I’m so excited for you! Let us know when you find something. How special that your parents will have a hand even still in your first owned home!
3 Likes
Our acreage was $35,000 in 2001. Pretty rough shape when we moved in but still a bargain. We got a mortgage with a low down payment requirement and borrowed $1350 from SIL for that. Still living there…
We live in the Midwest so a lot of you would find the housing affordable but it still seems outrageous to me what houses are now.
DD’17’s fiancé is a park ranger with housing provided. So on one hand they’ll have an easy time saving up money (and she already has a good start), on the other hand, not a big need to purchase a home when you can live in a lake house for almost nothing.
DD’19 and fiancé will want a farm or acreage someday so I’m concerned because those are definitely high these days. IDK that we would help much. We may end up owning my parents’ farm they could build on but it’s not in a location they would prefer to live.
2 Likes
We were fortunate that H had two rentals he sold so we could use all the proceeds for a 60% down payment so we could get a mortgage where we could barely pay every month.
For our kids, we plan to help them make a large down payment so they can find a place to live, once they know what state & city they want to settle in.
2 Likes
We got married much later than most here —both 36. As a result we were well established in our careers and making very good salaries. We bought our first house for $550k back in 2002. We put 20% down -all our own $$. It was in an expensive part of CT and, despite the price, wasn’t anything special. We sold 2 years later and realized a huge profit. Moved back to MA where we bought our second house- we still live there.
2 Likes
My unlikely but true story was that my spouse won a significant amount of money on a game show. We were planning to buy a small house and with the unexpected windfall were able to put down more of a down payment and bought furniture.
Housing prices in my area have skyrocketed and I don’t think you could buy an apartment for what we paid for our house years ago. Definitely tough for young people today.
5 Likes
I too was older when I married. I had already saved for a down payment on a condo and sold that when we moved to our house putting 20 percent down from the proceeds. As for my kids, they have trusts from their grandparents that will cover a down payment.
H used a very small inheritance from his grandmother to put 10% down on a small house during his last semester in college. Interest rates were north of 10%, I believe. We sold that house and bought our first house a few years later. He didn’t get any money out of his house (broke even), but we both had jobs that paid decent salaries, so we were able to save 20% for a down payment (interest rates were around 10%). We still live in the same house, and it’s been paid off for ages.
After living out of state for years, D moved back when she got engaged. She lived with us rent free for 6 months and saved a lot of money during that time. Her then-fiance lived out of state but is from our area. He also moved back & moved in with his parents rent-free and saved. I don’t know the details, but I do know that they were able to put enough down to avoid PMI.
S rents a house and has said that he’ll probably never be able to afford to buy one. He thinks that saving the down payment will never happen. He doesn’t know it, but he will be able to afford it eventually. His grandmother will be leaving him some money, and we will give him money when he’s ready to buy a house … we paid for his S’s wedding, so it seems fair to give him some money.
My wife and I both worked and made good incomes.
We weren’t looking to be quick buyers. We were looking to be good buyers.
In was 2001 and the market was good.
We could have bought in 1999 - but we would have been stretched.
Yes, we paid more - but we put a lot down and had a reasonable loan.
But it’s like saving - working and spending less than you make. Two incomes better than one of course.
Be a solid buyer, not an early buyer. You want to make it so if something goes wrong job wise, you’re not totally hosed - that you can still make it work.
1 Like
We bought our first house in that magical, terrible late 90s period where they were throwing mortgages at everyone, whether it was a good idea or not. So we found a first time homebuyers program with a 1% (!) downpayment and no PMI. We bought just before the Boston real estate market went insane, stayed 3 years before moving back south, and made tons of the money on the house, relatively speaking.
My S and DIL were in mid-30s when they married, so older than some as well. S has a lot saved they could put toward a home—they can’t decide where. If they buy a condo, HOA are crazy at some places.
Our first home was a $100K condo in 1984. DH and I both had solid incomes and were able to make the down payment though my dad approved the loan through his bank so there was never any question about approval. The eventual sale of the condo covered the down payment on our next place, and so on. We are retired and have been mortgage free for about ten years now.
Our son is in the Army and bought his first house the year after he commissioned. He secured a VA loan covered mostly by his Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH). In effect, the government gave him the money to buy the house and then made the payments for him. He made a tidy sum with the sale this past summer which he invested and is now renting as he is not sure how long he’ll be at his new post. With the profit from the house plus his VA loan eligibility, he won’t have any trouble with any future home purchases.
3 Likes
Rented until I was completely done with my schooling, then continued to live like a student and saved like crazy the first two years working in my ultimate career. Purchased a home for $165,000 with 20% down in my late 20s.
