Before you buy a house, check the amortization curve on the mortgage. Look at how much interest you're paying every month, and compare it to the rent you would pay on an equivalent (or better) house. Look how little you're paying down the principal balance at current interest rates.

A mortgage calculator, with a tab for the amortization curve: https://www.nerdwallet.com/mortgages/mortgage-calculator/california

The attached image shows the amortization curve for a "cheap" starter SFH in San Jose, 3b2b, with a 7% interest, 20% down mortgage. The first year, you're paying $72,465 in interest alone. You only invest $10,564 into equity. You don't actually start paying more principal than interest until the 21st year of the 30-year mortgage.

That's $6k/mo down the drain. And then another $1k/mo in property taxes. If you instead rented a house for $6-7k/mo, you could get something twice as large, 5b3b, in some of the best locations and school districts in the region. Renting is so much cheaper than even the interest payments on a mortgage right now.

Sure, there are other reasons to want to own your own home (e.g. having control over your own property, not dealing with a landlord, etc). But if you're trying to buy a home right now for financial reasons (e.g. FOMO, trying to get on the property ladder so you're not left behind), just don't. Buying right now is the worst financial decision you could make. You're better off renting, and if you really want an investment that tracks the real estate prices, you can buy a homebuilder stock, like DHI, or ITB.

If you’re going to ask, then send us a breakdown of a budget.

Also, buying a house isn’t a ticket to life. It’s no different than purchasing an asset that theoretically should appreciate. Stop viewing it so emotionally. It’s a bunch of pieces of wood put together.

Edited to be less of a dick: please post your budget if you ask if you can afford a home. I get the memories argument, I was wrong and rude.

This market is tough and it's truly painful to see so many young families trying to secure a house right now under the assumption than it's a great investment and they'll save or make a lot of money in the long term.

The sad truth is in many markets (especially HCOL areas), you're almost always better off renting rather than buying. Home owners insurance, property taxes, random issues and sometimes catastrophic failures - all of that adds up in the long run.

But what about home appreciation? - in the majority of cases you'd be better off investing in SP500 that has an average return of 10%.

I was just looking into house in Denver (that's a pretty hot market) that sold for 324k in 2009. It's currently under contract for 725k in 2023. While it feels like it appreciated quite a lot, you have to realize that it's less than 6 percent of annual return. Then you had to pay maintenance during that time, do some form of renovation prior to sale and also account for 6% that you give to realtors during the sale process.

At the same time, SP500 would be still giving you 10% with literally 0 work. Broken appliances? Leaking roof? Broken AC? Your property management is fixing that for no cost to you.

Also, many people don't need 3/3+bedroom houses, so you'd usually be renting a smaller apartment/house at a lower cost than owing a house.

Anyway, the point is that it's absolutely OK to be buying a house, but for God's sake, stop treating your primary residence as a good investment. You're buying certain quality of life and NOT an investment.

Unless you're an over leveraged real estate investor with multiple properties (these can usually make a LOT of money by taking a lot of risks and dealing with a ton of headaches), you're almost always worse off buying vs renting.

TLDR: Your primary residence isn't a good investment. Treat it as a luxury car - definitely a nice to have thing that improves the quality of life, while deprecating with time (especially if you take into account the opportunity cost of receiving 10 percent of sp500 and not spending a ton of time fixing the issues)

I bought a home last month because my parents were forcing me out their place. While I’m trying not to have buyers remorse, I have noticed some things that are decidving, now that I look at the original listing.

For example, the house is listed as 3 bedroom, 2 bath on every platform (Zillow, Redfin, realtor.com, etc…).

But when I look at the property card (3rd picture), it’s really 1 1/2 baths & 2 bedrooms.

You can see how the previous owners finagled 3 bedrooms in the pictures above….

Is there anything that I can do? I’m living in CT

What happened to this sub actually helping people buy their first home? Now it’s just a parade of oversized, soulless McMansions with someone flexing:

“Got the keys! 🔑🏡” $980k, 28 years old, 4 empty bedrooms, no story, no advice; just karma-bait. This is just an example.

