Even though it would hurt me. I own my home, and it’s more than double the value of what I paid for it 6-1/2 years ago. But part of that is corporations buying homes site unseen for conversion into Air BnBs or other rentals. They make cash offers way above asking because the price fits into their business model no matter how high it is.

But I also think people need to evaluate rent vs mortgage. I know people who say they can’t afford to buy, but their rent is double what my mortgage is. Those people can’t afford not to buy IMO.

And it is getting to the point and beyond in some cases that buying is cheaper. Stop making others rich!!!!!

And interest rates shouldn’t matter when refinancing when they go down is easy.

But getting the money saved for a down payment and closing costs is the biggest barrier for most renters. Depending where you live it takes $12K minimum to purchase a home. And most places it several grand more than that.

I won’t get into personal finance. But I find that the majority of the people I know who can’t afford to save don’t make detailed monthly budgets for themselves. You’re dead in the water without knowing where every dollar is going. A budget can make a lot of things possible. Have a friend on disability who was able to buy a small home in Northern Michigan because he lives in a strict budget. He paid his home off and now lives there for a few hundred dollars a year in property taxes.

Instead of a five thousand dollar vacation, go camping. You can make memories that way too. Yes some can’t afford camping but definitely can’t afford a trip to Disney world. I know,through friends, a woman who never made more than minimum wage and died a millionaire. It can be done.

It’s sorely lacking. My parents didn’t have good habits and taught me little. In high school accounting class I got some education, but even that was faulty and was geared more towards getting in debt to build your credit.

Personal finance needs to be built into classes for all 12 years of school. Every math class should have personal finance built into it as examples. The opposite actually happens. Kids learn that they need to have credit cards as soon as they can and they do. They get into credit card debt at 18 and die 60 years later with credit card debt. I don’t think anyone should graduate high school without knowing time value of money and compound interest equations like the back of their hand.

You use a credit card with a high interest rate and you’re basically agreeing to pay 500% of the purchase price for whatever you bought. You can literally show people this fact on a chalk board and they still won’t believe you. Those $100 boots are on sale for $50 if you use the store credit card? Well, if you use the store card and pay your balance over time like 95% of all credit card users do, you’ll have payed $250 or more for those $50 boots by the time you pay them off.

The fact all consumers don’t know about compound interest, effective interest rates, and the time value of money is a crisis. And my word is it impossible to pay off credit card debt once you accumulate several thousand or more. Nothing makes a dent and then a crisis happens and you need to go into more credit card debt because you e been paying credit card bills rather than building an emergency fund.

I know couples making $175K a year who are broke because they don’t know basic finance. I know other couples making $55K a year who are financially set because they do know finance. It’s a crime and a scam against the American people that the basic tools of knowledge aren’t given to everyone.

I took my 400 dollars from high school graduation and invested. Then I started putting 100 dollars a month in the Mutuals funds. Once I started getting raises, I’d take that and added it to the investing. After almost 37 years, it’s pretty good. It’s easy but I agree it has to be taught. And credit has been the devil in all of it. Buy now, pay later is the biggest fraud out there.

Congrats.

The American Dream is still possible. It’s right there to grab, but not enough people know how to grab it. I didn’t know how to grab it until later in life than you. But I know all sorts of people in their 20s who have a firm grip on it already. More times than not those people are the ones whose parents had them working spreadsheets at the kitchen table when they were preteens.

And not all these people have fancy jobs making better than average money. My wife’s best friend has never had a good paying job and never been married. She just turned 50 has no debt, a $50,000 emergency fund and a good retirement because her parents, who were flat out poor, taught her personal finance at a young age.

It’s so much easier to start young that it is to start later when you have to find a way out of $15,000 or more in credit card debt.

Credit card debt. I inherited $1000 from my grandfather and brought stock in Merrill lynch for $20 and I ended up selling it for $100 a share. My ex husband at the time wanted me to put his name on account so I had the statements sent to my parents house. I invested the money in mutual funds which I still own. Ex husband tried to get the stocks when we divorced but I had owned the stocks before we married so he had no right to it. I still have accounts in my name only after being married to my current husband 30+ years and he doesn’t care about it as we have built our own finances together.

