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American dream of owning a home is dead, majority of renters say (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 9 months ago by MicroWave to c/news

142 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Exclusive: most renters surveyed by Harris Poll say the areas they live in have become so unaffordable they are ‘barely livable’

The poll, conducted by the Harris Poll Thought Leadership and Future Practice, asked survey takers to identify themselves as renters or homeowners, along with other demographic information. Those polled were asked their opinion on home ownership in the United States. For many, especially renters, the outlook is bleak.

Though the vast majority of renters polled said they want to own a home in the future, 61% said they are worried they will never be able to. A similar percentage believe no matter how hard they work, they’ll never be able to afford a home.

“When you think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and housing is right at that foundational level of security, the implications on consumer psyche when things feel so unaffordable is something that will impact everyone,” said Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at Harris Poll. The American dream of owning a home “is looking more like a daydream for renters”.

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[–] shadowSprite 115 points 9 months ago (25 children)

When I was in my late teens/early twenties I truly thought that in ten years I'd own a home for sure, with some hard work and dedication.

Ten years later, I don't even get to buy groceries every week or eat every day. I've lost 30 pounds in the last year just from skipping so many meals.

I can't wait to see what the next ten years holds.

And if one more person tells me I should make sure to invest for retirement... I can't even feed myself, what you want me to invest? My retirement plan is work until I'm too old/sick/injured and then off myself.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Have you tried having rich parents? That helps...

[–] shadowSprite 44 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I wasn't smart enough to make that choice this time around, but next life being born into a rich family is my number one criteria :)

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's really quite easy. Just cut out the avocado toast, stop buying those expensive coffees, and invest that cool $69,000,000 your parents left you from their work on the board of an orphan crushing factory.

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (6 children)

Off topic tanget but I'm pretty tired of being told "housing is affordable, just not where YOU want to live" I'm in a midwest state and buying a home anywhere near a city is apparently now a luxury.

All my home owning friends keep telling me to stop throwing away my money on rent, and just move somewhere the nearest grocery store is quick 40 minute drive away. There are USDA loans to help, no city tax, no homeless or crime, if I could only stop clinging to "societal interactions and infrastructure" I could have a great homestead!

What a joke.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 9 months ago (1 children)

if I could only stop clinging to "societal interactions and infrastructure" I could have a great homestead!

This is so true, and something that really gets ignored in the discussion. I don't WANT to move to bumbfuck nowhere where I have no roots, I want to stay and give back to the community that raised and nurtured me into the person I am today. Unfortunately I (and a lot of others) have been priced out by home speculators.

How is there a loneliness epidemic in all age groups of our society, and yet no one is asking if one of the factors might be people having to move for education and then work to chase affordability, while getting pushed further and further away from their social networks?

[–] FlyingSquid 20 points 9 months ago

Even if it were true, which it is not, "move to some nowhere shithole if you want to buy a house" is a stupid way of framing this untenable situation.

[–] Maggoty 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Yeah the whole, move away from all the jobs to buy a house you need your job to afford line is ridiculous.

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[–] givesomefucks 81 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

Veterans get their loans backed by the government, so no down payment.

It allowed me to get a decent sized 3 bedroom house on almost an acre inside of a metro location... For $400 more than a 1 bedroom apartment down the street a decade ago. I got two friends as roommates at first, paid lower than my old rent and they saved up their own down payments and both moved out into homes they bought in just a few years because I charged really cheap rent.

I just checked, my old apartment has went up $700 in that decade.

The Down Payment is the hardest part of buying a home. You can't save up 25k while paying what's essentially a mortgage payment.

Give first time homebuyers the same program, and loads of people who think they'll never own a home would be able to do so and pay less than renting within just a few years.

If we don't do anything, those people are going to be lifelong renters.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 9 months ago

If we don't do anything, those people are going to be lifelong renters.

Yeah, that's the current idea. We'll all own nothing and we will like it

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (6 children)

We were lucky enough to buy in 2019 before everything got out of sight in our area. We used a FHA loan which required a 3% down payment and I got a first time homebuyer grant that covered all of that which allowed us to pay closing and moving costs since we were leaving in a hurry due to the small podunk town we lived in for 12 years stopping extra trash haul off and allowing trash burning in town instead. Almost every day my house was full of smoke. I had to choose between my home or my health. We were outbid on about a dozen houses by landlords. With the loan type we got stuck with a PMI, but even with that and extortionate Texas home insurance rates we still pay half of the renters in the house next to us. Although we'll never be able to afford moving now and if we had waited any longer we would have been stuck in the corrupt small town EPA violation. We paid 96k for a brick 3/1 and five years later it's shot up to 240k in value. I feel bad for the people that can't get one now because I fear it's more going to get any better when half the country cares more about voting for the people they believe hate the same people they do.

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[–] Fosheze 17 points 9 months ago (3 children)

There is a federal first time home buyer program even for non military members. You can put basically 0% down on your first house. You just also have to pay PMI until you have 20% equity in your home. So you are better off making as large of a down payment as you can but it can be as low as 0%. Of course there's still closing costs but that doesn't cost too much more than most rentals charge for a security deposit anyways. As far as PMI goes it isn't that expensive. With the PMI, taxes, and insurance included my mortgage payment on a 3 bedroom house is still less than rent on a 1 bedroom apartment in my area.

