Oh wow, fascinating, thanks for sharing! Home ownership is such a complicated issue in so many ways and it's something incredibly warped by social media.
My now husband and I bought our first house in 2006 when I was 20 and he was 27. We bought a modest starter home when the market was incredibly different than it is now. We quickly found ourselves upside down on what was a traditionally safe investment. We were in that small home for much longer than planned, we essentially broke even when we sold in 2015 and acquired the home we have now at auction, as is (and it definitely had some issues), we'd never be where we are otherwise. We've dumped a lot of money and sweat equity into our home since we've owned it and I'm quite proud of our circumstances, but some real luck and privilege involved and we're incredibly grateful all around.
I think home ownership is treated... hmm... casually and expected for such a huge investment involving so many factors.
My husband and I bought our home in 2012, when the market was vastly different than it is today. But! Our lives, our family situation, and our incomes were also very different. We almost couldn’t afford this house then, the mortgage payment was daunting, and our job stability felt… tenuous. We took, what we deemed at the time, the risk anyway.
I’m so tired of feeling shame or guilt (or feeling like I should feel those things) for our luck. It didn’t feel like luck at the time, though it does now. In those moments 12 years ago, it felt impossible. It was hard. We almost walked away from the process.
I do empathize with folks looking to buy their first home now. We certainly can’t sell right now because we can’t afford today’s market—and I think that creates an inventory limitation that hurts all of us.
Our home’s value has increased 3x since we bought it. So I also ponder this: Would I sell at today’s market prices? Or would I sell for a price that feels like “enough” for me? In either case, I wouldn’t be able to afford something else. But in the latter case, it would create affordability for someone else. (Though I could never guarantee the buyer wouldn’t just flip it for their own profit.)
The market’s changed so much in 12 years that I can’t help but wonder where we’ll be in another 12. I know it’ll be different. I can only hope that different means better.
This subject is such an important one for me personally too. I bought my first house (traditional purchase) at 24 right before my wedding. Our income was modest to say the least. But the cost of houses was still reasonable. Real estate was so hot back then (a big time seller's market in the early 2000's), so we were able to tap into our equity twice because home values kept going up while rates were still low. We refinanced first to pay off debt, then again to pull out money for the purchase of another property. This just WON'T happen for my newly adult-aged kids anytime soon. But it will happen to some degree in the future. This current housing environment is very discouraging but home ownership is still a meaningful path to generational wealth. Don't lose hope. Manage your debt and be thoughtful consumers!
Thank you for sharing your story! I actually put it on my list to write about my house story after the AHP comment thread, too. I think it’s important for people to share the privileges and luck that help them “achieve” various financial milestones like owning a home, because otherwise we just see all these people so much better off than us and think we must be doing something wrong. But it’s just as important for those conversations to include those of us who struggle or make sacrifices, so people can understand our realities, too.
I moved from an affirming city into a small town with a low cost of living, and I emptied my already-inadequate IRA to make a down payment on my house. I’m OK with my decisions, but I do get frustrated that my options were so limited compared to others’.
We’ve lived in our tiny Cape Cod-style house for 47 years with just one tiny bathroom—and yet got through the teen years of our children with just the right amount of distress. My “children” are now 48 and 47. Both own their homes, not because of any privilege but because of hard work. In my town, the current craze is to tear down houses like ours and build monstrosities that I’m sure have more than one tiny bathroom. It makes me sad to think of all the family history and stories that disappear when those houses are torn down.
Katy—Thank you for sharing your story. I look forward to more behind the scenes tales.
To everyone else—Be thankful for and take pride in wherever you live.
This is all so complicated. We bought a starter house fixer-upper in 1999, a delapidated little Victorian. We subsequently realized we’re not fixer-upper people. Our house is kinda embarrassing, but the mortgage payment is like $600. In our city, a 1 bedroom apartment is twice that much rent.
It’s funny how I can feel really poor and really privileged multiple times each week.
Thank you so much for writing about this. My husband and I (both public educators) bought our tiny house 10 yrs ago as a "starter home" for us and our three boys. For so many reasons (interest rates, low-pay for teachers, soaring housing prices, paying off debt, etc), we cannot comfortably afford to buy anything bigger. I get caught in this web of feeling shame because my husband and I both chose a profession with very limited income growth opportunities. (It also doesn't help when people comment on the fact that we are raising three boys in 1,000 sq ft. "I don't know how you do it! We could never live in something so small!" Sigh.) I remind myself constantly that I am so privileged to own a house at all and this hunger for more and bigger and better is truly an American phenomenon.
