How difficult is it where you live to get a loan for a house?

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by TeacherBelgium, Jul 21, 2021.

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  1. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    So expecting to own a home, a good car and have money left for wine and dine every now and then makes me a spoiled brat?
    If people work more than 40 hours a week that is the minimum they should be able to expect. Otherwise might as well stay in bed and live from wellfare benefits , if working isn't supposed to pay off so that one can live a comfortable life at minimum.
     
  2. Vicki

    Vicki Well-Known Member


    Not exactly what I said, but yes. You sound entitled. Plenty of people who are older, more educated and with more experience still are not there yet. Others had to work hard a LONG time to get there. You’re just getting started. You want life to be easy. That’s just not reality. Never has been. You are delusional if you think this is new. You are sounding like you want all or nothing.
     
  3. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    I'm 25, not 18. I think it's not sounding entitled to expect to be able to buy a home at 25. People are getting kids in their late 20s. You can't have a kid without a own house imho?
    I studied long and hard, I work very hard at a margin of 50 hours per week while I'm only getting paid for 40, and then my credit is still too low for a decent house and a decent car.
    A happy few rich ones are lining their pockets while us working crowd are left drained and poor. It indeed makes me question the world. Especially that people accept this so easily. Feeling entitled to a comfortable lifestyle in exchange for my manual labor and intellectual labor is not pretentious in my opinion. I'm not asking for a golden throne. I'm asking for my own place of at least 100 square meters surface and with a small garden and to be able to afford a decent car and be able to wine and dine twice a month. That is a basic lifestyle. That's not a Kardashian lifestyle I'm asking for.

    This is what you buy with 185k euro regarding houses in Belgium.
    This is what a starter can afford.
    Does that look to be a decent place in your eyes or more like a student room if you are honest?

    https://www.logic-immo.be/nl/advertentie/appartement/2897813?utm_source=trovit&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=trovit-cpc-nl-bel
     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2021
  4. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    That is cheap. People are misguided when it comes to rent. Sometimes, it makes more financial sense to rent, especially when home prices are currently inflated and are likely to decrease substantially in the near future. In Texas, we have to pay expensive property taxes. Renting an apartment typically comes with lower utility costs, no payments for maintenance and repairs, no property taxes, and no insurance or cheap insurance. There's also more flexibility in moving for employment.

    You can either thank your lucky stars that you can still live with your parents and save for a house, or you can pay rent and become independent now.
     
  5. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    I don't know how it is in Belgium, but renters in the U.S. can report their rent payments to credit bureaus, which will increase their credit score.
     
  6. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    I filed a demand with the bank for a loan for a small house.
    Nothing too nice though, a small thing with 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. Hopefully I will be able to buy a fancier house sometime in the future. For now, this shall do if I get the loan.
    I just took on a second job at a lawyer's office above my regular job. That should increase my salary somewhat.
    Frustrating what obstructions one has to face to get what they feel they deserve.
    But yes, it's like that for most people, I recon.
     
  7. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    Here rent is just money thrown away. It doesn't give you credit of any kind. Just a roof.
     
  8. Vicki

    Vicki Well-Known Member

    It’s great to have a goal and work toward it…. But your statement that older generations had it easier is just 100% wrong. I don’t know anyone at all who bought a house at 25. Not a single person. Most couldn’t buy a house until their 30’s. Myself included. I worked long and hard too. I worked 2-3 jobs at a time… for many years. I got a degree and an additional certificate. I never once felt entitled to buy a house because of my age, degree, etc. just keep plugging away. It takes time. Some longer than others. You are complaining that you have to do pretty much exactly the same thing many of us had to do while claiming this is a new thing. It’s not. In reality, older generations…. As in baby boomer and older…. Probably had it even worse. They had a whole slew of other issues. Like slavery, women’s rights, wars, the Great Depression, lack of safe food to eat (no refrigerators in homes), minimal medical care available, etc etc etc. These older generations bought the materials for their houses and built them themselves from the ground up. But sure, not buying a house at 25 and getting to buy wine and dine…. That’s really hard compared to the easy life of older generations…o_O

    oh and that link you shared is gorgeous. I don’t know what any of it says, so I can’t speak of the value. But if that was what I could afford, it looks spectacular compared to the first apartment I rented in my 20’s. And nicer than the 100 year old house we bought in our 30’s.
     
