I’ve been wanting to buy a house ever since I graduated college, but have only watched prices go up and up as I try to save a down payment.

Since 2020, home prices have doubled in my area. Everyone just told me to wait for house prices go down, but they haven’t at all! Then they told me when interest rates went up, prices would HAVE to go down for people to be able to afford it. Nope! All sellers have done is raise their prices.

I’m so sick of these high prices, it doesn’t make sense.

I just want a place where I can decorate how I want, put in my streetlights outside and put up my ceiling fans. I want a garage too.

The only thing that’s remotely affordable are places with stupid HOAs that you have to pay monthly for and of course you can’t put up streetlights, or even put a bird feeder in your yard. And you can’t even paint your house or replace the mailbox without approval.

Prices NEED to come down, it’s outrageous. This bubble needs to pop already!! I’m ready to move on with my life, but it feels like this is never going to straighten out.

I know it's not what you want to hear, but personally I've never had the slightest desire to subject myself to the trials, tribulations and staggering debt that come with owning property. Like you said, there are too many restrictions and other issues that just aren't worth it to me. It wouldn't be possible now anyway, as I'm too old for anyone to give me a mortgage, I wouldn't live long enough to pay it off 

Sammi and I are quite happy renting where we are here, it's a council property and the rent is reasonable. There are no restrictions on decorating, or putting up shelves etc. It's a flat, so we have no outside space to put up street lights, but that's not our thing anyway. If there are any problems, like with the roof or central heating etc., we just ring them up and they send someone to fix it, at no cost to us. If we want to do any major work like kitchen or bathroom renovations, we'd have to ask for approval, but it wouldn't be unreasonably denied.

You’re not alone Cole, prices in the UK are the same!, homeownership is an out of reach target now for our younger people and first time buyers! 
The whole western world has gone to hell today house wise!, even renting here is becoming unaffordable unless you’re bringing home a 100K a year salary!

Yeah, when I read your replies, thinking of where you all live, I know the UK is way worse than the US price wise and has been for a long time. My area hasn’t hit that high (yet).

When I look at UK, Canada , etc and the crazy prices, it makes me think that we could get far worse. It may not actually pop like it did in 2008.

I think a big part of it was that anyone who bought the last 15+ years has a low mortgage rate of anywhere from 3-4% and now we’ve been back to the 6-7% range the last two years, so people are very hesitant to sell, and if they do sell, they don’t need to lower the price much since there’s not much inventory.

It is building up here though, as practically nothing is selling the last few months, and there are a ton of new houses being built in my area. It feels a lot like 2008 with all the construction going up.

It is the winter season though, which tends to be the slowest for buying/ selling homes.

And you’re definitely right, renting does very much have it’s perks since you don’t have to worry about repairing stuff, new hvac, roof, appliances, water leaks, etc.

Plus you don’t have to pay taxes and homeowners insurance, both which keep increasing here.

That’s nice that the council lets you decorate and upgrade kitchen and bathrooms, that doesn’t seem to be as common as here in the US. I guess you might find a personal “mom and pop” landlord that just rents out a house or two that might let you do things like that. I have heard of people doing that and the landlord let’s them fix things up if they want to.

Yeah, we're lucky where we are. Sammi has been in this flat for 30 years next month and it's Band A council tax, the rent is just over £320 a month, less than half what private rental would be. We're not going anywhere any time soon 

When my mum died in 2020, her house, which was nothing special, sold for £380k, based purely on its location..! That was split between my brother and me, so I'm not mega-rich, but it's enough to keep us afloat for the rest of our lives if we don't go stupid. I set aside a few thousand for lamps and a car, but that's pretty much gone now, so what we have is what we'll need to live on, as all I get now is my pension, which isn't much 

Same, same... I make well above minimum wage, but i can only get a mortgage high enough to pay about half of an apartment in my city.
In the countryside i could get something with my savings plus that amount of mortage, but all the money i'd save on buying or renting a house there, would evaporate into exhaust gases from having to commute - and a pretty hefty toll on my mental health because i do not wanna live in the middle of nowhere.