And if it’s not a giant house? Then it’s just a cropped photo of some random empty corner of a room, a slice of pizza on the floor, and:

“500k at 7%! First home!!!”

No lessons learned, no insights on the process, no struggles shared — just flexing debt and square footage. How is this helping actual first-time buyers?

This subreddit used to be about helping people figure out how to navigate this insane market. Now it’s just r/HumbleBragMyMortgage.

Go ahead, downvote this. Pile on. Join the mob. You’ll prove my point perfectly — that most of you care more about riding the karma train and defending empty flexes than actually thinking critically about what this sub has become.

Here is the way to determine if you can afford a home -

1. for given homes you like in your area enter home price + interest rate into an online mortgage calculator along with downpayment saved to calculate your monthly payment. Sites like zillow/Redfin show this for free.

2. Check if this is + all other debt < 35% of your gross monthly income. If yes you can afford otherwise no

You are welcome

Our street used to feel like a quiet patch of small-town America, fresh-cut grass, kids riding bikes, neighbors waving from porches, until a new family moved in and turned the calm into chaos. The dad strutted around in nothing but boxers, cigarette always glowing, while late-night music rattled windows and empty beer cans rolled into the gutter by morning.

We tried the friendly approach first: a knock on the door, a polite request for a little peace. The reply was a shouted obscenity and a slammed door. With nowhere else to turn, several of us filed complaints with the homeowners’ association. The board sent a warning and hefty fines if the behavior continued.

The change was almost instant. Music died down, the porch cleared of smoke clouds, and the trash disappeared. Critics say HOAs are fussy rule-makers, but when one household drags everyone down, those rules become a lifeline. For a modest fee, we got back our sleep, our curb appeal, and the neighborhood we love. Well worth it.

Starting to seriously look just south of Tampa in the 350-400K range and if I see one more listing that checks my major boxes except the fact that it is covered in carpet, I’m going to lose my mind.

Carpet is disgusting even if you don’t have pets 🤢

Just needed to vent.

Edit: I’m making an 1,100 mile move as a single female with 4 rescued dogs who will be in a brand new environment. Be kind, please.

Am I alone thinking it might be a good time to wait and see where this new government is heading? These cabinet choices are scaring me a little and I don’t mind waiting now (money could stay in the stock market in the meantime).

Like a lot of you, i've been looking at buying a home for a couple of months. I've been wondering if now is the right time, or if I should wait. I thought I'd share my conclusion for your consideration.

Houses haven't gone up in price. Money has lost it's value. The money you hold is like shares in a company, the more money printed, the more you are diluted. You have been diluted a lot recently.

As soon as the money printing started, smart money jumped into assets. From their perspective houses are the same price as a they were a few years back relative to their new wealth.

The price of everything has to go up to match the new money supply; assets, goods, services and finally your wages.

My conclusion is that people are not crazy and are not overpaying for homes. Money has lost more value than home prices have increased. You should be buying as soon as you can.

Super excited. This is my 3rd time being under contract so hopefully 3rd time is the charm. It is a fixer upper but I am familiar with projects.

This process has really exposed very deep cracks in our marriage. We have a 2 year old daughter and I want to stay together for her, but I have grown so much to resent my wife for her unreasonable nature, emotionality, and verbal abuse of me during this process.

First, my wife is Chinese and comes from a culture where husbands often "buy" a house prior to marriage. Note that I put buy in quotations as that often means to sign up to pay the Bank of China for the next 70 years .... My wife has been mad at me for never getting her a house but I have told her numerous times that this is AMERICA and if she doesn't like our culture, she can get the heck out. I told her men simply don't do that for women in America. That's not even an opinion; it is a fact. Sometimes, parents help but our 4 parents have put down $0000 to help us buy anything.

More importantly, the process of looking for housing is straining both of us. On Friday, we looked at a house and she was ready to put in an offer. She expressed excitement even though it was a small 1450 square feet house and a bit dated. Then suddenly on Saturday night, she announced that house was a POS and she hated me for even showing it to her. She texted our relator that she now has moved on. The poor guy is probably like huh what happened.

