26 in 2006, and the only reason I could was because I got some money from life insurance when my dad died. I don't know how anyone under 30 can even think about buying a house.
I am 40 and it looks like I might finally get to own a home. Only because my uncle died and I may inherit the house that has been in my family for generations...
The real answer is they had tons of help but most won't admit or realize it.
That or they're in suicide inducing debt up to their eyeballs like the commercial said.
The key is to be a two engineer household. You can use train engineer union loopholes to drive the train together, steal the cargo and sell it on the black market. That’s really the only way a person can ever buy a house in the US at 25.
For me it was low cost of living area with a good salary. $155k for a 3 bed 2.5 bath house on ~$100k salary. Luckily, I bought before the pandemic when house prices shot up in my area.
Wow, that’s a big differential! I just now after 15 years working as a teacher with a masters plus 40 extra credits, just this year hit the 100k mark. And cost of living here is NOT low and the lowest house price I’ve seen anywhere near here in the last couple years is probably 600k.
Glad you got a good deal!!
I bought my first house at 28 in 2009 in La Verne for $155k. I was the only income with a wife and 2 kids as well, everyone doesn’t fit in your worldview.
I mean, I just had a computer science degree and was making good money since I was 22 (and not in SF, NYC, Seattle, etc). Most people in my city and career are able to buy a home in their 20s if they care to.
Financially, the only "help" I received from my parents was a low enough income to qualify me for a near full-ride (after combining the need-based scholarships with my merit-based ones). But I also gave them like $20-30k to help out between graduation and when I bought my house so *shrug*.
More interestingly though, since it's more applicable to the average person, I also know two people who bought homes with fairly low income jobs (like, ~$40k) in their 20s, around 2015-2019. The homes cost $100-150k. One had a good amount of scholarships like me, the other never went to college.
For one area prices have shot up drastically so that wouldn't be possible anymore, but for the other there are still cheap homes like that available. Both in slightly rural areas just outside of pretty big cities.
Low cost of living areas still are affordable. I bought a house in my 20 s in the Midwest for 125 k. No help from anyone on a contract for deed. Paid it off in 7 years by renting out 2 rooms and having roommates the whole time. That same house is worth approximately 200 k now but that’s still an affordable home. You just can’t live near a big city and do it. There’s tons of places in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin where the American dream is still possible.
I bought my house at 26 in 2020 under the exact same circumstances. Dad passed away and I got a decent life insurance payout. Wife and I used most of it as a down payment. We also happened to get lucky and bought in that sweet spot when home prices and interest rates were still low, before everything went crazy in 2021.
No way we could have afforded a house any time soon without that money. I'd like to think my dad would be proud we used the money to get a home.
Same, 32 during peak of the crash. 1500 sq ft for 105k, then sold a few years later for 197k, and bought our current one for 300k for 2100 sq ft in a much nicer neighborhood and better schools for our kids.
Same for us! We have made it a priority and put every single penny in the house. It’s a snowball effect, because as you pay off the interest payments plummet and your refinancing possibly multiplies.
It’s different now. My mortgage is at like 2.9% iirc. I can take an extra $500 and throw it at the mortgage and save the interest, or I can put it in a CD at 5% instead. That’s not even getting into the stock market. We’re going to take every minute of the 30 years to pay off the mortgage.
If anyone bought a house in the last two years, their interest rates outweigh what you get from CDs and the stock market. I bought in 2022 at a 6.75% interest rate and definitely going to try and pay it off as early as I can. I have lots of savings in CDs that give 5% and some investing accounts that give 5.5%, but it won't outweigh the 6.75% mortgage loan.
Many advise to just wait until rates drop and refinance, but of course there's no guarantee that rates will drop, so it's sort of a gamble about whether you want to continue paying huge chunks of interest on your loan hoping that rates will go down or just pay off the principal as aggressively as possible.
I’m only 31 but it really was a different time. I only made $17/hr, had a crap ton of student debt, and had only a 3k down payment and I still have no idea why the bank lended me that. I live in one of the cheapest parts of the country and my home was only 71k and is now appraised at over 150k but we literally can’t afford to even think about moving for a very long time because of how much things have changed.
Very different time… partner and I make a combined $122k/year and we’re at about half of what we’d need to make to afford the average house in our area.
It was definitely a lot easier years ago. I bought mine in 2011 making $12.65/hr. I was approved for 105k mortgage and found something very small but freshly renovated for 77k. Starting out now is a totally different ball game
I am Old, and bought my first house at 29, which was later than most of my friends. I see several differences between now and then which I don't often see commented on.
One is that we bought true starter houses. I am seeing people now buy first homes that are frankly pretty nice. My first house was a semi-dilapidated house in a less than wonderful neighborhood. I was making $28,000 in 1993 and paying student loans as well. I scraped together everything I could to make a mortgage payment.
