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Notes -
Anybody feel like telling a few stories about how the housing market might get better over the next couple years? I'm having a hard time seeing it and most people are more inspired by predicting doom than imagining the subtle signs of what an improving market would look like. Was out for a walk earlier with the wife and she mentioned how this one neighborhood we both like sometimes just bums her out now that she's accepted we're not going to be able to buy anytime soon. We've managed to save enough but even on lower end stuff, the monthly payments are insane and 2-3x what we're paying.
Mathematically the prices will go down. I’m glad it happened, this model of ‘pay almost no interest, just take on multi-generational debt you’ll unload onto the next buyer’ was getting really stupid. That sort of mortgage was really rent by another name, because they didn’t own the house and couldn’t pay it back. You dodged a bullet there, now you might actually get to own a house some day.
That doesn't help him since he is complaining about monthly payments as well, which will likely stay the same. When the interest rates go down again then the prices will rise at the same time.
The housing market isn't "improving" unless you're sitting on a bunch of liquid capital, which it kind of sounds like he is but he is going to have to eat the higher monthly payments.
Not at the same time, with considerable delay. We are right now in such a delayed phase, where sticky prices have not caught up to interest rates (only it’s about prices going down instead of up). I’d prefer interest levels to stay mid permanently, to stop this rollercoaster. My second choice is permanently high interest rates. Low interest rates ownership is fake, and transforms banks into landlords.
The obsession with monthly payments just strengthens the analogy to rent. If someone selling you a car or TV kept talking about your low monthly payments, you would recognize it as sleazy, would you not?
You seem to be implying that back in the day people paid off their mortgages before the thirty year term was up. Is this actually true? If not, then holding the term constant, yeah I'd prefer the lower payments, thanks.
According to American Nightmare (Randal O'Toole): Six-year house loans (with down payment of 0.5 percent, no fixed payment schedule, and the possibility of refinancing at the end of the term) were popularized around year 1889, and 12-year mortgages from building-and-loan associations (with down payment of 25 percent) also were popular. Sears's famous mail-order house kits could be obtained with 15-year mortgages (with down payment of 25 percent) around 1911 (zero down payment from 1917 to 1921). Longer-term mortgages weren't mainstream until 1948, when the federal government authorized the Federal Housing Administration (created in 1934) to offer 30-year mortgages (with down payment of 5 percent, or zero for veterans).
In The Jungle, Jurgis' mortgage was 20% down ($300) and $12 a month for eight years and four months (plus interest at 7% per year which the agent never told them about).
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