newsflash: you have to spend the rest of your life paying *someone* for the privilege of a place to live. i've read this line elsewhere and it's really fucking annoying. Some people were hoping to buy houses like my step-grandfather did: lived in it for many years and spent the last decade of his life with no mortgage. others are hoping that, if they have nothing else to give their kids, it will be a mostly paid off house with a comparably low mortgage 25 years from now.
> > * *It must be a bailout for homeowners, not for home lenders.
>I'm sorry, but fuck the homeowners, they are driven by greed and delusions
>of the "property ladder" just as much as the lenders, why should they be
>rewarded over renters and residents of co-operative and public housing?
a good income in this area is 70k. Most individuals earn _less_. A 1 bedroom condo is 275k, a 2br condo, about 350. A 3 b.r. house 450k and up. Prices aren't going down in this area, but staying about the same. You can live in suburbs and pay less for more, but then you have a commute.
On that income, even the one bedroom is 4 x the yearly income, which is higher than the recommended income-debt ratio. Getting in over your head is easy to do, and you don't have to be greedy.
For a reality check on rent: 1500 for the 1 br.; 1900 for the 2 br. 2300-2500 for the 3 br house. (Someone can do the mortgage equivalent math, with 5% down, decent interest rate but maybe not the lowest + tax write off.)
If someone does that, imagine you're one of the black couples at my job for whom $12/hr as a sales rep at my company, plus commissions is considered a good income. a person for whom $50k as a sales rep is considered astronomically good. You make 80k between the two of you and need a 3 bedroom house to raise your family -- 2 kids. They are otherwise paying $2300 to rent a similar house.
shag
http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)