A lot of this resonates with me. We bought our first house in 2009, at the absolute bottom of the market, in a rural Wisconsin town, and I was 24. I fought tooth and nail to GET that mortgage since we had no wealth, I made a whopping $32,000 as a masters-degreed librarian, and the $129,000 asking price was too high (I negotiated down to $121 or $123, I can't remember). We sold it in 2018, another low point in the market, and used the meager profits from selling to put a downpayment on our second house for another unimaginably low $171,000. We refinanced the mortgage in 2021 and now will never leave because of our low interest rate, the low mortgage rate, and our home being fine enough. It's an old Victorian and I love it to bits and pieces, but it will NEVER be an instagrammy home. It will always have weird spots and quirks and never be big enough, but I also don't care about that.
I think the ability to not care comes because I have seen how much more reasonable in America it is to pay down a mortgage than it is to pay down student debt. I'll own my home outright years before my student loans are paid off (in that first house, I used to look at how much progress I made on the mortgage each month vs. how I made steps BACKWARDS every month with the student loan payments because the interest rates for the student loans were nearly triple that of the mortgage!). I grapple with the privilege of this, since I know I was able to make it happen...but I don't have any "haves" with it, either. I don't own a fancy house. We don't own land, and I'm okay with that. I don't mind paying higher-than-average taxes in a blue state because it means someone else's kids get a good education (and mine will someday, too). My mortgage is less than most rent around me because timing got us here and luck, too.
I try to be transparent on numbers because most people will see a sub-200 mortgage and be shocked. They should be because 2018 was not that long ago. (I didn't pay anything down beyond the lowest down payment possible because my husband and I didn't have money to do more. We have no family wealth. We also will never be able to afford an update/expansion/whatever and we're OKAY with that!).
I relate to your house story so much! My own house story is long and underpinned with hard feelings about privilege but also, is further complicated by grief and loss. (My last mortgage, which we could just barely sustain, was paid off in full because it was insured and my husband died.) I currently live in a small, definitely-not-insta-worthy duplex with one full bathroom for me and two daughters, one of whom is 13 and practically lives in it. It’s not ideal, and yes, so many people ask me when I’m adding a second bathroom to the place. It gets old.
I feel like so much of the housing issues now stem from this idea years ago that you got married, you bought a house, you had kids, etc. I must have somehow missed that because I didn't own a home until I was almost 40. We had been married for 10 years and had always rented. We just never felt the need to take on homeownership. But now I'm like we are not moving, we have a extremely low interest rate, and I'm not losing that. Plus what I see homes that are smaller than ours going for I am shocked! Now those may be more updated, but I'd rather have the space than the new (because we looked at those homes too). And our home is not updated. We were lucky that it was old enough that some updates had been done (screened in patio, painting, small upgrades to interior spaces), but what we have done are the things that had to be done (new HVAC, new roof, new fence, new exterior doors - which included 6 doors and a patio slider) and we've also done some of the replacement items with upgrades for safety (garage door opener with all the bells & whistles, wifi thermostat - after having AC issues when we were gone). Our next project - a full home generator because in Florida that's practical. Would I like to redo at least one bathroom and paint the whole house with new trim & doors and get new flooring and repaint the entire exterior of the house and redo all the landscaping? Yes. But right now they are fine and we have 2 dogs who are still young and those old floors are not being damaged by them. Pretty sure our neighbors have completely redone their entire home now (interior and exterior) and added a pool, but the value of our home is still really good because of our lot size and square footage. And good for them, but I love my older home and it works for us. Someday I'd like to have something with more land, but honestly we really do love our home. If I had all the money there are certainly things I would do, but we are not handy which makes all those costs even greater.
This hit hard and is something I think about A LOT. Most people my age can't afford a home and we've been LUCKY to own two in our almost 10 years of marriage. Honestly, it boils down to nothing but luck and taking a risk at the right time. If we had to buy the house we bought three years ago in today's economy, we absolutely would not be able to afford it. Like you, we also can't afford upgrades beyond maintenance. As much as I'd love to redo parts of our house, it's not even on my radar at the moment. It's a lesson in gratitude and contentment.
This was beautifully written! I could feel the mixed feelings as you recounted your tale. I think we often take a snapshot view of privilege: Who has it in the here and now? But what about the long view (in an imperfect world where privilege exists largely due to inequity)? How has it flowed over a family’s time? How does it evolve? How do we use privilege? How do we share it?
