Posted on 01/25/2024 5:58:46 AM PST by devane617
Over the past two years, Genuine Campbell was shocked at how rent for her two-bedroom apartment in Philadelphia just kept going up — from $1,300 a month to $1,600. She's a single mom of four, and right as her rent was rising, her hours as a hotel valet were getting cut.
Add in utility costs plus inflation, and every month brought a wrenching decision.
"Do you want to pay the bills and then give half the rent, or do you want to try to do the whole rent and then be back on bills?" she says.
Campbell says the area isn't even safe enough for her kids to play outside, but the rents are still way out of line with what she can make. "You have to work in, like, maybe a hospital or [as a] police officer ... just to keep up with the rent," she says.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
When I bought my first house, back in the day, I packed lunch every day, made all my own dinners, gave up going out, even for beers, sacrificed on just about all purchases, barely made the mortgage payment. Oh, and fixed my own late model cars. That was when I was in my late 20's. Kids today would blow their ability to make the payment in a week of door dash lunches and their must have new cars.
Forgot to add, my first mortgage was 12.5% interest.
Housing also follows the rules of “Supply and Demand.”
Now we have millions of ILLEGAL ALIENS demanding housing, rents will go up in price. And if the government pays for these higher rents for illegals, expect the owners to demand an even higher rent payment knowing the housing will be trashed.
I have several rental houses. I have nice albeit small homes, 1000sqft, 3 br 1 bath. Most have covered front porch and a back deck in good neighborhoods. My rents are about 20% or so lower than the market will sustain but I usually lease the first or second day I put it on the market. I could easily charge a few hundred dollars more each month but having a property vacant is not good and a few months vacancy can take years to make up in rent. Local property taxes take the first month and a half rent and insurance takes another month and a half, so my first three months of rent are not mine. Of course there is income tax on the rent which amounts to about $3000 a year between Federal State and Local. If I had to make payments on the house I would have zero profit unless I raised the rent and then it would be a close margin if there were any costs associated with the property I could lose money.
I was fortunate, I was able to pay cash for my houses but even paying cash is a cost. One benefit of paying cash is that inflation is eating up any cash reserves right now but housing valuse rises with inflation so your investment is safe. I received an offer on a house I paid $60,000 for 20 years ago, they guaranteed $160,000 and maybe more. I could not have made that much money in the stock market or in any kind of interest bearing account. Of course, I haven’t really made any money, it’s all inflation but at least I still have my money and have collected rent (interest) all this time. I have collected 4 times the original value of the house in rents and still have the house.
I have tried to show my renters how they could do the same thing I have done but they like their big car payments, their fancy IPhones and cable. They like their Starbucks on the way to work and ordering fast food delivery etc.
I like the income I collect although some years on some houses I’m lucky to break even. Bad renters can cost you a fortune. I fortunately don’t have many of those but it does happen. When a tenant loses a job or gets a divorce it can all go sour.
I like that I provide a service and get income from it and recommend that everybody who can to procure 10 or more houses to rent for retirement income. After you get two or three it gets easier to get the rest.
I suspect that the Federal government will try to make it more difficult for people like me, they will consider it unfair for me to own 10 houses and the people I rent to to own none, but for now it works.
Do the houses belong to you personally or to a corporation you control?
I WANT TO SEE HER LIFETIME VOTING RECORD-—
4 kids-—job as a valet.
HOW MUCH EDUCATION DID SHE GET???
Could she have put more effort into an education instead of having those kids????
What about the rest of her life style???
Where does her money go?
Do all those 4 kids have CELL PHONES????
.
Your analysis is valid.
One totally new factor is institutional investment in single family housing.
This is very important because housing prices are determined by actual transactions—and last I saw only about 5% of single family houses have a transaction in a given year.
Active institutional investors can (and have) caused housing prices to skyrocket in “hot” markets.
If they panic and try to sell in large quantities they can (and imho will) cause a major crash as well.
“One totally new factor is institutional investment in single family housing.”
As I stated above, Blackrock and other institutional investors are buying up property at an alarming rate and have been for a while. This has driven up costs at an astounding rate. Why do they want these properties? Where is the ROI? I see it as another far left groups of communists or socialists actively working a plan to destroy the housing market so people in the middle will be forced onto gov housing, and guess who supplies housing to the gov?
>>>When I bought my first house, back in the day, I packed lunch every day, made all my own dinners, gave up going out, even for beers, sacrificed on just about all purchases, barely made the mortgage payment. Oh, and fixed my own late model cars. That was when I was in my late 20’s. Kids today would blow their ability to make the payment in a week of door dash lunches and their must have new cars.<<<
Your life experience is not advice for the 25-35 year old demo looking to buy a first house and start a family. I’m not saying if they did what you did it wouldn’t be beneficial. I’m saying they can do everything you did and still not have money to afford a home. Simply look at the average income vs. the average housing prices for markets where most Americans live. This is why things are broken.
You need TWO INCOMES now to buy a house for a large number of young adults. That is incredibly sad. If a wife can’t afford to quit her job, who will raise the next generation? Answer: Daycare.
I cannot totally disagree with that. Confiscatory taxes and fees are the difference.
Ask around and maybe in illegal will rent out their back room.
They’ve yet to realize every time minimum wage goes up, so does everything else. Well, not their savings as it goes down in value.
They gnash their teeth over 3% mortgages. Oh, the highest ever in history! Not. We were paying over 12% plus points in the 90s. Of course, we saved for a home and didn’t blow our paycheck like ME, ME, ME! Millennials do.
Carnac the Magnificent predicts we’ll just switch out countries one day.
“””One totally new factor is institutional investment in single family housing.
This is very important because housing prices are determined by actual transactions—and last I saw only about 5% of single family houses have a transaction in a given year.
Active institutional investors can (and have) caused housing prices to skyrocket in “hot” markets.””””
I believe the following is the reality behind Blackrock, Fidelity, State Street, and Vanguard buying up single family homes.
These mega-mutual funds were sent a message that Biden was going to bring in 10 million illegal invaders into the USA and Biden was going to need a lot of single family housing across the USA to house the invaders.
So the mega-mutual funds bought up a huge number of houses and the mega-mutual funds are now renting those houses to the FEDS and the FEDS thru their NGO’s are placing illegal invaders in those rental houses.
Some interesting posts on the institutional investor stuff—we really need a whistleblower from inside these organizations to spill the beans.
Maybe go back to school for her PHD in valet. Or get a court to force her baby daddies to kick in. I'm betting there are 4.
That's what is so crazy about liberals. Complain about lack of housing, but demand open borders and allow millions of illegals in - and they are poor, take available jobs and free stuff, and grab housing.
Best solution is to block more from coming, and kick out the ones who are here - or destroy them.
Indeed. So, do we need to look?
Do the houses belong to you personally or to a corporation you control?
They are mine, in both my wife’s and my name.
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