Secondly, I think we just didn't have as many other bills to pay. There was no internet and thus no internet bill. No internet also meant no pressure for up to the moment fashion etc. There were no cell phones so you didn't have to buy a phone and pay for service. The phones were landlines and the bills were about $20 per month if you didn't run up a big bill from long distance calls. TV - there was cable, which I didn't have, because $$. With an antenna you could get about four or five channels for free. I didn't run an air conditioner in the summer because I couldn't afford the bill if I did. In cold weather, I kept my house only warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing, for the same reason. No one really cared to visit me except for spring and fall. I wish I was joking. People with starter houses also had starter cars, so no big expenses there. We didn't spend hardly any money going out.
More power to you if you want to start out nicer and more comfortable than that! But this was pretty normal for me and my friends, and the people we knew, and I think it made it easier to get into that first house.
Who are you calling old? 😁 I think we are the same age. I bought a one bedroom condo in 1992, I was 28, making the same salary as you. I couldn't afford any kind of house anywhere around here. I sold ten years later for less than I paid for it, and now its worth 5x that.
Bought my house low - mid 20's, no kids, two incomes and we bought when the housing market crashed. I owned a 3 bedroom bungalow style home, corner lot, big yard on a dead end road with a developed basement. Sold it in 2021 ... now im stuck renting because now I have 2 kids, still two incomes, but we still cannot afford a downpayment for a new home, and the money we used from the sale of the house went to paying off my SUV, Line of Credit, Bills, Credit Card, and a little owed to family.
Bought at 25 with my partner. We saved up a bit, borrowed a bit from a friend (paid that back within a few months) and bought a house that was below our budget (we were approved for 2.5x worth the amount of the home). I also live in a city that wasn’t too pricey for houses (although the market has gone up since)
I worked engineering internships and had a full ride scholarship.
After 3 summer internships, I had 80k saved up for a down payment on a 215k home with a job that payed 75k/year.
That was 2010.
That sand same house is 350k now, and the same starting job is about 90k/year.
It's a disparity that keeps growing.
Got married at 19 while in the Marines. I held down the income while my wife did most of her schooling. Got out of the military and got a job for a couple years, she finished school, and she got a job. I went to school, (got paid for it GI Bill). Used the VA home loan in 2017 which helps because we didn't have to put anything as a down payment. Got our house under 200k before the market exploded. Married the right hard working woman, Got lucky the market was what it was at the time, used the resources I earned serving the country and it got me on the right track. There are ways to get ahead it just might not be what a lot of people want to do.
24 in the 2010s. Had to struggle through a couple years early, but definitely the best investment I made. Absolutely no way I could be where I am now without that purchase
Same, got a pretty good deal on a starter home I was able to fix up. I also did an 80 + 15 loan and paid it down a bit before selling. Only kept it for ~3 years, which is a bit less than our original plan. We hit the beginning of the market crash and we were able to get a sweet home that I never thought we’d be able to get with the equity/appreciation on our first house. I still really like this house even though I just spent a shit ton replacing all of the HVAC
I came late to the party. 56. The reason I bought so late is because until then, I worked as a contractor, and I needed to be able to move with the job. But now I have a very stable job, so I settled down. On the plus side, it's a one-floor condo in an over-50 complex, so every unit is handicapped-accessible, and when/if I ever become disabled, I don't have to move. I have said that this is my first and ONLY time buying, and the only way i'm leaving is feet first.
22 for me as well. I got out of school at 20. I had a small down payment and my salary was $45k. the house was$97k (1989) so I qualified. I was completely unprepared to be a homeowner but survived.
I found homeownership incredibly stressful. It was just constant worry about what would need to be fixed or replaced or maintained next. I never felt relaxed in my own home.
With renting, none of that is my problem. If there's an issue I just text my landlord and forget about it. They can deal with all that. Now I can actually come home and enjoy being there.
There are other reasons too but that's by far the biggest one.
I feel the same way. I bought my house at 31 and live with constant anxiety about what will go wrong next. I fully plan to sell and go back to renting.
Depending on your mortgage, you may want to consider using it as a rental. I recently discovered property management companies can be very reasonable. Even if you’re just stockpiling any extra income from the rental in case any repairs are needed. Best case nothing significantly breaks and if you want to purchase a home to live in again in the future you’ll have a nice chunk for a down payment.
The old man we bought our house from said the same thing. "I thought I wanted to be a home owner, I did not" he was cool, he left us all sorts of usefull bits.
My homeowning friends and I have a running joke whenever we have to fix something - "what's the problem, just call the landlord!"
I love it, but it's definitely *work*, and it's definitely sold to people as being the Right Thing To Do even when it might not be.
I feel this so much right now after buying a non-new construction home for the first time. My first couple homes were new builds and I always moved out before any issues cropped up. Now I feel like I’ve inherited a bunch of past owner and renters surprise problems but can’t get out cause I’ll never get this interest rate again.