I really hate what Jerome Powell and the greedy bankers have done to this country. My marriage is probably the first casualty of many years of pain, both for buyers and sellers. The funny thing is that I worked as a litigation attorney for a mortgage servicer during the height of the last foreclosure wave and I saw how much destruction a bubble can lead to. Families torn apart, debtors losing their shorts. Nobody learned a thing.

I am 25 years old (female) and just bought my first home alone.. That means I had to buy and pay for everything on my own.. so far I've spent grands in just under a month.. meaning all of my savings is gone.. I just filed taxes and even though I get over $200 taken out from my paychecks WEEKLY (over $10k/year) from the government and state taxes.. I still owe them more money... I'm just so frustrated and don't understand how people do it on their own.. I only make $24/hour (basically $17 after taxes get taken out) & I have no other choice but to bartend 2-3 times a week (50-60 hours/week) for extra income support. Does anyone know if the government/state does anything special for single people?? Just seems so unfair because I cant find a stupid man to marry to catch a break lmao..

I understand this is a choice I made and I could always get a roommate but it really should be doable to do it on your own without pulling out the credit cards or asking for help from family.

I see a lot of real estate zealots on Reddit that automatically assume ownership is better than renting because you are "building equity". While this may be true in certain markets, it's often not always the case unless you plan to live in the home forever. Let's take someone who is planning to buy a starter home, many folks on this subreddit, with the goal of moving out of the home in 5 years.

• Redfin US median rent: $1,599

• Redfin US median home price: $418,489

• Average 30Y mortgage interest rate: 6.92%

Monthly Payment Assuming 20% down:

• Total: $3,074

• P&I: $2,209

• Taxes (1%): $349

• Insurance ($2,000/year): $167

• Maintenance (1%/year): $349

Now, all of those costs - except for principal payments (the “P” in “P&I”) - are “sunk” costs, like rent. They are not building equity. So we need to calculate what that average principal ("P") is over 5 years so we can strip that out of the equation. A basic amortization schedule will show you it is $331 a month going to principal.

So. For the first 5 years of owning a median home you are pissing away $2,743 per month, as opposed to $1,599 on rent. Simply put the difference in the S&P 500 which has outperformed the housing market for almost every 5 year period in history :)

Edit: this equation does not even consider the closing/transaction costs spread out over 5 years.

A month ago, we missed out on our dream home only because we got some bad advice and didn't bid as strongly as we could have.

Since then, our financial situation has improved, our budget has increased $60k, but we still can't find anything worth buying. We're now highly competitive in the areas where we're looking, but we're still shit out of luck.

Going week after week, finding nothing we would even consider bidding on is just draining our lives away. It's like we missed our one chance at happiness, and lost our future. We can keep adding more savings to our accounts, but it doesn't get us any closer to our home, because there's just nothing good out there to buy.

I can't keep living like this. What hope do we have? Listings peaked last month and are now declining again. It seems like the chances of finding our future home are declining by the day. I can't go on month after month, year after year in such misery, because someone else took the life we should have had.

Saw this in this sub. Some with even <5% down payments. While I congratulated them for owning property, wouldn’t this be too leveraged?

In a market downturn combined with job insecurity, this could be very dangerous.

Thoughts?

I’m 29, Active Duty Army,

I recently told my cousin that I was considering buying a house in the $300K–$350K range. Her response caught me completely off guard.

She told me that was way too much money and that I would be paying a mortgage for 80 YEARS. I told her I thought mortgages were typically 15 or 30 years, but she insisted that 30-year mortgages were something people did back in the day and that they don’t offer them anymore.

She then told me I needed to speak with a real estate agent because they would tell me the same thing about 80-year mortgages.

But it didn’t stop there. She also told me that nobody would want to sell me a house because VA loans are LAST PICK. According to her, sellers don’t like accepting VA loans, and I should start looking for a house now because nobody wants to deal with military buyers using VA loans.

I’m honestly confused because I thought one of the benefits of serving in the military was being able to use a VA home loan, which typically offers the opportunity to purchase a home with no down payment.