  9. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    We pay for a lot of things that don't turn into assets. Most of what we buy will end up in the garbage.
     
  10. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    That is an apartment in the city. It is 85 square meters. Costs 185000 euro (approximately 200k $ ) . That is what you get here in Belgium with a starter salary. It only has 1 bedroom.

    I'm not saying that I want to wine and dine every day, I just believe people are more than work instruments that need to do their work and go to sleep without expectations.
    A house is the basis of everything. That's what everyone's goal is I think: buying a house. Nobody wakes up and thinks : "Let's go to my miserable job to pay my miserable rent and not own my own miserable place ever. Yeey lucky me! ").
    I think feeling entitled is healthy sometimes. It helps you set boundaries. There are CEOs out there not doing anything except for making a few phone calls a day, while the true stars on the work floor who make the place turn around are not paid more than peanuts.
    I'm very happy with my own work place, but I know others who are really treated like crap at other work places.
    I know a secretary who is a bit older than me and she has to do all the work at her work place and judging from her clothes, car and the fact that she shares rent , doesn't get paid a lot. That woman deserves a raise.
    And so do many others.
    People should and can be more demanding imho.
    Not entitled, just expecting respect.
     
  11. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    My first mortgage was at 11% fixed for 30 years.
     
  12. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    With people leaving large cities the prices in some areas went down, taking in to account very low interest rate I'm not seeing a buyers market in these area.
    Younger people still can't afford it. I do see deficit in properties in other areas were there is a seller market. My Cousin is a real estate agent for last 25 years and after some drought she is doing incredibly well.
    Rent is also historically high, before the pandemic and the rise in violence and murders, RB&B type properties even further limited the rental market.
    Next week a friend is moving from really nice home that he sold for retirement money boost and purchased a really nice newer property in smaller town for 5 times lower price.
     
  13. Rachel83az

    Rachel83az Well-Known Member

    25 is super young to be buying a home. 2 bedrooms is awfully large for someone living alone who doesn't plan to marry.

    We can't always get what we want. I would also love to own a house but I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. Not unless it's a vacation home in a cheap country. I WISH houses around here were 300k euro. I think housing prices start at closer to 500k to 1 million - but I haven't looked in a while. But that's the tradeoff for living in an attractive city.

    I thought you were planning to eventually move abroad. Owning a house would make that more complicated.
     
  14. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    My parents bought their most recent house 15 years ago in their 40s, for $215,000 CAD in southern Ontario. Today, similar properties in their neighborhood are selling for $800,000 ($638K USD). Rent for a studio is $1000 a month. For a 1 bedroom it's $1500 a month. Median salary there is $58K a year, though I was making $36K when I left (I was living with parents.) It would have been challenging to move out when rent is 50% of my take-home.

    In comparison, in southern Iowa, I bought my 3-bedroom house for $90,000 USD. I put 5K down and my mortgage is $625 a month. The 2-bedroom apartment I was renting was $550 a month, but they go for as low as $400 for a two-bedroom. You can make $12 an hour and still afford the basic essentials.

    The cost of living in some areas have spiraled out of control and it's more than feeling entitled. In 1979, the mortgage interest rate was 11%, but savings accounts were paying 5%, minimum wage was $2.90 and the median home price was $60,600. A new house cost 20,897 hours of work at minimum wage. Today, minimum wage is $7.25 and the house costs $326,400, over 45,000 hours of work.