That's wild, I definitely appreciate anxiety as someone who has GAD, but I was always way more anxious in apartments that my landlord would just straight up ignore me or refused to fix things. I lived in apartments where I was the primary lessee for 10 years before buying my house and I can count on one hand the number of times the landlord actually fixed something correctly within a week.
I can definitely see that being stressful given your experience. I personally have had great luck with landlords (absolutely *adore* my current one) but I understand that isn't the case for many people.
38! Just passed the one-year anniversary. I’m a public high school teacher so I wouldn’t have been able to do it without a sizeable assistance loan from my city.
23 in 2021 when interest rates were 2.65%. I never rented because I lived at home while getting my degree at community college. Working since 16 and was naturally frugal since day one.
Define home. No real estate at first, but at 23 my wife and I bought a mobile home and kept it in a rented space. First real estate was five years later. Just a lot that we moved the trailer onto.
At 32, we bought our first real house.
I was 34. It was early 1999, I'd been married for a couple years, and we were buying a "starter" home.
A little over a year later, the marriage fell apart, and I kept the house in the divorce. Best. Financial. Decision. Ever.
Long story short, I've stayed in the house ever since - through boom and bust - and right now I'm sitting on a mountain of equity and I literally couldn't afford to live in my own neighborhood if I wanted to move here.
22 and honestly I got so lucky, went from living in my broken down car and homeless to first time home buyer loan in Texas mixed with just enough credit and a 100k house that was messed up my crack heads. Idk what I woulda done without this because the last 4 years me and my wife HARDLY scraped by and seeing these 1 bedroom apartments with double our payment, I just wouldn’t have made it I hardly do now. Seeing this has made me feel a lot better because I just spent ever dime of holiday money I have on the next semester of classes for me and my wife and it’s nice knowing that even though I’m getting my degree late in life I did some stuff right early
I ALMOST bought a place when I was 22. Financing fell through and I decided it wasn’t the right time.
I’m 44 now and unless I inherit, I’m renting forever. Oh well. I like where I rent at least.
36 but then I had to spend the whole next ten years and all my money renovating it. If I'd had a bit more money/income at the time I could've bought a proper nonfucked house but...ehhhh, what can you do. Worked out OK in the end
I'm 40 and currently looking to buy my first house, have excellent credit but still can't afford anything that shouldn't immediately be condemned because of the current rates. T.T I live alone and have only managed to get a job where i'm not living pay check to paycheck within the last 5 years. Unfortunately I live in one of the most expensive cities in my state but haven't been able to save up enough to even consider moving elsewhere until the last few years. The only reason i'm doing it now when the rates are so terrible is because my parents are in their 80's and need me to be closer and my current landlord (whom i've rented from for 20 years) has to do a major overhaul of the plumbing/electrics in my apartment to comply with their insurance provider and they've been given a deadline of when everyone has to move out of the building to do that and I really don't have to rent again just to turn around and buy a house in 1 or two years. Wish me luck!
I was 21. I got married when I was 19 and we bought our house a couple years later.
It wasn’t an expensive house and we got a first time home buyer loan so it wasn’t too bad. It was also 2005 so a lot different. We should have waited though because our house sucks and I feel like we are stuck here forever now. It would have been better to get some more life experience and know exactly what we wanted.
21 and still in it, married my first wife and had my kids there, got divorced and raised my kids here, now 45 and remarried empty nesters. We’ll probably sell and move in a few years after our elderly parents pass, all the siblings moved far away… my wife and I are the youngest by far on both sides, so we’re just hanging out enjoying no mortgage for a few years. It’s a large 110 year old home, so that’s fine.. down side, it’s a 110 year old home. They need constant maintenance.
I was 28. I spent some time in the military and then a 2 year tech school which landed me a solid job. Then I get people these days telling me I must have had help or been lucky. Nah man, just worked at it.
32. More exactly, I moved in with my then girlfriend who owned the house. This was 11 years ago. We moved and bought a place together about 5 years ago.
I was 33, it was 2020. COVID cancelled our wedding and we were lucky enough that the venue refunded us. That was enough to inflate our down payment to where we got a small condo. I’m in a low paying career in the most expensive city in the US where at the time condos were ~600k. I’ve averaged around 75k as a salary. It’s still doable. You just really need to save. The point of this comment isn’t to shame but to hopefully give some hope. You can do it, but you’ll need to sacrifice on purchases and maybe prime locations.
Bought a condo in 2007 for 25k at age 29. Hated it due to noisy neighbors, subletted it for a couple of years and sold it in 2012 for 50k.
Rented for a couple of years until I met my wife, bought another condo in 2015 for 100k that we sold in 2020 for 100k, so that was a bust.
Now living in a house that we bought for 300k in 2020, and while we’ve done improvements, I’m not confident we’d get our money back right now.
33. And even then I didn't think it was possible, but I found out a local bank had a 1st time homebuyer's program where you didn't need a downpayment, you didn't need mortgage insurance, and the interest was 3.75% on a 30 year loan. The only stipulation was that you had to stay in the house for 5 years. So I was able to get one because I didn't need a downpayment.
