🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <B4FC1B3F.17EDA%no-spam@netninny.org>, John Higdon
<no-spam@netninny.org> wrote:

>Fortunately, there are still some young folks who apparently want to buy a
>house badly enough to plan, save, and research the market. It comes down to
>a matter of priorities. Anyone who just thinks it "would be nice" to own a
>home might as well forget it. It takes sacrifice, work, and a lot of
>prioritizing.

A dotcom IPO stock option doesn't hurt, either.

I don't recall the original poster whining about his "right" to own a home
as characterized by DK and others in this thread. 

Home prices in the Bay Area are priced far outside of the range of most
buyers who would otherwise be considered middle class in most other parts
of the country; even REAs agree with this. I know people who are working 3
jobs, well over 75 hours a week, saving as much as they can (I'm currently
fixing up an old computer for one of them so he can have Internet access).
When they think they have enough for a down payment (most without the
benefit of wealthy parents), they find the bar has been raised...again.
This has been been going on for at least a decade now. These folks are no
longer young. For some a thirty-year mortgage payoff is well beyond
retirement age.

Does anyone have a reference figure on what the average family needs
(right *now*, both in terms of a down payment and income necessary to meet
a mortgage payment) for a modest or average home in the greater bay area?
Let's compare that with what they needed 6 months ago. Then 1 year. Then 5
years.

Even cheap, broken-down, rat-infested condos are subject to jaw-dropping
bidding wars. It isn't real estate, it's surreal estate (thanks, Utne
Reader). The original poster was right. The Bay Area SUCKS as a place for
buying a _home_, although it is great for property as an investment (at
least until it strangles itself with all the rope it's got).

-- 
"Lord, help me be the person my dog thinks I am"

Remove DRAT in reply to that