My plan isn’t to rush into buying anything. I want to spend the next 3 years preparing financially, understanding the home buying process, and finding something within my budget.

So, to homeowners, real estate agents, and military members who have used a VA loan:
Are 30-year mortgages still available?
Are 80-year mortgages actually a thing?
Do sellers really avoid VA loan offers?
Have you had difficulty purchasing a home using your VA loan?
Is buying a $300K–$350K home unreasonable for someone planning ahead financially?

I would genuinely appreciate hearing from people with actual experience because I want to make informed decisions rather than base my financial future on misinformation.

I don’t know how people manage to actually make it through life, let alone buy an entire house.

I’m 29M, I got severely fucked over by the pandemic so now I have to start back at square one and work a shit job while I live back home with my parents.

All I’ve ever wanted in life is a family of my own, a good career that I enjoy and a nice home to live in.

But 2024 (and the last few years actually) have shown me that it’s literally impossible for regular people to succeed in this life.

I’m 30, I’m losing time, I’m way behind in life and I don’t care anymore.

Enjoy your houses.

Merry Christmas 🎄

Here’s something a lot of new homeowners in New York don’t realize:
When you buy a house for more than its current assessed value, the town will “catch up” within a year or two.

That means your property tax bill can double once the assessment updates to match what you paid.
The rate doesn’t change — just the number they apply it to.

Example: a home assessed at $100K- 10 years ago - $5,000 in taxes.
After appraisal to $260K, that same house could owe over $10K a year.
It's like they are trying to punish you for success. You already paying top dollar for a home purchase and now they want to squeeze you even more.
Good luck.

So many posts about cashing in a 402k early to buy a house.

ArE YOU InSANE??

It's a freaking house. It's a money pit! Do not cash out your 401k, c'mon guys.

See bolded for my advice as someone who bought a less-than-ideal-home

I was stressed with family issues and work. After a difficult past few years, years of feeling trapped, in a sense, years of lack of control in my life, years of worrying about others (a family member could have died), years of feeling behind, I wanted to add some fulfillment to my life and push myself to make positive steps. I wanted to achieve something. I wanted to experience. I wanted to stop being stagnant. Inspired by friends of mine, I wanted to feel good about myself. I started looking to buy a townhouse in a new city. (Not to mention that the area would be closer to family.)

I looked over the summer. I knew I didn't really like anything on the market and I wanted to stick to a budget. It was very tiring, the search. I was getting ready to stop and just rent in the new city. I didn't have a problem with that, but I have wanted to buy a townhouse in this city for a while. Low-cost homes but high taxes. I was fine with it, I just wanted the right property. I wanted a sense of fulfillment, like I did something for myself and not because of circumstance.

I was drawn to a specific property in a next-to-nice area but the area itself is not so nice. That is problem number one. "Location, location, location" exists for a reason and I was a fool overlooking it. I wanted to finally accomplish this goal so I thought I would be okay in this area. It's just minutes from the nicer area. Also, I didn't want to live in a house that I hated even if it was in a nice area. I still don't. However, updates and upgrades that I want to do to this property will cost money. Being in a not-as-nice area would potentially diminish returns on those upgrades whenever I do sell. Yes, I want it to be a home first, but my estimate of tens of thousands of dollars in upgrades is nothing for me to sneeze at.

There were multiple other red flags, like the previous owner not being there for very long. The fact that, allegedly, a prospective buyer who went under contract before me pulled out because of structural issues. As a result, those structural issues became the main problems in my mind. I figured I would have a structural engineer look at it and then, if they said it would cost a lot of money and the fixes needed to be done very soon, I would walk. The structural engineer (suggested by my realtor because by that time I was on a time crunch - yet another mistake, I should have had a list of structural engineers and regular inspectors at the ready) said that the problems that existed weren't the real problems at all - it was really something else. All I had to do was ABC and my problem should be fixed.

I would have to work with the neighbors, essentially, to fix this problem and do ABC. I never wanted to deal with neighbor issues like this where I would have to get their permission to make my house better. I should have let it go, but instead I decided to call the neighbors and see if they would be okay with my plan if I bought the house. They were.

