I got a 15yr fixed at 2.1% in 2021 and I still feel lucky, even though I’m not the winner of this thread.
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thats killer though!
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Yeah. Paying the bank back with cheaper dollars thanks to inflation remaining above the target rate feels good.
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as long as inflation remains above 3% im still winning there too lol, definitely feels good!
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Doing a refi right now to use the excess funds to pay of all debt and just leave me with my mortgage, payment, car insurance, electric, water, food, etc…
I figured the 20k I have in debt at extremely high interest rates being lumped into the house payment at a lower rate (6 percent fixed, $150k over 30 years) is a smart move. My interest rate when I bought it about 4 years ago was 7 percent, so at least it is going down a point. Still stupid high but that’s just on account of having maxed out credit cards and just paying minimums. Will be awesome to cut them cards up and actually get to have money to put into savings or towards the principal on the mortgage.
@JEA86 I am not a smart man, but I’m fine with being told I am making a mistake in a public setting, lol, feel free to give advice. The appraiser came today
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Nah you aren’t make a bad move imo - some of that higher interest debt is much harder to nail down. Looking at it from a high level moving up 1% to save 20+ on unsecured debt is the correct move, ultimately you will refi again within the next 7-12 years anyway
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Awesome, thank you brother
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Anytime my friend
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It’s a fever dream to buy right now. I live in a town with supposedly over 2k people. Last I saw, we were 1,400, but I did move away for a minute. Houses here are 2 bed, one bath, need some serious electrical upgrades and they’re still 250-400k. We don’t even have a Walmart for 80 miles. The hospital is just a clinic. And we’re more reasonable than most other cities around us! Except for the one town down the road but ain’t no one moving there.
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Comparing house prices over time to the price of gold isn’t really a fair comparison. The average house is much larger now than it was in the 1960s:
Here is a relevant quote from the article to save you a click:
Here’s a sample, with the figure referring to the average floor area of a new single-family home:
- 1920: 1,048 square feet
- 1930: 1,129
- 1940: 1,177
- 1950: 983
- 1960: 1,289
- 1970: 1,500
- 1980: 1,740
- 1990: 2,080
- 2000: 2,266
- 2010: 2,392
- 2014: 2,657
I got 5.9 in 2023 and consider myself lucky hahahah
That’s the year mine was built. Seems to be the runt of the litter.
Not sure at all your point with this.
In 1970 it took 20,000 grams of gold to buy a 1000 sq ft house.
In 2024 it only takes 6,000 grams of gold to buy a house that is 2.5 - 3 times larger.
The spread is inflation due to national debt.
Before leaving a gold backed dollar an equivalent amount of gold was held by the treasury for every dollar printed. After 1970 it steadily takes more and more dollars as there they become worth less and less.
If we had never left the gold standard and created a fiat currency and the inflation rate had remained the same, then the median house price would only around 175-200k. Instead it’s more than double that. Leaving the gold standard meant the govt could print as much money as they wanted and the value of the dollar declined rapidly as they printed more and more.
The reason everything is compared to gold is because it still takes basically the same amount of effort to extract gold from the earth. The time and effort is baked into the price and that hasn’t changed that much in recent history. Also it’s a commodity that has been traded for thousands of years.
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My wife and I purchased our current house in 2015, and got 3.25%, which I feel incredibly luck to have gotten.
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My point was simply that there are factors other than inflation that might be partially responsible for the increase in home prices. Larger houses cost more to build than smaller houses. Lower inventory and increasing demand raises home prices, even if inflation is zero. The market conditions are different now than they were in the 1960s.
Never leaving the gold standard might have mitigated the dollar-inflation component of the cost of a home, but it wouldn’t have any effect on the other factors.
The median home size has gone up 150% while the cost has gone up over 2000%.
How much of a factor do you think supply & demand is in the price increase?
There is a shortage of 4 to 7 million homes in the US.
Not gonna lie, this thread make me sad as hell, will never be able to even mount a shelf on the wall as I will be forever in rent.
About the increase of prices in Uk, the first factor is the gentrification, poor people are getting pushed outer and outer, my area was a sort of rough one couple years ago, after a while they started to requalify the whole place, starting from the station, tall new buildings with impossible prices, added a Starbucks and other stuff like that and a room for rent when from 450 to 900 £ a month which is insane (the area is not even that cute), this is what happen and happened in many areas of London, my uncle live here from when he was 18, when he bought his house it was around 200k now the same house is worth a million, the area around him get fixed.
To be really honest, gentrification should not make the price raise like that also because the work done to the area doesn’t really worth it, add a starbuck (which is the worst coffee ever) and other couple of food chain should not be an excuse to raise a price that much.
In 2 years the apartment we rent went from 1400 to 2200£, our landlord kept the price as it was as he likes us and didn’t see why increase the price that much, we have been lucky or honestly I had to say goodbye to that apartment.
Outside London the situation is better with prices but is a bit harder to find jobs, in UK there are literally towns of jobeless people surviving on benefits, or people that have to commit crimes to survive.
I like UK, it gives me a second home, a girlfriend and other chances but damn London is seriously becoming out of hand
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I’m also uk, the house market is terrible yes,
and you usually only fix a mortgage for 5 years, not the duration, so you take an extra risk
i would say leaving london is not as bad as you can think, the price of everything there is much higher, (homes, food, services)
I have moved into the west of England, and there are also many nice places in the north such as manchester and york, where housing is not as crazy
it really depends on your industry of employment, if you work in finance or similar you have no choice almost but to be in london, but if you do something less london-centric you may be able to move
(i also hear Manchester has good yoyo meetups)
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