Lately I have picked up watching Mac Repair YouTuber Louis Rossman’s NY real estate adventures. He often brings up the outrageous prices for renting empty buildings in NYC. For me this is really interesting because I have always been confused by real estate prices. What do you mean? Well, let’s go over it!
Before leaving the US a lot of my friends were starting to buy houses. My friends are all mid to late 30’s. None of my friends in their late 20’s early 30’s can’t even dream of owning a house. How did this happen? However, a thing I noticed is many of these friends all have mortgages that are 25-35 years. Meaning they will be either 60-70 until the house they bought will get paid off. They will have to work until then unable to retire. HOW!?
All of these friends that bought houses have great jobs: cloud engineering, programmer at Microsoft, programmer at Lockheed, professional hacker for a company to test their software and fix it, accountants, and such jobs. As you notice all of these are amazing jobs. I have friends who are programmers who can’t even afford to buy a house, as a FYI. They will have to pay off their house, and student loans, for a long time.
How did this happen to people with great jobs? “Affordable loans”. A comedian I listen to once said “NEVER ASK FOR AN AFFORDABLE LOAN! THAT IS HOW THEY FUCK YOU!”. This is the truest thing ever. See loans weren’t always this long. My grandparents paid off their house before I was born. “Oh but that… ” shh…. They bought the house after my dad was born. My grandmother used to tell me about how she would stay in the tiny apartment and take care of my dad for the first few years of his life, same with my uncle. My dad had me in his mid 20s. So, let’s say they had paid off the house in 20 years.
5 years may not seem like a lot but there is a big reason for me to bring this up. My grandparents are both Mexican and grew up picking fruit as kids to help their family. My grandparents were not rich in the least bit. My grandfather, until he had to retire due to health issues, was a janitor. My grandmother worked random jobs until she landed a job as a secretary at MENSA. I don’t even think my grandparents graduated high school, to be honest.
Why the 5 years? Well, houses were priced correctly that anyone could afford them. My grandparents worked menial jobs and were able to pay off their house in 20 years. My friends with college degrees working as engineers and accountants have to take loans that are 25+ years to pay off their houses because the housing market is insane now.
This is why you need to stop saying you want things to be affordable and switch to “priced correctly”. As houses sky rocketed due to the late 90’s early 00’s housing boom they never actually sunk after the housing crash in the late 00’s. Something that should’ve happened. Some how they just went up. What should’ve happened is the prices of houses should’ve sunk hard. Instead banks are just giving you longer loans. A house that should be 15-20 years to pay off now takes 25-30. This way you are paying less per month but more over time. Everyone wins, except you.
Not only are houses taking longer to pay off they are climbing in prices to where friends working as engineers can’t even afford an amazing giant house like people could in the 90’s and 00’s. The costs of houses has drastically gone up and instead of fixing the prices they just extended loans making them take longer and longer to pay off. If this continues I am sure our grandkids will have 40 year loans for houses.
I’d like to point out. My grandparents could afford a house working unskilled jobs. You can’t even dream of paying for an apartment, or a family, working such work anymore. Go ask your grandparents, or great depending on how young you are, what they did after high school. How did they buy their house? What job did they have? I have found asking many senior citizens a lot of them just got jobs out of high school with 0 training and paid for a house with no issue. Even the ones working unskilled jobs were able to do so.
How does this relate to Louis Rossman? NYC is having an issue where 500 SQFT businesses are costing 8000 a month, or more, for rent. People can’t afford these places. There are places that have been vacant forever, according to him. Rent has gone up as costs of everything else has too and income has dwindled. People can’t afford this shit anymore. We are not like our grandparents. Able to buy up things for cheap and afford a life with that.
Take from this what you will but understand that simply “getting a better job” isn’t anywhere near the leg up people had before.