    Millennials currently have 4% of the wealth. Baby Boomers at the same age had a whopping 21% of the share.

    These are systemic issues.

    Mortgage rates: https://www.valuepenguin.com/mortgages/historical-mortgage-rates
    Savings accounts: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/11/23/the-battle-for-big-bucks/44574d2e-2372-4a8b-8627-cf8bcc2ef7a2/
    Minimum wage: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart
    Home price:
    https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-us-minimum-wage-and-its-value-has-changed-over-time#1979-14
    Wealth breakdown by generation: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/09/millennials-own-less-than-5percent-of-all-us-wealth.html
     
    Acolyte likes this.
  15. Vicki

    Vicki Well-Known Member

    I am not a boomer, but there’s a lot more to those statistics. My mom was a boomer. At 25, she had a kid, single mom, we shared a bedroom in a small apartment. She didn’t reach a comfortable income in life until she was in her 40’s either. There’s also a lot more boomers out there. The wealthy were doing big things. Ya know, like starting Microsoft and Apple. They were innovators. If you don’t like where you are, stop whining about the system and go DO something innovative and make that wealth. It doesn’t happen overnight for most people. A lot of hard work and sacrifice comes first. That’s where most people are at 25.
     
  16. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    As a Millennial, I understand that we've gone through multiple deep recessions from young adulthood until now. Wage growth has been slow. But, it's not abnormal for a 25-year-old not to be able to afford a house. It's pretty typical for people in their 20s to rent. It'll give you experience with managing bills and being fully independent.

    Older Millennials are not doing as bad as originally thought. Sixty-eight percent of older Millennials earn more than their Boomer parents did at the same age. I feel like our education has finally paid off.

    https://theconversation.com/68-of-millennials-earn-more-than-their-parents-but-boomers-had-it-better-161647
     
  17. Acolyte

    Acolyte Active Member

    I think what Dustin said is very true - when you add up the number of hours of work it takes to have a car and a small house (kind of a basic standard of living) each generation from WWII on has fallen a little further behind. I'm 51 - a GenX'er and it's been tough for my parents to understand this (they are boomers) until recently when I laid out a similar metric - not in dollars but in hours of work required to achieve what have traditionally been the foundations of a stable adult existence: reliable transportation and a modest house. :-(
     
  18. Vonnegut

    Vonnegut Well-Known Member

    Not sure anyone has called you a spoiled brat, would be saddened if you were interpreting it as such. Many of us are older and while I'm not trying to speak for everyone, I believe the consensus that most are trying to assert is simply that it typically isn't common for people on starting salaries to be able to afford nicer forever homes, new vehicles, and wining/dining. While there certainly are exceptions and in some high paying careers where that is the norm, for most people it isn't. Often early adult career moves and lifestyle choices, savings, etc. are about sacrificing for the future. Whether that's taking a certain job that pays less, to improve one's skills/marketability/positioning for future opportunities. Or eating Ramen and living with friends or family to scrimp and save for a down payment on a "starter home", seed capital for a business venture, or a mad dash to max out one's investment/retirement portfolio during the time when you'll have the greatest impact. Building a career and making sacrifices as a young adult has a high chance of leading towards a much more comfortable life. As for a 40 hour work week... that's a whole other topic, I'm not sure what that is, but I'm not necessarily a (personal) advocate of the work-life balance trends.
     
    Rachel83az likes this.
  19. Vonnegut

    Vonnegut Well-Known Member

    Great summary of one of the major systemic issues. The great lifestyle communities that are drawing the best jobs and economic development are spiraling out of control in affordability, while the areas of America that are far more rural/remote and often lacking in opportunity can be incredibly affordable but with the caveats of why that is. The NC State Emerging Issues center has a remarkable presentation that's been pushed in higher ed circles across the nation. We're in the midst of a new industrial revolution that is changing the opportunities and lifestyles, as dramatically as the previous revolutions.
     

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