• Aggravationstation@lemmy.world
    421·
    1 year ago

    I’m English so can’t comment on the situation in the US, but reading the comments in this thread it seems quite similar to the one here.

    I bought a house in 2010, just before I turned 23 and I’m very much the exception to the rule. I live in an area with some of the lowest house prices in the country. I didn’t go to University and got my first full time job when I was 19. It didn’t pay well but I lived at home and I was a stoner. I didn’t go out much, just to friend’s houses to get high. My town is walkable enough that I didn’t need to drive (I get that not driving isn’t really possible in the US, or even in some parts of the UK).

    This meant I saved up a lot of my money without really trying. The house I bought cost £41,000. I sold it in 2022 for £39,000 which should give you some idea of the state of it.

    My Dad bought a house in 1986 for £12,000. I can see that house from the one I live in now, which cost me £79,000 in 2022.

    • input@lemmy.world
      19·
      1 year ago

      That is some achievement to lose money on a house in that time period, did it fall down 😂

    • beepnoise@lemmy.mlEnglish
      17·
      1 year ago

      Those house prices sounds absolutely insane to me.

      I’m also in the UK, but I’m in the South East, so house prices are very high. Still managed to find a “cheap” house recently due to the location being a bit rough.

      For comparison, my house that I’m buying is £345k (it’s 2 bedrooms with a separate garage and 2 bathrooms). I saved up a £125k deposit by living with my parents for the longest time (I think it took me about a decade). The exception being for 3 years when I house shared - the rent was £325 per month with bills included, but my room was effectively a glorified cupboard.

      I will also say that I was saving lots and lots of money with my old job. I’m a software developer, so my salary was good (started off at £22.5k, went up to £45k with about 10 years experience and being a senior dev, then our company got bought out and my salary went up to £55k). A year later and I switched jobs as the annual salary increase was £150 (for the whole year). Ended up with a £75k salary w/ bonus, private healthcare, etc etc. I really lucked out at that moment.

      As to why I didn’t buy a house earlier with my deposit, there was two reasons:

      • I had saved up about £100k before for personal savings, then that money went to help a sibling (call this sibling A) with their property. My parents sold a property aborad to effectively give me back the money, but the money was split between me and another sibling’s bank account (call this sibling B) because of financial advice given by my uncle. What then happened was sibling B didn’t give me back the money and was being incredibly difficult about the money, and since they have a history of being difficult in general, I decided I was going to save that money instead.
      • Sibling A wanted to start their own business, but it effectively flopped for all sorts of reasons. They had amassed a loan of £15k, and I helped pay that off. This was while sibling B was being incredibly difficult.
      • Main reason: At the time, I didn’t know if I really wanted to stay at the job for so long, and if I did want to stay, I didn’t want to move into the area where my job was - despite the convenience, the area was incredibly rough - almost GTA like (and that is no exagerration). I didn’t know where I wanted to live, and the places I would be interested in, I effectively had no clue as I was living with my parents at the time.

      So yeah, buying a house in the South of UK isn’t easy at all. It requires a ton of patience and luck.

      • Aggravationstation@lemmy.world
        6·
        1 year ago

        Jesus, that’s insane.

        My house has 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and no garage. It is, I’d say, in the second worst part of town but crime rates here are still fairly low. I paid over 4 times less for it than yours just 17 months ago.

        TBF house prices here have increased since then and you’re looking at around £100k minimum for a place like this now, but still, that’s mental.

    • kmkz_ninja@lemmy.world
      15·
      1 year ago

      You bought a house for less than $45K? Excuse me?

      For comparison, a 2 bedroom 1 bath house at about 1000 square ft in my area would cost 250K for a place that needs repair and remodeling.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
        18·
        1 year ago

        For us using metric who are not used to freedom units:

        1000 square ft = 93 m2 (92,9 m2 to be exact)

        So I guess you can divide by 10 to get a rough estimate in m2 that is 7% off.

          • Buffalox@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 year ago

            Freedon units are absolutely awesome to confuse the enemy, problem is it confuses your friends too.😋

        • Dass93@lemm.ee
          3·
          1 year ago

          Fore 3 years ago we bought a house in a decent size city at £103K at 133m2 in Denmark, and the houses prices is still pretty much the same the prices have gone up £11k on our house but mostly because I have renovated over the time.

