Ugh, housing...

[Lindsey]

Janet, you make me wish I was a lot older than I am now lol. My 20 year old cousin got engaged over Christmas and is getting married this summer. She has no idea about finances or bills or anything because she still lives with her parents and they pay everything for her, including her tuition. She's trying to convince her boyfriend to buy them a $300,000 house for them to move into this summer. She doesn't realize it's not just that easy, especially on one income. She still has 3 years left of college.
My dad always says "Don't worry about it, I didn't buy my first house until I was 35!" But they bought the house for $69,000. It was a big investment then but compared to now that's nothing. You can't buy anything for that much now.
Our rent has went up $200/month in the past year. The landlord likes us, so he said he doesn't want to drive us out by charging too much but he has to raise it. He has signed a contract not to raise it again for another 12 months, but I can't imagine how much it'll be raised then. It will for sure be somewhere between 1500-2000 a month. I'm so sick of paying rent and throwing my money away, but I really have no other choice.

[DianaB]

That's too bad, Lindsay. I live in a small town and our prices aren't too bad compared to other places, but we're an hour and a half from the nearest large city and don't have any colleges. We have one home that's for sale for $500,000 but I don't know who they think is going to buy it! Mostly nice homes are $100,000 and up, with not too many up towards $135,000. We have a lot of lower end homes and fixer-uppers for sale. Of course there are some new homes that if they were to sell would sell for a lot more than that. We were told when we built ours 9 years ago that if we were to sell that there would be no market for a home as expensive as ours but there have been several others that were more expensive than ours built so there is a market for them. We don't have a lot of commerce to keep our young people here so we're turning into a town of retirees. Our schools have half as many students as it did when I was in school 33 years ago.

[Lindsey]

Your town sounds a bit like my hometown, Diana. Well, until the oil started sprouting up everywhere. There is a lot of work in the oil field and a lot of people have been moving to town because of it. We have two cities just under an hour away, and both of them are huge with oil too but I think a lot of young families like the small-town feel and want to raise their kids there, and actually a lot of high school students who don't want to go to college just stick around home and fall into the oil industry, so there's still quite a crowd of young people there.
A new little subdivision was built in our town about 10 years ago and it seems everytime I go home there are more houses there. Some of the houses are GORGEOUS, and none have had any problem selling.

[Lindsey]

Well, good news He had a meeting with a mortgage broker today, and he was offered 25,000 more than the bank would give him. This gives him just enough to be able to buy a house I found online today. We've been driving around and looking at houses and online searches for a long time and this one seems pretty promising. 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, an extra kitchen downstairs so you could convert it into a basement suite if you wanted, double garage... it's a bit of a fixer upper, but with some paint and new flooring (which he can get for free from his uncle's flooring company, and he can install himself because he used to do that!) it could end up being really nice He's doing a walk-through tomorrow with a realtor. I'm so excited for him! Oh, and maybe a little for me because I won't have to feel weird always going to his mom's house lol.

Originally Posted by Lindsey

Well, good news He had a meeting with a mortgage broker today, and he was offered 25,000 more than the bank would give him. This gives him just enough to be able to buy a house I found online today. We've been driving around and looking at houses and online searches for a long time and this one seems pretty promising. 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, an extra kitchen downstairs so you could convert it into a basement suite if you wanted, double garage... it's a bit of a fixer upper, but with some paint and new flooring (which he can get for free from his uncle's flooring company, and he can install himself because he used to do that!) it could end up being really nice He's doing a walk-through tomorrow with a realtor. I'm so excited for him! Oh, and maybe a little for me because I won't have to feel weird always going to his mom's house lol.

lindsey, marry him in his fixer upper and you wont need to buy your own house in 15 years!!!!!

[Lindsey]

Originally Posted by CoyoteQueen

lindsey, marry him in his fixer upper and you wont need to buy your own house in 15 years!!!!!

Lol nah I don't think I'll ever get married I just want to spend my whole life travelling around the world with my dog! So I suppose me buying a house would be pointless anyway

[Tink]

Lindsey, the economy is insane in the real estate market.
People are getting in so deep that when the interest rates on those adjustable rate loans goes up they simply can't keep up and they're foreclosed on. A bank will tell you that you can afford 25% of your gross income for mortgage payments, but when you do, the house ends up owning you... it's a sad spot to be in when anything else comes up that you hadn't budgeted for. (And it will!)

I would not even want to buy right now. My first house... a 3 bedroom one bath on a city lot was $11,300. Of course back then we were making a lot less too! Our payment on a 20 yr loan was $103 a month and that was plenty to pay! LOL

Katie and Josh and Joel and Shannon all rent upstairs apartments in our small town and both couples pay $325 a month. That's pretty average for here. It really does vary greatly what part of the country you're located in. Most of the jobs here are in factories and the starting pay is $10- 13. an hr. which is what they all make.

[Lindsey]

Wow Tink, that rent seems pretty low! When I first moved here after high school, 4 of us shared a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom house for $700 a month, which I thought was really expensive! Now I'm in a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom duplex which is about a third the size of that house and we pay $1200 a month. It's hard to even find a one bedroom apartment for less than $1000.
If Kyle ends up with the house he's looking at today, mortgage payments for him would be around $1000 or maybe just a little less. He has two people (his cousin and a friend) who have agreed to move in with him and they'd each pay 1/3 of the mortgage for rent. Then if he saved up enough money to convert the basement into a suite, he could easily gain revenue from that, because the house is right near the tech college.