Not exactly news to anyone living on either coast or on the north side of Chicago, but... http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050710/ap_on_bi_ge/unaffordable_american_dream
I wish that were true for us. But even in 7.1% unemployed Michigan, aka the new Mississippi, housing prices are still absolutely rediculous and I refuse to put my family in that kind of financial pinch again. The payment must be below 30% of the main bread winner. But this is some scary sh!t right here...
And that's the problem. Things get more expensive, these 'banks' just create new and fancy ways to lend more money to the overleveraged. If you can get a $500,000 loan with no down payment, no proof of income, and a 2% interest-only ARM, then what's the point of being financially responsible? You've just quadroupled the potential buying pool by no longer worrying if an individual is 'risk worthy.' This is going to end badly.
the median home price in California climbed to $522,590... That's just stupid; in fact, though, it is a stupidity, found on both coasts, that I have to say I appreciate. We bought our house with a WWF signing bonus in 2000, for an unaffordable price, and sold it for a profit, also stupid, that allowed us to come to Scotland. When we return, we are returning to a house worth just about that median that does not belong to us but that we hope to inherit, God willing. That's the only way we'll be getting a house of any authentic worth; I mean, my friends have townhouses and homes that range from 200K-900K, but, excepting the high-end ones, they all have walls you can't bump into lest you cave the wall in a foot and a half, basically they are on the ladder, but the rungs aren't worth sh!t, except in this inflated market. It's only for their sake that I hope that the market takes it easy on the way down, and doesn't pop. Too many people I know, and scores more I don't, will be crushed. Me? I'm trying to stay mortgage and car note-free for at least the next 5 years, hopefully for the next decade, and see where this whole thing takes us. The walls are plaster where I'm headed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/09/realestate/09complex.html ...Mr. Molina is one small part of what might be called the real estate industrial complex, the economic engine that has become one of the few reliable sources of growth in recent years. Encompassing everything from land surveyors to general contractors to loan officers, the sprawling sector has added 700,000 jobs to the nation's payrolls over the last four years, according to an analysis by Economy.com, a research firm. Combined, the rest of the economy has lost nearly 400,000 jobs over the same span, which stretches back to the start of the most recent recession, in 2001... This is code for "We'd better have something IN PLACE to replace this growth when it does pop, or it's everybody's ass."
From what I understand, Chicago is unique right now in that it isn't experiencing ballooning prices, but significant growth. Prices in the city, and even the burbs, are likely to fall off within a year or two, but not likely to "pop" like the coast may see.
ROTFLMAO and get up and LOL You have given out too much rep in the last 24 hours... I'll get you tomorrow. Seriously Mel, you gotta give him credit!!
First, according to a news story about a month ago that showed that urban areas that had gained population in the 1900s with gentrification, Chicago actually lost population in the last few years. Second, Prices on the North Side of Chicago certainly have skyrocketed tremedously. I suspect that the South and West sides can explain both of the above. That's where the population decline has been and those areas are also keeping Chicago's average home price lower. I would love to see both the population figures and the average home prices on the North Side. There's been tons of anecdotal and circumstantial evidence (ask anyone who, like me, rides the Ravenswood el line) to support my bet is they've both gone up dramatically since 1990.
Inherit as in inherit a mortgage, guy; as opposed to the other sbilings (my wife is one of four kids...). this is my in-laws' only asset, and my father-in-law seems willing, even hopeful, that the home will stay in the family, b/c he'd like to die there, but it's also, after saving well to put four kids through college, theri only remaining asset. Mortgaging the house to us, or any other sbiling, would, alongside whatever package he gets from the ELCA, provide for their retirement. Sorry for the confusion. I'm sure that the excitement here along those lines was palpable, but, no. Now, it is true that we hope for a mortgage that is less than the market value of the house, so you could try to claim some "hypocrisy" there (although the posing of a resolution for a debate doesn't necessarily reveal a held position, one or the other, but in this case I think I AM leaning toward the (at least) utter oddity of the promotion of inheritance and the claim of maximized citizen mobility, but really to harken to the inconsistency there, at most), but since the "market," as this thread illuminates, makes no sense, I'm looking for a mortgage that reflects more accurately the value of the house, not of the market. But who knows? Laurel is the third child, and like all children who come along down the line, she doesn't feel that her older siblings have nay more "right" to take on the house than she does, where I feel that her father may want to consider his other daughter and other two sons before offering the house to an in-law. But I've been wrong before, and I'll be wrong again. What I'm NOT here, to the probable dismay of some, is hypocritical.
Yes, because inheriting some equity in a house is exactly the same as a small number of families reaping hundreds of billions tax free.