          But here in Denmark if you buy a house you pretty much need to could renovate by our self, because the professional is extremely expensiv, if I needed to hire a professional to replace my roof it would cost us £100k and I can do it by my self for £10k.

          Edited: with symbols for pound on all now

          • Buffalox@lemmy.world
            51·
            1 year ago

            in Denmark

            Yes I figured as much from the “for 3 years ago”, which is totally Danglish, “3 years ago” is enough.

            Sorry, I just found it funny, that I figured a Dane wrote that from the first 3 words.😀

            And yes professionals are really expensive, USD 100k to replace an entire roof doesn’t even sound expensive, if it includes materials, it’s sounds dirt cheap.

            Edit I just checked prices, and apparently you can get a new roof for a 100m2 house approximately 1000 ft2, for about USD 10000.

            • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
              1·
              1 year ago

              In Denmark, the cost equivalent of a roof replacement is 100k UK pounds? That price in the US is so high it shocks the conscience unless you’re talking about a mansion or doing some special kind of roof material like slate and hiring only engineers with advanced degrees as laborers.

              • Buffalox@lemmy.world
                2·
                1 year ago

                I think I specified USD = US dollar, but that is cheap, our neighbor got an offer of USD 160000 for a house of about 180m2. That was with ceramic tiles, but afaik it’s not that much cheaper even if you chose cheaper materials, I think the cheapest was about USD 120000.

                Edit

                I have been misinformed, I looked up prices and you can get a new roof for a 100m2 house approximately 1000 ft2, for about USD 10000.

          • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 year ago

            1 Krone is $0.14 USD. Holy shit. $14k for a roof? I just got mine done for $6k by a pro here in the US - I thought about doing it myself but realized that I’m a father now, have zero safety equipment or roof replacing skills (lack of experience never usually stops me) and knees that now randomly dislocate for no reason, and I’d probably die. That said, it would still have cost me more than $1.5k in materials. How can folks afford such prices? How can the market sustain such prices?

              • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
                2·
                1 year ago

                I didn’t know what the symbol for Krone is and incorrectly assumed they use the pound symbol (they don’t - Kr is the symbol). 100k pounds for a roof is absolutely insane, and now I absolutely need more explanation as to why.

                • Dass93@lemm.ee
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  It was all converted to pound for ease.

                  And why the prices fore a professional is so damn high in Denmark is becous the labor force is very well paid in these proffesions, so price is: 50-60% salary, 10-30% taxes, the rest is material.

                  And the symbol is “DKK” i don’t think there is symbol like $.

      • systemglitch@lemmy.world
        5·
        1 year ago

        That almost exactly the size and price of the house we bought, and I live in th most affordable city in Canada. Also needs repair and remodeling.

        • kmkz_ninja@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 year ago

          I say this as an American, but I feel terribly at how Canada has treated its citizens in regards to housing.

        • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 year ago

          Oh, Canada, I wish you were my home and adopted land. Don’t know where the most affordable city is (and I won’t ask you), but Jeff Jacques (questionablecontent comic) has me pretty interested in Halifax/Nova Scotia.

          • gaiussabinus@lemmy.world
            2·
            1 year ago

            Wherever you are it is better than here. We are on the cusp of an economic crisis. Ironically its our massively over inflated houseing sector thats putting us under.

            • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
              2·
              1 year ago

              US housing is unaffordable as well, but we’ve got mass shootings, 25% of our voters are white evangelicals that believe the earth is 6,000 years old and that we don’t need to worry about the environment because the more fucked it is, the faster a vengeful Jesus will come and crush non-evangelicals like grapes till the blood runs thick in the streets. I’d take a convoy of idiot truckers playing American over what we’ve got going down here any day. (EDIT: sorry, 25% of the GOP voting base, which is still awful but not as awful as I previously stated)

      • Aggravationstation@lemmy.world
        21·
        1 year ago

        No, I bought a house for £41k. Not sure of the currency exchange rate at the time and how that relates to now, but pretty sure it’s always going to be above $45k

    • drathvedro@lemm.ee
      21·
      1 year ago

      Which city is it? I would very much like to move in. The housing market is so ridiculous now that even in my crappy city, in a terrible country that lost millions due to COVID, and is now at a goddamn war losing thousands of people by day, the prices are still skyrocketing. Currently, even the cheapest 12m² room inside an ex-USSR barrack costs like 20 grand, and the situation is even worse outside the cities.