Mortgage foreclosures at 30-year high !

You know why housing costs are low here? Illegals doing , slab, brick, stucco, drywall and painting for cheap. I am in an electrition, who relies on heathly house building to keep a job. Get rid of cheap labour, and watch housing prices go up. When people quit buying housing,the local economy goes to hell.

Actually this point might be moot, in the past year my fathers company went from 11 employees to 4. The reason? Builders are starting not to pay. If the situation becomes worse, i will have to change jobs till the market comes back. Bad times are ahead.

Take a two-income family making $100,000 a year for example. Instead of settling for the affordable 3-bedroom ranch house that would allow them to still make payments if one of them were to lose their jobs

What gets me is that the same exact house my dad bought new for $15,000 with 4% interest rates quite a number of years ago in a neighborhood with similar houses where everyone had families living on one income is now more like $100,000 and would take most families two incomes to buy. The exact neighborhood only with old homes instead of new ones now has two income families buying those same houses.

Bad times are ahead.

That cheap labor isn't so cheap after all if you have to pay much more for their free health care at the county hospitals and $7000 per each child at the local schools. I think bad times are ahead too because they've already been bad here since the mid-90s when everyone else thought times were good. You have to look at the total cost of buying a home which includes interest and property taxes ---when you do that it's obvious they aren't at all cheap but take a larger chunk of our incomes than ever in the past.

He pays $7500 a year in property taxes on house that cost $35,000 to build 25 years ago.

One thing I know is home prices have nothing to do with labor costs because older houses already built 40 years ago with labor that was long ago paid can cost just as much as a new home. Property taxes are something home buyers need to pay very close attention to ---they need to look at everything going on in the area ---the mortgage can be set but property taxes can be taking some wild hikes that you'd better be aware could happen.

[You know why housing costs are low here? Illegals doing , slab, brick, stucco, drywall and painting for cheap. I am in an electrition, who relies on heathly house building to keep a job. Get rid of cheap labour, and watch housing prices go up. When people quit buying housing,the local economy goes to hell.]

I don't know where here is and I don't know that housing costs are low 'here' meaning where I live.

Now you are in favor of illegals then? What are you going to do when they hire them as electricians? They already are when they do not have city ordainances against it. A electrical contractor will get the job and just put illegals to do it.

Texas recently passed a law saying all plumbing work must be done by a master licensed plumber. I do believe they have excluded work done by homeowner on his own home and there is conflicting laws regarding towns of 5,000 or less - but some tried to float the reason for this was to keep illegals out of the plumbing business. Well, of course, all a large plumbing concern has to do is once again, get the job and put illegals to do the work.

While I have sympathy that your job is in jeopardy for whatever reason, I have friends that were dry wall people, concrete workers, brick layers - and their jobs are gone. Do not for a moment think that any job for which an employer can hire an illegal, and not have to collect and pay taxes, or worry about workman comp, etc. will be safe from them.

Yes, I think bad times are ahead and of course, I do have a blind spot where the illegal situation is concerned - I do not see a benefit - in the long run, or short run - to this country or to anyone but politicians (both sides) and employers.

I am not convinced we need any new people to this country, except absolute family needs, until we can get straigtened out, but we certainly do not need any more that will undermine the citizens jobs and that will have to be subsidized by those citizens. This is just insanity. I feel the employers are 'getting while the getting is good' and to heck with what happens later. They will have their money, their houses behind gates, etc. and they could care less about the rest of us. NOw there are a few who are not quite making the killing of illegals, but in my opinion, if you hire them you should be ashamed - just my opinion.

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