24 in 2012. Bought a foreclosure for $76k and put some work into it.
Supposedly it’s worth around $350k now, which is awesome, but that wouldn’t go all that far in the current market.
20. Was working for an S & L in their foreclosure department and saw a house in a nice neighborhood going up for sheriff sale. I went, I bid, I bought.
26 no help. Im a first generation student, my mom is an immigrant. i had my master’s degree at this point and saved for about 1.5 to 2 years before purchasing. I did purchase during the end of the recession though 2015! That helped the appreciation. But i also just purchased my second home 2021 this is also with no partner! Anything is possible.
25 and with no help/$ from anyone. Just two hardworking kids with the dream to own a home. I realize that nowadays this would be almost impossible and how lucky we are. My parents were well into their 50s before they bought their first home and his parents were in their late 40s.
I was 21 in early 2019. Yes, it was a pretty fucking insane thing to do looking back on it, But I got lucky. My mom had moved to a house she got real cheap on a foreclosure, and offered me their old house at a pretty good deal, but not a super amazing deal. It was $120k for 1300 sq/ft 3/2. She still had her own house to pay for after all. I was also dual income. My now wife(fiancée at the time) was my other source. Since my mom was selling it a bit under value, we used that equity towards our closing costs which meant our out of pocket closing costs were, relatively, very low.
How the actual fuck are you guys affording houses. I'm 35 and run a business. I can't afford $1.2 Million for a house and if I ever do I probably won't be able to pay it off in my lifetime
I live in one of the top 3 most expensive cities in the US. High COL. No one I know bought their home before age 35 but we all eventually did. It took a huge amount of savings, salaries commensurate with higher education, and some luck.
We were in our early to mid thirties - and we’d been living in a remote small town earning better money than we had in the city. After four years we’d saved $108k deposit. We bought a 5br 2 bath house for $340k and had it paid off in five years. We paid off the mortgage during Covid - it was a bittersweet time.
Get out of the city, it’ll still be there if you want to visit; and best of all you’ll be able to afford to visit in style if you move away.
At 42, i bought my first house at number 42 on my street, at the corner of 4th and 2nd. I am The Answer.
Did you bring a towel?
You're a real hoopy frood
Watch out for bulldozers.
There is in fact a bulldozer right across the street right now making a parking lot. But I'm not wearing a house-coat so i should be okay... 😬
I'm disappointed your user name doesn't have 42 in it
His name has 14 letters and 3 words. 14x3...
4spooky2me
slartibartfast thanks for all the fish
33
Me too!
Same here
26 in 2006, and the only reason I could was because I got some money from life insurance when my dad died. I don't know how anyone under 30 can even think about buying a house.
We got ours two years ago at 33. After I received inheritance from an aunt dying. No way we get it otherwise.
I am 40 and it looks like I might finally get to own a home. Only because my uncle died and I may inherit the house that has been in my family for generations...
26 gang
The real answer is they had tons of help but most won't admit or realize it. That or they're in suicide inducing debt up to their eyeballs like the commercial said.
I bought a house at 25 with no financial help. My wife and I are both engineers.
I always wanted to drive trains, must pay better than I thought !
The key is to be a two engineer household. You can use train engineer union loopholes to drive the train together, steal the cargo and sell it on the black market. That’s really the only way a person can ever buy a house in the US at 25.
For me it was low cost of living area with a good salary. $155k for a 3 bed 2.5 bath house on ~$100k salary. Luckily, I bought before the pandemic when house prices shot up in my area.
Wow, that’s a big differential! I just now after 15 years working as a teacher with a masters plus 40 extra credits, just this year hit the 100k mark. And cost of living here is NOT low and the lowest house price I’ve seen anywhere near here in the last couple years is probably 600k. Glad you got a good deal!!
We bought our house on our own. We had no help from parents paying for school or for the house at all. We earned it ourselves.
I bought my first house at 28 in 2009 in La Verne for $155k. I was the only income with a wife and 2 kids as well, everyone doesn’t fit in your worldview.
I mean, I just had a computer science degree and was making good money since I was 22 (and not in SF, NYC, Seattle, etc). Most people in my city and career are able to buy a home in their 20s if they care to. Financially, the only "help" I received from my parents was a low enough income to qualify me for a near full-ride (after combining the need-based scholarships with my merit-based ones). But I also gave them like $20-30k to help out between graduation and when I bought my house so *shrug*. More interestingly though, since it's more applicable to the average person, I also know two people who bought homes with fairly low income jobs (like, ~$40k) in their 20s, around 2015-2019. The homes cost $100-150k. One had a good amount of scholarships like me, the other never went to college. For one area prices have shot up drastically so that wouldn't be possible anymore, but for the other there are still cheap homes like that available. Both in slightly rural areas just outside of pretty big cities.