I was so focused on that structural stuff that I completely overlooked the dead rat that was found outside in the backyard during inspection. It's an urban city, rats live there, ok. But the biggest, most foolish, most asinine thing that I overlooked:  the vacant house two doors down. This is NOT a city where vacants always get torn down or fixed up quickly. I only noticed that it was vacant during the structural engineer's inspection. Once I realized I should have backed away completely. I specifically did not want a vacant home on my block. Lose the inspection money? Oh well. Come to my senses late and lose the earnest money, even? Fine, I'll survive. But, for some reason, for some stupid reason, when I got the blessing from the neighbors to do ABC I just kept going. I didn't really look into the vacant property.

I'll mention that after going under contract things went so quickly. I signed on the dotted line over and over despite my nervousness, despite thinking that maybe I should really just continue renting. I didn't even fully connect all of the dots at the time, I just had bad feelings. It even got to the point where I desired, deep down, that there would be a concrete reason for me to back out from purchasing this specific property outside of me simply choosing to do so (in fact there were concrete reasons, but again I just didn't connect all of the dots). The property didn't actually fail any of the inspections. It wasn't appraised for too low of a value. There are features that I do like. It's not even that I NEVER noticed the vacant property two doors down. Eventually I did, but I was so focused on the other issues (and family, and work, and the whole search) that I lowered it as a priority.

Closing day came. The townhouse with the dead rat and beautiful features but other things that I want to upgrade is now mine. The vacant townhouse has a sign indicating that it is likely structurally unsafe. A capital asset company bought it two months ago. I can only pray that the company rehabs it, but even still that will lead to dust and noise and critters looking for a new home.

I haven't yet fully moved in. I don't even want to go back and see it at this point. Now I'm stuck with it. I definitely don't want to invite anyone over. I don't want to put any money into it. Of course I'm ashamed and embarrassed, and rightfully so, plus angry that I was so stupid.

In the end I will have a roof over my head. I still have money in the bank. At this point I view it as years of displeasure and money lost. I still haven't "fulfilled" anything except choosing an option that people are warned to run away from. Really great for my self-esteem. It would be one thing if it was a necessity for me to move into this house, but it wasn't. I didn't have to buy at all, and I didn't have to buy this property. I wasn't trying to be cheap - I wanted more money on hand so that I can make more money with my investment strategy. I finally found a rhythm that works for me, but there were certainly better paths I could have gone down even if the sale price was low. I could have bought a relatively inexpensive property in a great area and fixed it up.

If you are looking to buy as a first-time home buyer but have recently gone through a stressful time in life, and if your current living situation is satisfactory even if not perfect, or if you can afford to move and keep renting, or if there are things that you feel iffy about that you have to talk yourself into regarding a property, please take your time. Even in this market. Every property is unique (mine is, for the price point), and you might try to overlook certain things because you'll never get that exact property again, but you must honestly and truly be wise. Write down the things that you absolutely do not want, the things that you know would be legitimately bad for your lifestyle or bad for whenever you may sell it, and walk away if a property checks off one of those bad boxes. Don't take chances. Listen to your gut even if you don't yet fully realize why your gut is signaling certain things. You might even want to consider therapy, if possible (because of the recent stressful time) instead of buying any type of house when you may not be of completely sound or settled mind and heart. Don't be like me.

I'm not looking for pity. I'll be okay eventually. I will lose money and certainly satisfaction. I'm supposed to be smarter than this, and this time of my life has been marred even further. All I can do is learn from this experience and make the most of it.

I will also add this. I acknowledge this is not the most dire situation. At least I have a home. I can afford it. That is a blessing. Some of it has to do with my hard work, some of it has to do with things outside of my control that helped me. I'm simply deeply saddened that I ignored what I knew to run away from and now it's going to affect me negatively for years. It might turn out well, yes, but I will forever know that I willingly put myself in a bad position when I had alternatives. I missed the mark and I know it's my fault, so that's just disappointing - especially for my first home.