My salary didn’t change at all, but homes went up 82%. The money I saved for a down payment and my salary no longer are good enough for this home and many others. This ain’t even a “good” home either. It was a 200k meh average ok home before. Now it’s simply unaffordable
Is it though? My understanding is it’s more complicated than “simply better”. You need to account for property tax, home repairs, lack of mobility, housing market, etc.
It’s more along the lines of “buying is generally better than renting, but there are about 100 different factors to consider.”
The main downside is you have to pay closing costs to move. That means you should plan to stay in the home at least a handful of years or else you’d lose money likely. But with the market the way it is, get a house ASAP cause its going up like a roller coaster.
I bought mine 5 years ago and its gone up 50% in value since then.
My mortgage is significantly less than my last apartment down the road. $2700 vs $2100. Same size living space (1000sqft, 2bed), an extra basement, and I get to live in a marginally more affluent area. That difference in monthly payments more than covers monthly housing maintenance costs. And property tax is already included in that $2100 mortgage, which is how it is usually handled in my state.
And you get equity instead of throwing away your income to a faceless real estate corporation for no gain. Owning a house is 100% better in every way, unless you need to quickly move for some reason.
But even then, it’s rare to see a house be on the market for more than a month, MAYBE two before getting sold. You can move out on a couple months notice, instead of having to wait for your annual lease to run out.
But when you do move, you sell your house for ✨ profit ✨ because the housing market only goes UP for some removeded reason.
I’ve helped three friends and coworkers navigate buying their first house in the past couple years. They are all better off financially for it.