They say we changed under Reagan from a savings to a debt society. I know my Depression-Era parents passed a No Debt philosophy onto me. In fact, sometimes looking back I think I might've carried it too far in that I only bought cars I could pay cash for instead of carrying car payments. That now seems a bit extreme.
But as for credit cards, I've never carried a balance.

Car payments are throwing money away too. But not as big a deal.

And people need to know about paying g off their mortgage early too. An extra couple payments a year turns a 30 year mortgage into a 20-22 year mortgage. That’s a couple hundred a month for most people. And I don’t know about other people, but my retirement plan doesn’t work nearly as well without a paid for house.

Bought it in '73 on a VA loan (7- 1/4 interest at the time) and paid it off before I took early retirement in 2001. Been very lucky on that.

Property taxes, insurance, maintenance and repairs are all costs that need to be paid when you own. Many people don't adequately take those into account when planning their budget.

Your property tax and insurance are part of your monthly payment that goes into escrow. But yeah, you have to budget repairs.

My neighborhood is upper middle class. But a couple of the houses are rentals. I couldn’t afford to rent in my neighborhood. The difference is massive. There’s a house similar to mine on not as nice a lot that is renting for 2-1/2 times my mortgage payment right now. Zero chance I could afford to rent my house. Even at today’s buying prices I think rent would be $800 a month higher for me. Pretty crazy.

My sister got divorced and thought she’d sit on the proceeds from the sale of their house and wait to buy. Massive mistake and life happened and she doesn’t have savings to buy anymore and is stuck renting a townhouse for several hundred dollars more a month then a mortgage would be.

When I decide to sell it will be to a family.

I get at least two offers a week by text, phone call, email or USPS offering to buy my house we have owned since 1976. When it is time, I will only sell to a family.

Democrat's win on these types of issues with voters.

I said sure, if...and named a price that's about 3 times it's current market value. That ended that call.

The basis used to assess property taxes does not adjust to the full market value until the property changes hands, which usually happens when a person dies or moves away. But a corporation never dies.

We want action!

They know people are stuck and there is no recourse when lot rents are raised. I know it’s cliche, but trailer parks have been a preferable and more affordable alternative to apartment living for millions of families for generations. That is going away. Lot fees are skyrocketing and turning these parks into corporate profit zones.

Once people are in a park, they can’t move parks without spending thousands of dollars to move their trailers. They get total stuck no matter how high the lot rent goes.

There’s nothing wrong with living in a trailer park. Now even that option is out of reach for many as corporations take advantage of the lack of regulations.

A recent attempt to have a split roll (residential vs. commercial) went down to defeat.

prop 13 has crippled the state not just in terms of revenue but also by reducing the ability to craft policies.

I’ve read about this before, first about foreign investors, and it does not surprise me that homegrown greedheads are in on it as well.

In metro Atlanta, where I live, a recent study showed that 11% of rental properties are owned by 3 corporations. https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/gsu-study-atlanta-single-family-homes-corporate-landlords-own-11-percent/85-7df30b4e-86c7-4591-a1b3-596a1970b090

such assets, as the downturn in some markets (Las Vegas, others) caused a big drop in home prices. Also, the flood of AIRBNBs is suppressing the markets too (too many AIRBNBs).

I suspect that this trend is going to continue, as companies re-evaluate their portfolios and reduce their footprint in the single family housing markets. Maybe they don't need to do anything, but continue to watch trends, but still keep an eye on things, to make sure that these markets don't get out of reach for the ordinary homebuyer.

When I first came to L.A. long ago, I was surprised to see so many single-family homes for rent. It's not something I remember seeing back east.

Meaning no matter how lucrative the property becomes, no matter how much comparables appreciate, taxes will only go up 2% a year.

And as long as they hold on to over 50% ownership share, the property will not be re-assessed.

Prop 13 was a give away to big commercial property owners.

Oregon has a severe housing shortage.

I'm glad to see more Dems getting on this bandwagon nationwide.