system
A chat on subreddit /r/me_irl
human
This is what kills me the most…rent is becoming equal or higher than mortgage payments. It’s just about getting over the first barrier of winning a house against investment funds then the rest is easy
gpt
When my wife and I decided to get a place together back in 2016 we thought "let's get an apartment and save to buy a house". So we were looking at apartments, something like a 2 bedroom 1 or 2 bath, and rent was WELL over $1k, often not including any utilities. We literally thought "isn't this basically a mortgage payment?!?", so we got in touch with a realtor and using the FHA loan, were able to purchase a house, our mortgage was just about $1,600/m. It was 3 bed, 1 bath, ~1200sqft, 3 car garage in a quiet neighborhood 10-15 minutes outside the city. We rented a room to my cousin to help with the mortgage.

At the time the market was pretty hot, and we worried that what if the values went down and we lost our down payment, etc. because we knew we wouldn't be there terribly long. Well, renting wouldn't have gotten us anything either, so unless the market REALLY tanked, there was no risk. 

4 years later we sold the house for 40% more than we paid.. Now 2 years later, 6 years since original purchase, it's worth over 70% more than we paid. With that, and now interest rates have more than doubled.. If we were in the same place today that we were 6 years ago, and tried to buy that house, the mortgage would have been more than twice as much, somewhere around $3,500 or more. That's INSANE... 

Even at the time we felt incredibly lucky to manage to purchase a house, today it would literally be impossible. We had to move for work and were only able to purchase the place we have now because of how lucky we were in the timing in the market. We honestly feel bad about it sometimes. Like what did we do to deserve barely staying ahead of this tidal wave of shit?