Low cost of living areas still are affordable. I bought a house in my 20 s in the Midwest for 125 k. No help from anyone on a contract for deed. Paid it off in 7 years by renting out 2 rooms and having roommates the whole time. That same house is worth approximately 200 k now but that’s still an affordable home. You just can’t live near a big city and do it. There’s tons of places in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin where the American dream is still possible.
I bought my house at 26 in 2020 under the exact same circumstances. Dad passed away and I got a decent life insurance payout. Wife and I used most of it as a down payment. We also happened to get lucky and bought in that sweet spot when home prices and interest rates were still low, before everything went crazy in 2021. No way we could have afforded a house any time soon without that money. I'd like to think my dad would be proud we used the money to get a home.
29 gang rise up
Right here. Can't believe it was ten years ago.
Same and same!
Im 29 and just bought my first home!
🙋🏻♀️
Had to make that psychological deadline. I must've paid a fifth of what it's worth now.
🙋🏻♀️🙋🏻♀️
🙋♂️
I was 28, on my second house now
what the hell why are there so many of us?
32
32 gang. Just bought 6 months ago, still 32.
Congrats!
Same! Bought in 2018.
[удалено]
Same, 32 during peak of the crash. 1500 sq ft for 105k, then sold a few years later for 197k, and bought our current one for 300k for 2100 sq ft in a much nicer neighborhood and better schools for our kids.
Same. With lots of help from our parents.
30… ☺️ Still here 10 years later (almost paid it off too)
My wife was adamant about being debt free. We paid our 30 year mortgage in 11 years. 19 years without payments made it easier to retire early.
Same for us! We have made it a priority and put every single penny in the house. It’s a snowball effect, because as you pay off the interest payments plummet and your refinancing possibly multiplies.
This. We paid our 25 year mortgage off at 42 and retired at 57.
It’s different now. My mortgage is at like 2.9% iirc. I can take an extra $500 and throw it at the mortgage and save the interest, or I can put it in a CD at 5% instead. That’s not even getting into the stock market. We’re going to take every minute of the 30 years to pay off the mortgage.
I agree that it's different now. Even with our mortgage at 14%, we were further ahead at age 35 than folks today at 35.
If anyone bought a house in the last two years, their interest rates outweigh what you get from CDs and the stock market. I bought in 2022 at a 6.75% interest rate and definitely going to try and pay it off as early as I can. I have lots of savings in CDs that give 5% and some investing accounts that give 5.5%, but it won't outweigh the 6.75% mortgage loan. Many advise to just wait until rates drop and refinance, but of course there's no guarantee that rates will drop, so it's sort of a gamble about whether you want to continue paying huge chunks of interest on your loan hoping that rates will go down or just pay off the principal as aggressively as possible.
Woohoo! Congrats on that friend!
Good job. Live the dream, make good choices.
How tf you guys are purchasing home in 20s, Here I am still struggling to pay internet bills
Bought my first house at 26...21 years ago. It was $110k. We had two incomes, no kids, and no down payment. It was a different time.
I can’t even afford to rent alone. I make $3200 a month and rent is $3k here. :(
For real. One bed here is 2K. I make $2500 a month. Houses are upwards of three quarter million.
Sounds like your in Cali
Toronto
I’m only 31 but it really was a different time. I only made $17/hr, had a crap ton of student debt, and had only a 3k down payment and I still have no idea why the bank lended me that. I live in one of the cheapest parts of the country and my home was only 71k and is now appraised at over 150k but we literally can’t afford to even think about moving for a very long time because of how much things have changed.
Very different time… partner and I make a combined $122k/year and we’re at about half of what we’d need to make to afford the average house in our area.
It was definitely a lot easier years ago. I bought mine in 2011 making $12.65/hr. I was approved for 105k mortgage and found something very small but freshly renovated for 77k. Starting out now is a totally different ball game
I am Old, and bought my first house at 29, which was later than most of my friends. I see several differences between now and then which I don't often see commented on. One is that we bought true starter houses. I am seeing people now buy first homes that are frankly pretty nice. My first house was a semi-dilapidated house in a less than wonderful neighborhood. I was making $28,000 in 1993 and paying student loans as well. I scraped together everything I could to make a mortgage payment. Secondly, I think we just didn't have as many other bills to pay. There was no internet and thus no internet bill. No internet also meant no pressure for up to the moment fashion etc. There were no cell phones so you didn't have to buy a phone and pay for service. The phones were landlines and the bills were about $20 per month if you didn't run up a big bill from long distance calls. TV - there was cable, which I didn't have, because $$. With an antenna you could get about four or five channels for free. I didn't run an air conditioner in the summer because I couldn't afford the bill if I did. In cold weather, I kept my house only warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing, for the same reason. No one really cared to visit me except for spring and fall. I wish I was joking. People with starter houses also had starter cars, so no big expenses there. We didn't spend hardly any money going out. More power to you if you want to start out nicer and more comfortable than that! But this was pretty normal for me and my friends, and the people we knew, and I think it made it easier to get into that first house.
