Redfin Reports That Homebuyers Must Earn $115,000 to Afford the Typical U.S. Home—About $40,000 More Than the Typical American Household Earns

yahoo! Finance ^ | 10/17/2023 | Business Wire

[freepertoo]

My mom (who just passed away a few weeks ago at the age of 101.5 years), was born and raised in Detroit and she said when she was young it was an entertainment mecca with the hottest stars coming to perform. She loved to tell me about how her Greek papa Nick would take her to Greektown and how thrilling the city was. My siblings and I were born there, too, but she had the wisdom to get us out of Dodge in the early sixties. Things had begun to turn about that time.

[outofsalt]

"Polyamory adds another paying adult..."

That will cost you more.

[dfwgator]

They say Detroit was the wealthiest city in the world in the 1950s.

[dfwgator]

I’d actually like to go back to Detroit and see the downtown for myself. It has tremendous potential with the river, and they are doing some pretty cool things along the river now.

The best thing they are doing is restoring the old buildings instead of tearing them down, because there was some fantastic architecture in Detroit back in the day.

[freepertoo]

We used to live so close to the Detroit river that one of my very earliest childhood memories is hearing the low-pitched horns of the tug boats. Yes, Detroit has fantastic architecture. When I was a child we were poverty stricken and the apartment building we lived in was all but caving in on itself. But even as a small child I remember thinking that it must have been beautiful at one time. Long, winding elegant stairways, caged elevators. We lived on Fort Street, but I’ve never been able to find anything about the apartment we lived in (Fort Clark Apartments). I’d love to know its original history. By the time we were there, it was a slum.

[lodi90]

I was talking to a guy from Nashville who said he had friends who bought investment houses there in 2008-10 for $30k that are now worth $800k due to the influx of Californians and others.

[SamAdams76]

What articles like this ignore is that most homebuyers already own a home so they are typically using the proceedings of their current home sale to buy their new home. That's how I started out. I bought a starter ranch home when I was 28 and then upgraded to a four-bedroom colonial about 10 years later. By then, I had a lot of money from the sale of my ranch to put down on the colonial. I never would have been able to afford the colonial as my first home.

As for first time homebuyers, they are usually not starting from zero. Usually they have some sort of inheritance or family "loan" to supplement the downpayment of their first home.

Also, many "first time" homebuyers are essentially inheriting the house they grew up in from their parents when they retire. In those cases, the aging parents might take an "in-law" apartment in the home while their grown children take over the mortgage and maintenance.

[lodi90]

The multi generational format that Asians use is going to be the way going forward. Single family homes will get too expensive for young families.