[–] thesystemisdown 23 points 9 months ago

It's better than renting, but PMI is a racket and needs to be discontinued. It's a handout to the wealthy. The mortgage insurance is the property itself. If you don't pay your loan, they take the property. It's a hassle to foreclose a house, but I think mortgage lenders do just fine overall. They must assume some risk, it's part of the deal.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

PMI is just another weight around your neck, it shouldn’t be normalized

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[–] FlyingSquid 49 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Corporations should not be allowed to own and rent out multiple dwellings beyond a single apartment building.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Corporations can't be trusted to run an apartment building either.

Apartment buildings should be owned by their tenants.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Renting by itself would be fine, it's just that there's barely any rent control in North America, and you're constantly at the mercy of your landlord, inflation and general greed. Put national standards for renter protection and rent increases in place and this would be much less of a problem.

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[–] UltraMagnus0001 34 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Just saw a report in Georgia, cooperation owns tens of thousands of homes for lease only

[–] GladiusB 13 points 9 months ago

And charge way more rent than necessary

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[–] LifeOfChance 30 points 9 months ago (5 children)

I'm currently selling my house because I can't afford it anymore. When I bought the house I made sure it was 20% below my income. Mortgage went up $600 this year along with everything else I got robbed of home ownership. I worked tirelessly to buy the house and now being forced to sell I feel absolutely defeated....

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm curious as to why you weren't in a fixed rate mortgage.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (7 children)

Maybe it's tax and insurance increases. That's what I'm seeing.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago

If it's 600 per month (as I am assuming), and it was split evenly between taxes and insurance, that would mean an increase in taxes of 3600 and insurance by 3600. My insurance for the entire year isn't even close to that. My taxes went up on my million dollar (thanks to a nearly 50% increaseduring the pandemic) by 5%, which is less than 40 dollars a month. So I find it hard to believe that it is just the taxes and the insurance.

As I said, I was assuming they meant per month, but I could be wrong and it's only 600 for the year. But then if a 50$ increase per month in expenses pushed them the edge, they were never in a really comfortable territory to begin with.

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[–] mods_are_assholes 28 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The amount of people justifying this ridiculous housing bubble is disgusting.

So much love for landlords in this thread, on lemmy of all fucking places.

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[–] Maggoty 27 points 9 months ago (2 children)

You know why they call it the dream right?

[–] aphonefriend 23 points 9 months ago

You gotta be asleep to believe it.

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[–] nifty 22 points 9 months ago (10 children)

About 36% of US population rents (same as developed countries like Denmark and New Zealand), so I am confused why this is being framed as a uniquely American problem? I think the issue with real estate being sold to corporations is the main problem (which happens everywhere) as unreasonable expectations for continued growth and lack of new housing prices people out. Where I get the figures: link

[–] thesilverpig 36 points 9 months ago

For working class people home ownership was really the primary way to stabilize and build wealth. Which is important since we don't have a social safety net, most of our retirement has been privatized, healthcare and education are dramatically more expensive etc. etc. and since working class folk can't build up generational wealth we are moving into technosurfdom. I don't know if it's unique but it sure do suck over here for a lot of people.

I'm relatively lucky but shit be hard here.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (6 children)

I hope someday to be able to afford a plot of land to be otherwise homeless on where no one can legally fuck with me or put me in jail for doing it. In theory this might work as long as it's done far away from anything resembling a HOA. I'm sure there are measures in place to prevent people from doing that, maybe there's a minimum purchase price or acre requirement for land outside of population centers or something.

Out in the country you see people doing this with campers sometimes. Never talked to any of them though.

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[–] buzz86us 17 points 9 months ago (13 children)

Very easy to own a home. Just buy a house in the middle of nowhere, and then have a campervan

[–] [email protected] 31 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Yeah... I've been looking in a lot of "the middle of nowheres" and I can't find work anywhere even remotely close (1hr drive) that doesn't pay complete dogshit that wouldn't cover the bills. Not to mention the houses I keep finding are in bumfuck nowhere and yet are asking $150k+ for a house that is listed as a "teardown."

...$150k for the luxury of having to build a new home over it... It's absolutely fucking disgusting.

But yes, if this advice is for the lucky tech bros that can move wherever the hell they want, then sure. There are houses to "buy."

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[–] kaitco 15 points 9 months ago (8 children)

Even the houses in the middle of nowhere are $400K in my state. Rundown, off State Route X, nearest neighbors are all poor trash house? Still $400K.

I’m looking to build in the next year, and just expect that housing will be 50% of my pay or more because I’m sick of renting and being unable to prepare for when the rent shoots up $300 a month like it did last year.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (3 children)

seems about right. at this point my plan is to buy a small bit of land somewhere and plop some modular/tiny homes on it and call it good. not that it's just that easy, but i'd rather try to find some resemblance of normalcy than play the rigged game.

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[–] DigitalTraveler42 13 points 9 months ago

How is the average kid going to afford a home? They can't afford college, cause that's super expensive now, and none of the high school diploma or GED level jobs pay anywhere near enough for them to afford to live on their own, never-the-less afford their own home.

This is what class warfare looks like, and I'd also debate that this is what economic terrorism looks like, either way we need something better and we definitely aren't going to get any better under Trump and his GOP's leadership, because they're the ones helping cause and exacerbate the problems, and they have no intention on solving them, because solving problems is expensive and the Christian Nationalists among them see poor people as being "inherently sinful", and the racists among them see poor people as the minorities they hate.

The left needs to take the House back, keep the Senate and then do something about the corrupt supreme Court, while having a left adjacent President, which is certainly not Trump.

[–] militaryintelligence 13 points 9 months ago

Poor Ron lost his tennis court and his property value may fall. Have a heart guys.

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