The same home is valued at roughly $560,000 today. So our kids would need to make roughly 4 times my starting salary to be in equivalent position. That’s not going to happen right away. I am not sure what the future looks like for this generation and home ownership.
4 Likes
We bought our first and so far only house in 1988. My husband was working for a small company in Massachusetts that was bought by another company and consolidated with a subsidiery in the midwest. My husband got severance pay and a job offer in the midwest. The severance pay was not enough for a house in the Boston area but easily covered a 20% down payment in the midwest. So we moved with our two year old and have been here ever since. A couple of years ago my daughter and son-in-law bought a house here with a substantial amount of down payment from us. I can’t think of anything I’d rather spend it on.
I married H when he was halfway through medical school so we lived on one salary. Once he graduated we continued to live on my salary and were able to save his. It was a decent salary for the time (though barely minimum wage based on the hours he worked). When he finished his training (5 years) we were able to buy a house in the area of the practice he joined. It was a sweet spot of timing, early 1990’s, when prices and interest rates were relatively low.
It was a “builder basic” house we built. We were very disciplined to not go for any extras and paid about $300,000. Ten years later we did a major renovation for about $150,000. Now, based on recent sales on out street it’s worth about $1.8 million. Crazy.
It was dumb luck that we love where we live and never plan on moving unless health forces us to do so. D also loves where we live - on water, walking distance to the beach. We intend for her to have the house either through inheritance, gifting over time, or some other legal structure - figuring it out is on my to-do list for 2024.
As an aside, medical school was less than $4000 per year. H worked for 2 years before starting and was able to save enough for 2 years, his parents lent us tuition for the second 2 years. We payed them off before we bought the house.
1 Like
Clearly some great savers here. Also, the advantage of some nice salaries - makes a difference!
Would you say we had it “easier” in terms of bills, financial obligations than young adults (ALL young adults, not just the CC crowd) today?? We didn’t have cell phone bills. Cable/wireless bills. Necessary devices (argue all you want, phones and a laptop or similar is pretty necessary these days). Increased everything - groceries, utilities, transportation…
Not everyone today is in a high paying profession. Yet we need people to serve the roles of those lower paying professions - often “the helpers” - teachers, social workers, retail, child care providers, etc.
While there are some would be great if there were more loan options for these vital workers to acheive home ownership.
4 Likes
Same situation, but H and I had pretty crappy starting salaries ($25,000?). Fortunately our kids had starting salaries 3x+ ours (and a couple of our kids still in school should have higher starting salaries). But they had/have loans, we didn’t, so that’s a set back. I think our oldest has paid back all $80,000 (5 year masters in accounting), and I think our 25 year old is almost done.
Yes, costs have increased so much for young people today. I graduated law school in 1995 with modest loans. Tuition was $15k/year when I started and $18k when I finished. Now the same school is $58k/year!
3 Likes
Interesting question…
I don’t know that it is “easier” now, or ever easy, to be young and starting out. It does seem like our family’s cohort of 20-30somethings have an extremely wide range of salaries , but one commonality is a pretty uniform inability to distinguish between “want” and “need”. I am loathe to think they have anything harder than we did. (Although social media…don’t get me started)
That being said, DH has opined about youngsters spending money on a latte or a concert ticket – I feel like my niece can forego lattes forever and it won’t increase her pay or savings enough to be worth wringing one last piece of joy from her month. Not everyone wanted to be a doctor, lawyer, banker, or IT professional. Somebody needs to be the teacher, reporter, clerk, etc…
I’m seeing a responsible group of young people in my D’s cohort. Two have already bought homes, and many will be ready to buy when they settle somewhere more permanently. And these are single people, not young married couples with two incomes. While most friends are engineers, there are smattering of other lower paying occupations in the group and those women are managing to be self sufficient as well. They all seem to be savers. We’ve had to coach our D to make sure she’s budgeting some of her salary for fun things. If it were up to her, everything would be squirreled away.
2 Likes
Yes to most of that. Sure, everyone should have a perk (latte) now and then. I DON’T think it’s easier now that when we were starting out - I think it’s harder financially because of more bills, more monthly charges, higher prices no matter how you look at it for most everything. The want vs. need is a conversation for sure, but the truth is, on a lower starting salary (maybe never getting in triple figures) you can only stretch your $ so far.
Sure social media can promote “buying” and more wants than needs…but I’ll argue that tv commercials, magazines, etc. - “social media” of the past - did the same thing. Now it’s just fed to us a different way.
4 Likes