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Category: mortgage
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The 10 most affordable cities for homebuyers right now
The vast majority of American renters say they hope to one day own a home, but with rising prices, low housing stock, and high mortgage rates, it can feel like an impossible goal.
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Americans are getting priced out of the American dream
For millions of Americans, “someday” is starting to look like “never” as home ownership moves further and further out of reach.
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Home Depot shows that the housing market chill is hitting hard
On the surface, the picture looks bright – but dig a little deeper and you’ll uncover warning signs. On Tuesday, Home Depot posted Q1 sales rising 9% year-over-year to total nearly $40 billion. However, comparable sales – what existing stores actually brought in – fell 0.3% overall, with only a tiny 0.2% bump in the…
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The 5 states where homeowners spend the most on their mortgages — and the 5 where they spend the least
It’s no secret that housing prices in the U.S. have soared. In 2020, the median U.S. home price was $289,000. Now, it’s $418,000. And with mortgage rates remaining high, many people feel like homeownership is simply out of the question.
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I didn’t buy my first home until I was in my ’50s. I wish I’d done it sooner.
Margaret Awano bought her home (not shown here) in her mid-50s but wishes it had been sooner. Hispanolistic/Getty Images
- Owning my own home had always been a lifelong dream of mine.
- However, I waited too long to start looking for homes and my age became my disadvantage.
- I got a mortgage at 55 but felt like I would have qualified for better terms if I was younger.
I knew I didn’t want to rent forever but different life situations kept pushing the dream of home ownership aside.
I live outside the US and spent two decades of my life staying in my partner’s home. I never saw the need to branch out and get my own place.
On countless occasions, he said, “mi casa su casa” and for the period of our relationship, his home felt like mine.
After we mutually parted ways, and I was out looking for an apartment, reality hit me hard: I was 55 and didn’t own my own place.
I waited 2 years before getting my mortgage
I started looking for homes in 2022 but decided to wait and see if home prices would go down so I could purchase something for cash. I waited for about two years but prices never dropped.
So, in March 2024, I started looking at mortgage options. However, I’d read plenty of stories online from people in my age group about rejection and urging others not to waste their time.
I got more discouraged by the minute, but a fire in me refused to let me give up. So, despite my low expectations and worries I wouldn’t qualify because of my age, I sent a number of applications to different lenders to see what would come of it.
Six weeks later, I got my first call back from one of the mortgage lenders. After accounting for my age, savings, employment, pension, and credit card debt, the lender said I qualified for $300,000 at 6% interest to be paid back over 10 years.
I kept shopping around to see if I could find lenders with longer repayment times and better terms. However, all of my offers were about the same.
Looking back, I wish I applied for a mortgage at an earlier age. There were better terms for younger people with an income, like qualifying for a 15 or 30 year repayment period. However, 10 years was the longest period I was offered.
In the end, I went with the first lender.
What helped me get my mortgage
I wish I’d bought my home sooner, but everything turned out alright. Courtesy of Margaret A
I had a few good things going for me that helped me land my mortgage.
First, I had a solid credit score of 720 that I earned from paying down my debt with regular, on-time payments over the years. I also had minimal credit card debt by the time I applied.
Second, I had over $120K in savings and put up half of it toward the down payment for my home. I pay about $2,300 per month for the principal and interest.
My lender also advised that a guarantor would strengthen my mortgage application. So I talked to my older brother who agreed to serve as my guarantor.
I got my dream home in the end
I remember getting the keys to my home and I’m still obsessed with it. The kitchen is something out of a dream and the backyard has the most beautiful garden I’ve ever seen.
I’ve lived in my home for seven months and can confidently say it’s one of the best investments I’ve made for myself.
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Meet the baby-boomer homeowners defying their generation’s struggle to downsize without losing money
Some baby boomers have been lucky enough to sell their large homes in a booming market and downsize. Irfan Khan/Getty Images
- Three baby boomer homeowners told BI how they managed to downsize in retirement.
- These older homeowners benefited from soaring home values and low mortgage rates.
- They managed to find affordable homes with easy access to family and community.
