuming you buy right but that's the problem right now. The market is sky high. But if you wait, it may only go higher (along with your rent cost). So what do you do? I would not want to be a first time home buyer right now. The inventory on homes under $300k in my area is non existent.

There is a lot of social pressure to buy something as big as what everyone else has. People who can manage to shake that off can experience financial freedom everyone else can only dream of.

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Originally Posted by Dave_L

I don't see buying a house as a bad thing assuming you buy right but that's the problem right now. The market is sky high. But if you wait, it may only go higher (along with your rent cost). So what do you do? I would not want to be a first time home buyer right now. The inventory on homes under $300k in my area is non existent.

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Same rules apply: Buy low, sell high. If you cannot buy low, don't buy.

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Originally Posted by Irving

There is a lot of social pressure to buy something as big as what everyone else has. People who can manage to shake that off can experience financial freedom everyone else can only dream of.

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And this is why we have such a systemic debt problem. In the 80s and 90s, it was really about "Keeping up with the Jones's" and there is still a lot of that now, but in addition to the material goods obsession, the student loan debt load is effectively enslaving a good portion of an entire generation. It seems like it's 80% of millenials, but it's not. There are thousands of people who graduate college without debt every year - they just aren't vocal about feeling entitled and such because, well, they AREN'T entitled and whiny. That's probably the fundamental reason why they worked hard to graduate without debt.

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Originally Posted by Irving

There is a lot of social pressure to buy something as big as what everyone else has.

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Consumption is part of American DNA at this point.

-there's a thread to post a photo of the latest thing you've bought right on this website and that thread gets posted to fairly regularly.

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Originally Posted by hatidua

Consumption is part of American DNA at this point.

-there's a thread to post a photo of the latest thing you've bought right on this website and that thread gets posted to fairly regularly.

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Truth!

I'm guilty of posting something every 6 months or so, unfortunately I typically have to sell or trade something from my small pre parenthood collection to buy something, not a whole lot of money for toys these days.