Kids getting on the property ladder

It is becoming more difficult as time passes...

Or

A fixer upper..

DS1 and DIL have great jobs and savings but we helped them out. I feel bad for young people trying to get into the housing market.

A lot of entry home owners are priced out of fixer uppers by the flipper market. The new hopefuls aren't competing against other lower wage earners looking to buy their first home. They are competing against people using real estate as their hustle/side hustle. I know the house I was living in I was getting weekly ads (mail and texts) from companies wanting to make an offer on my house which was not up for sale and I didn't own. 

What is happening in my town is corporations are buying land and building mid-priced homes. They have no intention of selling any of the homes. They are built as rental properties. The corporations are also buying up homes in other neighborhoods and renting them. It has made it very difficult for young families to buy their own home. I have wondered if there will come a time when home ownership is extremely rare.

In my area it is exceedingly difficult to buy a "starter house". When smaller and/or houses in need of work hit the market they go into pending status almost immediately. A great number are going to investors to be either flipped or with increasing frequency, made into rentals.

My dds are both anomalies in this area - and very fortunate. They were both able to purchase great condos in our Seattle area housing market on their own. Youngest dd was 23 when she bought hers. We didn’t need to help. What worked for them was first having high paying jobs (they are both software developers) and not having any college debt. They were able to save for their own down payments. I seriously don’t know how younger people are managing now. It’s pretty scary.

We live in the highest priced property to income market in the world - Sydney Australia.
No chance my kids will own a home but they have the benefit of our fully owned house and a grandparents fully owned house (ie one each) if they are willing to play the waiting game.

A regular house down the road from us (we live an hour out of Sydney) just sold for 1.6 million. 4 bed 2 bath 2 car spaces on a 600 square m block.

How could you ever afford a 20% down payment to avoid extra fees on a house priced like that when an average wage is $70,000 ish???

How can she not love living here. I would never leave. It doesn’t rain enough in summer but we get plenty in winter.

my son is mostly counting on inheriting our house. my daughter and her wife bought in new zealand.. with some help from her parents, from us and the structure is more favorable there to use pensions and stuff to get you into market.. this was 2018.. the market is very hard.

I live in san francisco.. so it would be super difficult for my son to buy here.

My DD will inherit property that she can either live in or sell. We’re also working on setting her up with an investment account soon that we/she can add to annually so it can grow until she is an adult and can manage it herself. 

Neisey could your kids pool their resources for now and buy one house together that they can both live in until they build some equity, then use the first house as leverage for a second? That is kind of what some neighbors did at our old house in the city. A guy bought our neighbor’s house so that his two college aged kids could live close to their respective campuses. The older one was finishing medical school and the younger one was an undergrad at a different school. The kids both lived there and made the payments together, building equity. The older one graduated and finished his residency, he got married and stayed in the house. The younger one graduated and shortly afterward moved somewhere else around the same time the older one got married.

Or what about starting off with a condo or townhouse, live in that for a while to build some equity and then trading up to a single family home later on? That’s what my niece and her husband did here. Actually, I believe her DH bought the townhouse with his dad as a co-signer when he was still in college and I think he owned that place for maybe 7-8 years. They sold the townhouse and bought a single family home when they needed more space for their growing family.

My son will inherit my house. If he wanted something before the time comes, a couple of years ago, I bought the small piece of land next to my house, he could build a tiny house.

My DS and his husband were living in DC in an apartment and wanted to buy a home. They ended up in Manassas which is about 30 miles out of the city because they could afford to buy there. DSIL commutes into DC by train and DS works from home most of the time but also has to commute to Quantico a couple of times a week.

They sacrificed location for homeownership and feel good about their decision.

My kids are in their early 20s in the Bay Area. My oldest is in San Francisco with his girlfriend (the rental market here is on fire - but they found a screaming deal on a place in Russian Hill with views of the Golden Gate Bridge from every room) - I’d guess it will be 10 years before they buy. No idea about the other 2. I could see them buying out of state.