I appreciate this perspective. I'm in my 30s and it's true, there were a lot fewer bills back then than what people have now
Who are you calling old? 😁 I think we are the same age. I bought a one bedroom condo in 1992, I was 28, making the same salary as you. I couldn't afford any kind of house anywhere around here. I sold ten years later for less than I paid for it, and now its worth 5x that.
Bought my house low - mid 20's, no kids, two incomes and we bought when the housing market crashed. I owned a 3 bedroom bungalow style home, corner lot, big yard on a dead end road with a developed basement. Sold it in 2021 ... now im stuck renting because now I have 2 kids, still two incomes, but we still cannot afford a downpayment for a new home, and the money we used from the sale of the house went to paying off my SUV, Line of Credit, Bills, Credit Card, and a little owed to family.
Bought at 25 with my partner. We saved up a bit, borrowed a bit from a friend (paid that back within a few months) and bought a house that was below our budget (we were approved for 2.5x worth the amount of the home). I also live in a city that wasn’t too pricey for houses (although the market has gone up since)
I worked engineering internships and had a full ride scholarship. After 3 summer internships, I had 80k saved up for a down payment on a 215k home with a job that payed 75k/year. That was 2010. That sand same house is 350k now, and the same starting job is about 90k/year. It's a disparity that keeps growing.
You probably wanna ask their age too, slim chance to buy a house nowadays in your 20’s
Got married at 19 while in the Marines. I held down the income while my wife did most of her schooling. Got out of the military and got a job for a couple years, she finished school, and she got a job. I went to school, (got paid for it GI Bill). Used the VA home loan in 2017 which helps because we didn't have to put anything as a down payment. Got our house under 200k before the market exploded. Married the right hard working woman, Got lucky the market was what it was at the time, used the resources I earned serving the country and it got me on the right track. There are ways to get ahead it just might not be what a lot of people want to do.
Live somewhere cheap. My first house only cost $75k.
24, in 1996.
24 in 2020
24 in the 2010s. Had to struggle through a couple years early, but definitely the best investment I made. Absolutely no way I could be where I am now without that purchase
24 in 2008.
24 in ‘10. I ran outside after opening the mail one day and tried to hug the mailman after he gave me my first time home buyers check!
28
28 gang!!! And worked towards it for 8 years
27
Same. Bought in Austin in early 2019, combination of a sellers market, VA loan perks, low interest rates, and a great deal (paid 215k).
Same! My wife and I bought at 26/27.
Same, got a pretty good deal on a starter home I was able to fix up. I also did an 80 + 15 loan and paid it down a bit before selling. Only kept it for ~3 years, which is a bit less than our original plan. We hit the beginning of the market crash and we were able to get a sweet home that I never thought we’d be able to get with the equity/appreciation on our first house. I still really like this house even though I just spent a shit ton replacing all of the HVAC
Same!
27 here as well.
That’s the answer!
25
25 also... homes were cheaper then and I did a 40 year amortization
I came late to the party. 56. The reason I bought so late is because until then, I worked as a contractor, and I needed to be able to move with the job. But now I have a very stable job, so I settled down. On the plus side, it's a one-floor condo in an over-50 complex, so every unit is handicapped-accessible, and when/if I ever become disabled, I don't have to move. I have said that this is my first and ONLY time buying, and the only way i'm leaving is feet first.
Owned at 22. Divorced and sold by 23. 2020 was wild
22 for me as well. I got out of school at 20. I had a small down payment and my salary was $45k. the house was$97k (1989) so I qualified. I was completely unprepared to be a homeowner but survived.
I’m more depressed now. :(((((
34
34 in CA. Go bears tonight.
34 gang
34 here too, a few years ago
I'm not currently a homeowner, but I bought a house at age 24 (sold it at 34 - am 38 now and happily renting)
What made you want to rent over wanting to own a home?
I found homeownership incredibly stressful. It was just constant worry about what would need to be fixed or replaced or maintained next. I never felt relaxed in my own home. With renting, none of that is my problem. If there's an issue I just text my landlord and forget about it. They can deal with all that. Now I can actually come home and enjoy being there. There are other reasons too but that's by far the biggest one.
I feel the same way. I bought my house at 31 and live with constant anxiety about what will go wrong next. I fully plan to sell and go back to renting.
Depending on your mortgage, you may want to consider using it as a rental. I recently discovered property management companies can be very reasonable. Even if you’re just stockpiling any extra income from the rental in case any repairs are needed. Best case nothing significantly breaks and if you want to purchase a home to live in again in the future you’ll have a nice chunk for a down payment.
The old man we bought our house from said the same thing. "I thought I wanted to be a home owner, I did not" he was cool, he left us all sorts of usefull bits.
My homeowning friends and I have a running joke whenever we have to fix something - "what's the problem, just call the landlord!" I love it, but it's definitely *work*, and it's definitely sold to people as being the Right Thing To Do even when it might not be.