Oh wow, fascinating, thanks for sharing! Home ownership is such a complicated issue in so many ways and it's something incredibly warped by social media.
My now husband and I bought our first house in 2006 when I was 20 and he was 27. We bought a modest starter home when the market was incredibly different than it is now. We quickly found ourselves upside down on what was a traditionally safe investment. We were in that small home for much longer than planned, we essentially broke even when we sold in 2015 and acquired the home we have now at auction, as is (and it definitely had some issues), we'd never be where we are otherwise. We've dumped a lot of money and sweat equity into our home since we've owned it and I'm quite proud of our circumstances, but some real luck and privilege involved and we're incredibly grateful all around.
I think home ownership is treated... hmm... casually and expected for such a huge investment involving so many factors.
My husband and I bought our home in 2012, when the market was vastly different than it is today. But! Our lives, our family situation, and our incomes were also very different. We almost couldn’t afford this house then, the mortgage payment was daunting, and our job stability felt… tenuous. We took, what we deemed at the time, the risk anyway.
I’m so tired of feeling shame or guilt (or feeling like I should feel those things) for our luck. It didn’t feel like luck at the time, though it does now. In those moments 12 years ago, it felt impossible. It was hard. We almost walked away from the process.
I do empathize with folks looking to buy their first home now. We certainly can’t sell right now because we can’t afford today’s market—and I think that creates an inventory limitation that hurts all of us.
Our home’s value has increased 3x since we bought it. So I also ponder this: Would I sell at today’s market prices? Or would I sell for a price that feels like “enough” for me? In either case, I wouldn’t be able to afford something else. But in the latter case, it would create affordability for someone else. (Though I could never guarantee the buyer wouldn’t just flip it for their own profit.)
The market’s changed so much in 12 years that I can’t help but wonder where we’ll be in another 12. I know it’ll be different. I can only hope that different means better.
This subject is such an important one for me personally too. I bought my first house (traditional purchase) at 24 right before my wedding. Our income was modest to say the least. But the cost of houses was still reasonable. Real estate was so hot back then (a big time seller's market in the early 2000's), so we were able to tap into our equity twice because home values kept going up while rates were still low. We refinanced first to pay off debt, then again to pull out money for the purchase of another property. This just WON'T happen for my newly adult-aged kids anytime soon. But it will happen to some degree in the future. This current housing environment is very discouraging but home ownership is still a meaningful path to generational wealth. Don't lose hope. Manage your debt and be thoughtful consumers!
Thank you for sharing your story! I actually put it on my list to write about my house story after the AHP comment thread, too. I think it’s important for people to share the privileges and luck that help them “achieve” various financial milestones like owning a home, because otherwise we just see all these people so much better off than us and think we must be doing something wrong. But it’s just as important for those conversations to include those of us who struggle or make sacrifices, so people can understand our realities, too.
I moved from an affirming city into a small town with a low cost of living, and I emptied my already-inadequate IRA to make a down payment on my house. I’m OK with my decisions, but I do get frustrated that my options were so limited compared to others’.
We’ve lived in our tiny Cape Cod-style house for 47 years with just one tiny bathroom—and yet got through the teen years of our children with just the right amount of distress. My “children” are now 48 and 47. Both own their homes, not because of any privilege but because of hard work. In my town, the current craze is to tear down houses like ours and build monstrosities that I’m sure have more than one tiny bathroom. It makes me sad to think of all the family history and stories that disappear when those houses are torn down.
Katy—Thank you for sharing your story. I look forward to more behind the scenes tales.
To everyone else—Be thankful for and take pride in wherever you live.
This is all so complicated. We bought a starter house fixer-upper in 1999, a delapidated little Victorian. We subsequently realized we’re not fixer-upper people. Our house is kinda embarrassing, but the mortgage payment is like $600. In our city, a 1 bedroom apartment is twice that much rent.
It’s funny how I can feel really poor and really privileged multiple times each week.
Thank you so much for writing about this. My husband and I (both public educators) bought our tiny house 10 yrs ago as a "starter home" for us and our three boys. For so many reasons (interest rates, low-pay for teachers, soaring housing prices, paying off debt, etc), we cannot comfortably afford to buy anything bigger. I get caught in this web of feeling shame because my husband and I both chose a profession with very limited income growth opportunities. (It also doesn't help when people comment on the fact that we are raising three boys in 1,000 sq ft. "I don't know how you do it! We could never live in something so small!" Sigh.) I remind myself constantly that I am so privileged to own a house at all and this hunger for more and bigger and better is truly an American phenomenon.
