if you don't own a house, what keeps you from buying one?

I can't afford the rates, IF I could find a lender.

We could certainly afford the mortgage payments, but we are not able to save enough for a responsible down payment.

and the real fear that we would lose a second house if I had to be put in a nursing home. We gave up one house because of bankruptcy...I don't want my husband to lose another. :(

is when I move out of here. I am finishing my degree and watching the economy slowly before I am out.

1) too old--now 53 years old

2) Price is too high. Houses that went for 350K in my neighborhood are now in the $1.5 million range

3) Income inadequate--I make $70 K a year, they tell me I have to make over double that to buy a house here in Los Angeles, do not have enough saved for a down payment.

4) don't qualify for assistance--cant get any assistance even though I never owned a house

If this is the "American Dream", it sure sucks dead elephant dicks!

but I have a nice rent controlled place.

Santa Monica and Berkeley are among the few places in California with real rent control. In the City of Los Angeles, they just have rent stabilization and vacancy decontrol. Even then it applies only to buildings occupied before 1978. I have been renting in the city since 1987 and my rent has tripled since my initial move.

Bad enough that under Rent Stabilization, if you get married or someone moves in with you, you have a 10% surcharge permanently tacked on to your rent. But, that 10% surcharge applies to children as well. I've seen couples forced to move from their apartments when a child is born because they cant afford the rent surcharge.

My parents sold their 3000 ft^2 house in suburban San Antonio last July. The amount they sold it for would buy maybe a 800 ft^2 two bedroom condo in a decent area in San Diego.

Overall, salaries in the city of San Diego are not high enough considering taxes and cost-of-living to make buying a home feasible.

network" and very right wing, they kept salaries down, busted unions, stopped mass transit and didn't plan growth. Three years ago we retired and moved to Oregon on the south coast for a third of what it would cost us in "Insane Diego". I will never live in a city again!

for 1/3 of what i would have to pay to buy something similar here (San Francisco). For me it makes much more sense to stay and put the difference between what I pay in rent and what it would cost to buy in the bank in case I lose my job. At this point I COULD buy if i wanted to empty out the bank account and triple my nut. No thanks. Bad times are coming. I'm staying right here.

spent 7 years in and out of court. Had three women raped in the building, fire under the boiler....in the end I had to leave. I did make a deal, but I really would have preferred to stay.

Being able to stay in your rent controlled apartment is not always easy when the property gets taken over by corporations whose bottom line is to make as much money as they can, to hell with the tenants.

At least a few of the older tenants were able to stay in the places they lived in all their lives. For me, one of the youngest statutory tenants, the price was too high. It became a full time job just fighting the legal battles. I was in a constant fight flight state. Oh, the stories I could tell, but it's just too traumatic. At least I learned a lot about organizing....:nopity:

SF is 75% renters so rent contol is pretty good here, but there are loopholes and landlords find ways to exploit them every day. I'm not naive enough to count on it lasting forever.

but I'm sure it's at least as high as SF. NY was said to have some of the strongest renter laws in the country. Add a few corrupt judges, endless money by corporations to file lawsuits and the law is pretty much mute. I've learned you don't have any more rights than you are willing to stand up for, and learn.

In the beginning all the tenants were together, but after 7 years people slacked off. Holding people together is VERY difficult, which is one of the reasons I supported Obama. A community organizer really has to have it together.

adds like $300+ to your monthly payments for a very modest home.

But if I had the credit I had when purchasing my home now, I wouldn't get a loan or a car loan.

Most of the market in my area is a good 3X higher in prices than they should be. And having a partner that knows the actual costs of building these white elephants makes it hard to even consider buying something that is so over-priced.

Will most likely never live on land again.

:toast:

I sure don't have 60,000 saved for a 20% downpayment. The mortgage payments with 20% down wouldn't be worse than what I'm paying but the downpayment is impossible.

I was resigned to renting forever but married into a house. If it weren't for that, it was the down payment that kept me from buying one. If I could save $30,000, then I might have been able to, but getting the first extra $30,000 was impossible.

There is at least a strong component of not trusting banks and mortgage companies as well, and probably some other stuff too. The bottom line for me is that real estate finance is a suckers game in too many ways. Like so many other aspects of life under capitalism, it is designed to use our needs and desires as a means for generating income for someone else-- more to the point, as a means of MAXIMIZING income diversion "up" the pyramid to support the investment class and the already wealthy.

I can't find the information quickly at the moment, but I recall reading somewhere how much one might expect to actually pay for home ownership over the term of a 30 year fixed mortgage at what was then a common interest rate for someone with good credit. If I recall correctly it was a shocking amount of money-- much higher than the actual value of the property, which itself was driven in large part by the economic shenanigans inflating property prices beyond their real value.

I've looked into buying a home several times during my life-- I'm in my mid-50s. I'd be "house poor" if I had. I pay considerably less to rent, and therefore maintain a higher standard of living, than would be the case if I were paying a mortgage. I hear horror stories today about people being driven into foreclosure and bankruptcy by mortgage payments exceeding $4500/month. That is utterly crazy, IMO. I have NEVER paid more than $900/month for rent in my life-- that's my current monthly rent, for which I rent a lovely little one hundred year old house in a rural neighborhood where I'm completely happy. I've lived here nearly ten years, and the rent was raised once during that time. I have no complaints at all.

Purchasing property outright is a different matter, or even mortgaging it under very favorable terms, but THAT is well beyond my means, and I generally live within my means as much as possible.

Property ownership under capitalism makes sense ONLY if the property is itself a source of income, i.e. a farm, or a business of some sort. Equity income is not the same-- it is more often than not an illusion used to entice folks to participate in the upward concentration of wealth-- as one pays off the mortgage, one's equity stake grows, but only at a fraction of the rate at which wealth is siphoned off for the bank and its investors. Of course, inflating real estate bubbles makes the illusion more solid-- and can even make the gamble pay off handsomely under the right circumstances-- my parents bought a house for $28,000 in 1963 that they sold for $160,000 in 1990 or thereabouts, so THEY really did make income over and above the cost of ownership from that property-- but it was always a place to live, first and foremost, and their good fortune was the result of growth in the real estate market that outstripped even the greed of all the folks seeking to siphon off the profits-- AND, the only way for them to realize their profit was to sell the property itself. That's not a good way to use property to generate income, IMO.

And, upon further review, that is kinda one of your answers there: "don't like the idea of taking on such a massive debt or being tied to one place."

Chief among them, the bankruptcy and foreclosure we went through last year.

At this point in my life, I don't have a problem making my problem someone else's (the landlord) problem.

Maybe in a couple of years, I'll feel better about it, but not right now, and not for a while.

have never had a desire to own land...
like the freedom of knowing I could move if I felt like it...

also, have had the best of luck finding affordable, and wonderful situations
in which to live...right now a 2 bedroom house with lovely view of Puget Sound...875/mo...
(it's the best deal on the Island...and landlady said stay as long as you want, no rent hike ever)

I suspect that some people no longer qualify under the tighter lending standards.

I could afford one right now in MI, but prices have much further to fall. Plus I am secure in what I live in presently.

I own my shack free & clear although I would like to do some improvements. I am not confident enough in my employment to take the risk of a home equity loan.

She's close to done with her dissertation, and there's a chance we could move out of the region in the next couple of years if she lands a really good position elsewhere.

But, also, we have a lot of student loan and credit card debt, and we don't have enough to pay a decent down payment.

Under our fine current health care system, my odds of goin' decades w/o a medical bankruptcy are pertnear zero.