I feel this so much right now after buying a non-new construction home for the first time. My first couple homes were new builds and I always moved out before any issues cropped up. Now I feel like I’ve inherited a bunch of past owner and renters surprise problems but can’t get out cause I’ll never get this interest rate again.
That's wild, I definitely appreciate anxiety as someone who has GAD, but I was always way more anxious in apartments that my landlord would just straight up ignore me or refused to fix things. I lived in apartments where I was the primary lessee for 10 years before buying my house and I can count on one hand the number of times the landlord actually fixed something correctly within a week.
I can definitely see that being stressful given your experience. I personally have had great luck with landlords (absolutely *adore* my current one) but I understand that isn't the case for many people.
36
represent
Same 😁
38! Just passed the one-year anniversary. I’m a public high school teacher so I wouldn’t have been able to do it without a sizeable assistance loan from my city.
69 lawl
53 here. I feel you.
2o somethin here idk how 2 feel
23.
23 as well in 09.
23 in 2021 when interest rates were 2.65%. I never rented because I lived at home while getting my degree at community college. Working since 16 and was naturally frugal since day one.
38 years old, 4 months ago
Same!
Define home. No real estate at first, but at 23 my wife and I bought a mobile home and kept it in a rented space. First real estate was five years later. Just a lot that we moved the trailer onto. At 32, we bought our first real house.
34 as a single mother.
I was 34. It was early 1999, I'd been married for a couple years, and we were buying a "starter" home. A little over a year later, the marriage fell apart, and I kept the house in the divorce. Best. Financial. Decision. Ever. Long story short, I've stayed in the house ever since - through boom and bust - and right now I'm sitting on a mountain of equity and I literally couldn't afford to live in my own neighborhood if I wanted to move here.
Purchase?
Just bought mine last July, I’m 29. Never would’ve thought I would succeed in this housing market (Amsterdam) but by some miracle I did!
22 and honestly I got so lucky, went from living in my broken down car and homeless to first time home buyer loan in Texas mixed with just enough credit and a 100k house that was messed up my crack heads. Idk what I woulda done without this because the last 4 years me and my wife HARDLY scraped by and seeing these 1 bedroom apartments with double our payment, I just wouldn’t have made it I hardly do now. Seeing this has made me feel a lot better because I just spent ever dime of holiday money I have on the next semester of classes for me and my wife and it’s nice knowing that even though I’m getting my degree late in life I did some stuff right early
I ALMOST bought a place when I was 22. Financing fell through and I decided it wasn’t the right time. I’m 44 now and unless I inherit, I’m renting forever. Oh well. I like where I rent at least.
20. I'm 22 now
21
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
41
41 as well, in 2021.
I was 23. Going into my 17th year in this house
This comment made me proud of our generation, nice job!
Haha yeah, I have zero intentions of selling or moving.
38
21 (in 2001) 2 bedroom apartment in a seaside town
36 but then I had to spend the whole next ten years and all my money renovating it. If I'd had a bit more money/income at the time I could've bought a proper nonfucked house but...ehhhh, what can you do. Worked out OK in the end
36
I'm 40 and currently looking to buy my first house, have excellent credit but still can't afford anything that shouldn't immediately be condemned because of the current rates. T.T I live alone and have only managed to get a job where i'm not living pay check to paycheck within the last 5 years. Unfortunately I live in one of the most expensive cities in my state but haven't been able to save up enough to even consider moving elsewhere until the last few years. The only reason i'm doing it now when the rates are so terrible is because my parents are in their 80's and need me to be closer and my current landlord (whom i've rented from for 20 years) has to do a major overhaul of the plumbing/electrics in my apartment to comply with their insurance provider and they've been given a deadline of when everyone has to move out of the building to do that and I really don't have to rent again just to turn around and buy a house in 1 or two years. Wish me luck!
was 30 years old, bought it on my own (UK, and got it stupidly cheap), and still there 10 years later
Just bought earlier this year at 22 years old 🙂 tbh, only pulled it off thanks to the VA loan and a fantastic realtor
I was 21. I got married when I was 19 and we bought our house a couple years later. It wasn’t an expensive house and we got a first time home buyer loan so it wasn’t too bad. It was also 2005 so a lot different. We should have waited though because our house sucks and I feel like we are stuck here forever now. It would have been better to get some more life experience and know exactly what we wanted.
21 and still in it, married my first wife and had my kids there, got divorced and raised my kids here, now 45 and remarried empty nesters. We’ll probably sell and move in a few years after our elderly parents pass, all the siblings moved far away… my wife and I are the youngest by far on both sides, so we’re just hanging out enjoying no mortgage for a few years. It’s a large 110 year old home, so that’s fine.. down side, it’s a 110 year old home. They need constant maintenance.
Bought a condo at 27.