A lot of this resonates with me. We bought our first house in 2009, at the absolute bottom of the market, in a rural Wisconsin town, and I was 24. I fought tooth and nail to GET that mortgage since we had no wealth, I made a whopping $32,000 as a masters-degreed librarian, and the $129,000 asking price was too high (I negotiated down to $121 or $123, I can't remember). We sold it in 2018, another low point in the market, and used the meager profits from selling to put a downpayment on our second house for another unimaginably low $171,000. We refinanced the mortgage in 2021 and now will never leave because of our low interest rate, the low mortgage rate, and our home being fine enough. It's an old Victorian and I love it to bits and pieces, but it will NEVER be an instagrammy home. It will always have weird spots and quirks and never be big enough, but I also don't care about that.
I think the ability to not care comes because I have seen how much more reasonable in America it is to pay down a mortgage than it is to pay down student debt. I'll own my home outright years before my student loans are paid off (in that first house, I used to look at how much progress I made on the mortgage each month vs. how I made steps BACKWARDS every month with the student loan payments because the interest rates for the student loans were nearly triple that of the mortgage!). I grapple with the privilege of this, since I know I was able to make it happen...but I don't have any "haves" with it, either. I don't own a fancy house. We don't own land, and I'm okay with that. I don't mind paying higher-than-average taxes in a blue state because it means someone else's kids get a good education (and mine will someday, too). My mortgage is less than most rent around me because timing got us here and luck, too.
I try to be transparent on numbers because most people will see a sub-200 mortgage and be shocked. They should be because 2018 was not that long ago. (I didn't pay anything down beyond the lowest down payment possible because my husband and I didn't have money to do more. We have no family wealth. We also will never be able to afford an update/expansion/whatever and we're OKAY with that!).
I relate to your house story so much! My own house story is long and underpinned with hard feelings about privilege but also, is further complicated by grief and loss. (My last mortgage, which we could just barely sustain, was paid off in full because it was insured and my husband died.) I currently live in a small, definitely-not-insta-worthy duplex with one full bathroom for me and two daughters, one of whom is 13 and practically lives in it. It’s not ideal, and yes, so many people ask me when I’m adding a second bathroom to the place. It gets old.
I feel like so much of the housing issues now stem from this idea years ago that you got married, you bought a house, you had kids, etc. I must have somehow missed that because I didn't own a home until I was almost 40. We had been married for 10 years and had always rented. We just never felt the need to take on homeownership. But now I'm like we are not moving, we have a extremely low interest rate, and I'm not losing that. Plus what I see homes that are smaller than ours going for I am shocked! Now those may be more updated, but I'd rather have the space than the new (because we looked at those homes too). And our home is not updated. We were lucky that it was old enough that some updates had been done (screened in patio, painting, small upgrades to interior spaces), but what we have done are the things that had to be done (new HVAC, new roof, new fence, new exterior doors - which included 6 doors and a patio slider) and we've also done some of the replacement items with upgrades for safety (garage door opener with all the bells & whistles, wifi thermostat - after having AC issues when we were gone). Our next project - a full home generator because in Florida that's practical. Would I like to redo at least one bathroom and paint the whole house with new trim & doors and get new flooring and repaint the entire exterior of the house and redo all the landscaping? Yes. But right now they are fine and we have 2 dogs who are still young and those old floors are not being damaged by them. Pretty sure our neighbors have completely redone their entire home now (interior and exterior) and added a pool, but the value of our home is still really good because of our lot size and square footage. And good for them, but I love my older home and it works for us. Someday I'd like to have something with more land, but honestly we really do love our home. If I had all the money there are certainly things I would do, but we are not handy which makes all those costs even greater.
This hit hard and is something I think about A LOT. Most people my age can't afford a home and we've been LUCKY to own two in our almost 10 years of marriage. Honestly, it boils down to nothing but luck and taking a risk at the right time. If we had to buy the house we bought three years ago in today's economy, we absolutely would not be able to afford it. Like you, we also can't afford upgrades beyond maintenance. As much as I'd love to redo parts of our house, it's not even on my radar at the moment. It's a lesson in gratitude and contentment.
This was beautifully written! I could feel the mixed feelings as you recounted your tale. I think we often take a snapshot view of privilege: Who has it in the here and now? But what about the long view (in an imperfect world where privilege exists largely due to inequity)? How has it flowed over a family’s time? How does it evolve? How do we use privilege? How do we share it?