Getting rid of a life’s worth of stuff and shrinking your living quarters isn’t most people’s idea of a good time. But Holly Gates had fun saying goodbye to half of her things.
“I’m probably more of a minimalist than I ever wanted to admit to,” the 75-year-old retiree told BI, “so downsizing was a lovely challenge for me.”
Baby boomers have been getting some of the blame for the shortage of larger homes on the market. Many of them are resistant to downsizing — opting to age in place in homes that have exploded in value. And some who want to downsize are having a hard time finding accessible and affordable retirement housing.
But others have gotten lucky, managing to cash in on the booming housing market and trade in for a home that better suits their needs.
Two years ago, Gates and her husband sold their Oceanside, California, home and moved 40 miles south, where they bought a house for less than half the price and square footage. What convinced them to move wasn’t just a desire to downsize. Not ready for assisted living, but eager for community, the couple wanted to live in a walkable, close-knit place full of active people their age.
That’s just what they found at Laguna Woods, a 55-plus community of nearly 19,000 residents just south of Irvine. They have more than 200 clubs, including for music, astronomy, and Badminton, seven clubhouses for golf and bridge players to gather, several pools to pick from, and a bus system that ferries residents to medical appointments and shops. Gates recently celebrated her 75th birthday with 30 neighbors in a shared event space.
“We’re all in this together, and we watch out for each other,” she said. “The enormity of the pluses outweighs the small things, like an extra bedroom.”
The couple sold their Oceanside home for $1.07 million and bought their current home for $525,000, all cash, according to documents viewed by BI. They have to pay a $1,200 monthly homeowners association fee, which covers their property taxes, water bill, and home maintenance, including recent plumbing repairs and a new roof, Gates said. The co-op model removes much of the burden and liability of homeownership.
Holly Gates’ friends at her birthday party in a shared space at their 55+ community. Courtesy of Holly Gates
Moving near family
Leaving Orange County, California, wasn’t part of Bruce Levin’s plan. But when he got sick and retired from his 20-year career as a chef for Amtrak, Levin realized he wasn’t up to the task of maintaining his 1950s bungalow with a pool in Buena Park.
It was 2021 and the value of his home of about 35 years had ballooned. So he sold it for $730,000 without making any repairs and moved 200 miles north to Central California to live near his daughter and two grandchildren. Mortgage rates were still low, and Levin, a widower, managed to buy an accessible, single-story home for $335,000 in the small city of Exeter. These days, he rides his electric golf cart to a local senior community for lunch and sees his girlfriend who lives nearby.
Levin is healthier now and misses his old neighborhood and taking advantage of his Amtrak pass to hop trains around the state. But he doesn’t think he can live his old, fully independent life anymore. “I’m not like I was, but I’m okay,” he said. “I’m not pole vaulting, I’m not running a marathon. I walk with a cane.”
He added, “LA has become a very young town.”
Like Levin, Hedy Vahabzadeh, 72, and her husband moved to live near their daughters and grandchildren in retirement. The couple sold their home in Houston in 2017 and moved to the Florida panhandle. The couple managed to find an 11-acre piece of land in Freeport and built a new home. “The property was a steal. It was covered in trees. There was nothing around it,” Vahabzadeh said. But her husband “had a vision.”
Hedy Vahabzadeh and her husband designed their home in Freeport, Florida, to be comfortable as they age. Courtesy of Hedy Vahabzadeh
Their Freeport home is one story with just a few steps on the front and back porches. “We built it to be comfortable in our old age,” she said.
These days, the area is a sought-after vacation and retirement destination, and Vahabzadeh feels they got in just before demand for homes there exploded. “It’s a comfortable life,” she said. “We’re not trying to keep up with the Joneses kind of people. And we’ve never been that. So we’re just enjoying ourselves.”
Gates, Vahabzadeh, and Levin all benefited from lucky timing. They bought real estate before the demand for — and prices of — homes skyrocketed amid the Covid pandemic. Levin and Gates managed to cash in on the booming market at a moment in their lives when less home was more.
“I’m thanking God that we did this stuff before all this inflation,” Vahabzadeh said. “We were just fortunate.”
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Read the original article on Business Insider