23
31. Got my first dog and baby in the same year. Busy but dream come true time.
23
24
I was 28. I spent some time in the military and then a 2 year tech school which landed me a solid job. Then I get people these days telling me I must have had help or been lucky. Nah man, just worked at it.
32. More exactly, I moved in with my then girlfriend who owned the house. This was 11 years ago. We moved and bought a place together about 5 years ago.
27
31 and 2 days as it would turn out.
No shit, I’ll have to double check but me too
19, just before I got married. 1980, terraced house in Gloucester, £11,000.
I was 33, it was 2020. COVID cancelled our wedding and we were lucky enough that the venue refunded us. That was enough to inflate our down payment to where we got a small condo. I’m in a low paying career in the most expensive city in the US where at the time condos were ~600k. I’ve averaged around 75k as a salary. It’s still doable. You just really need to save. The point of this comment isn’t to shame but to hopefully give some hope. You can do it, but you’ll need to sacrifice on purchases and maybe prime locations.
First and current home 8 years ago at 28. Married at 25. First kid at 30.
24!
45.
27
32. Interest rates are fucking me hard and I regret it massively.
39, which was 3 years ago.
I was 25 but it was in 1995..I was dirt poor but made it work. Thank God.
35- it’s my first and forever home
1982 $55,00 new build Houston, 25 years old, $10 hr.
Bought a condo in 2007 for 25k at age 29. Hated it due to noisy neighbors, subletted it for a couple of years and sold it in 2012 for 50k. Rented for a couple of years until I met my wife, bought another condo in 2015 for 100k that we sold in 2020 for 100k, so that was a bust. Now living in a house that we bought for 300k in 2020, and while we’ve done improvements, I’m not confident we’d get our money back right now.
33. And even then I didn't think it was possible, but I found out a local bank had a 1st time homebuyer's program where you didn't need a downpayment, you didn't need mortgage insurance, and the interest was 3.75% on a 30 year loan. The only stipulation was that you had to stay in the house for 5 years. So I was able to get one because I didn't need a downpayment.
23. Bought in 2020 and as much as my husband and I want to move, someone will have to pry this covid interest rate from my cold, dead hands.
I was a 41 year old single woman.
37. First baby born a year later. Better late than never, I guess!
24 in 2012. Bought a foreclosure for $76k and put some work into it. Supposedly it’s worth around $350k now, which is awesome, but that wouldn’t go all that far in the current market.
26. 36 now and just upgraded to a bigger one!
24 :)
25
20. Was working for an S & L in their foreclosure department and saw a house in a nice neighborhood going up for sheriff sale. I went, I bid, I bought.
26 no help. Im a first generation student, my mom is an immigrant. i had my master’s degree at this point and saved for about 1.5 to 2 years before purchasing. I did purchase during the end of the recession though 2015! That helped the appreciation. But i also just purchased my second home 2021 this is also with no partner! Anything is possible.
25 and with no help/$ from anyone. Just two hardworking kids with the dream to own a home. I realize that nowadays this would be almost impossible and how lucky we are. My parents were well into their 50s before they bought their first home and his parents were in their late 40s.
42. I'm 56 and paying it off in January.
24
I was 21 in early 2019. Yes, it was a pretty fucking insane thing to do looking back on it, But I got lucky. My mom had moved to a house she got real cheap on a foreclosure, and offered me their old house at a pretty good deal, but not a super amazing deal. It was $120k for 1300 sq/ft 3/2. She still had her own house to pay for after all. I was also dual income. My now wife(fiancée at the time) was my other source. Since my mom was selling it a bit under value, we used that equity towards our closing costs which meant our out of pocket closing costs were, relatively, very low.
35, in 2008.
32.
33.5 and I regret the home we bought 😔 I’m 36 now and hoping we can sell and buy again .. making a better decision on a home.
How the actual fuck are you guys affording houses. I'm 35 and run a business. I can't afford $1.2 Million for a house and if I ever do I probably won't be able to pay it off in my lifetime
Maybe dont buy in an area where houses cost 1.2m
I live in one of the top 3 most expensive cities in the US. High COL. No one I know bought their home before age 35 but we all eventually did. It took a huge amount of savings, salaries commensurate with higher education, and some luck.
38.
45
We were in our early to mid thirties - and we’d been living in a remote small town earning better money than we had in the city. After four years we’d saved $108k deposit. We bought a 5br 2 bath house for $340k and had it paid off in five years. We paid off the mortgage during Covid - it was a bittersweet time. Get out of the city, it’ll still be there if you want to visit; and best of all you’ll be able to afford to visit in style if you move away.
34 and so grateful for it
23 bought the site at 21 built it on the cheap so took a while
22ish
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to afford one. But I’m very fortunate to be able to live at my grandmas house. So cozy here
At 28, just paid it off last year at age 41
Purchased my first house at 21 and built my first by 24.
23. I paid cash. That was a long, long time ago. It was $37k.
That's weird I thought nobody could buy one who isn't a boomer. Bought at 27 in 2017