By now i've been on the waiting list for a rent controlled place for about 8 years. I might be lucky at the end of this year or the beginning of next, to get a mediocre apartment in a meh part of town. But i'll take anything to get out of my parents' house. I've moved out twice before to temporary places, but had to return each time because if you want to rent or buy something 'right now' you have to make well over modal salary, so about 3500 euro a month.
It is very common here for the landlord to demand that you make 3 to 4 times the monthly rent as your salary. Rent for a meh apartment is often about 1000 euro, so you need to make 3000 euro to even be eligible. Less than half the people in my country make that much.

It's an extremely complicated system. Over here, the real estate market is completely locked up, and the real estate developers love it because they can literally ask whatever idiotic price they want, because of people's desperation.
On the free market part of our real estate system (which comprises about 75% of all housing if you count houses you buy too), there essentially is NO competition at all, because there is such a big undersupply that the property owners and developers on the free market do not have to compete against each other - it's the buyers competing against each other.
They know of course that if they start building more, or more affordable housing, that it will bring down their profits simply because if there is more balance in supply and demand, competition will spring into action and they'll now have to work harder for less profit... Which they obviously don't want.

Our rent controlled part (with apartments and town houses being 650 to 850 euro a month) is too small, with waiting lists easily between 10 and 20 years in any area where there are jobs. This is caused by the housing cooperations, which due to decisions by our free market-loving politicians started to be allowed to make profit somewhere in the early 2000s. So they started selling off social housing, sending their profits skyrocketing, but also creating a massive shortage of housing for people who make less than modal wage. There is no real chance that the upcoming government will solve any of these problems.

So here we are. A free market that refuses to supply affordable houses (either rent or sale) to avoid competition on low prices, and a rent controlled market that's completely destroyed with massive waiting lists.  I just get so, SO tired of this (...).

The most annoying part is that the housing cooperations and rental agencies are part of the bubble. If the bubble bursts they'll be out of money and even if they *want* to build, they now have no money anymore. And private home owners will now be unable to leave their house because of the massive devaluation of their house that they now can't sell for what they bought it for anymore. I WANT it to burst. But the effect can be detrimental too. The only way i see this can be fixed, is by having the government itself build and rent out property, which can be sold off later again (in let's say 40 years) to recoup the initial investment and to attempt to foster healthy competition on price (which we now do not have, neither on the free nor on the controlled markets). Or if competition simply still doesn't work, to keep it in govt hands to ensure a baseline supply of housing.

I'm 32 and i just want a place to call my own. In my street, there are 3 other families with children in their 30s waiting for their chance to get a place to live.

I think we might be getting a bit political here.
Let's just agree that the housing market sucks, unless you're the one selling.! 
I don't know how long the waiting list is here, I was very lucky to be offered a flat within a couple of months. 
What happened was that because the local Council condemned the building I was living in, they were legally obliged to rehouse me in the first available flat that came up. 

@ Cole, just read your reply to Ria's post again, I got the flat unfurnished, so all of the appliances have been bought by us.

I’m just telling you all, stay where you are! Don’t come to Switzerland because the prices are out of the sky now.

I think the same applies to a lot of places. 

Part of the reason for housing prices going up (from what I hear at least) is a lot of properties are being bought up by rich individuals or companies and turned into either short term, or long term rentals, and thus, prices have gone through the roof for actual 'for sale' properties.

A couple doors down from where I live, some neighbors I knew fairly well moved out (these neighbors owned the place they lived in), despite no longer living there, they never sold the place, and a new family has moved in under lease by the old neighbors. And that seems to be where things are going, and until this bubble bursts, it will likely continue this way for years.

That stuff can however be effectively countered. Various cities that struggle with the same issue, have instated rules that make it mandatory for the owner of a property, to actually inhabit said property for at least X number of years before being allowed to rent it out. Think of Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, Berlin.
In some places, short term rentals are prohibited alltogether (i think New York? And also the aforementioned cities, you need to actually inhabit the house you're renting out a room from). It's only a bandaid for the underlying issue, but at least it's preventing whole neighborhoods from turning into AirB&Bs.

Same seems to happening here. I have two friends (far wealthier than I), who each owned homes already, bought before prices went up (so lower price and low interest rate).

Both ended upgrading to larger homes last year, and are now renting out the previous home instead of selling.

I’m seeing some houses here stay on the market a long time now (one has been on the market for 140 days now) and they are refusing to lower the prices. Some are lowering the prices though, I’m fancy quite a few have lowered $10-20k, but it’s a pittance compared to how much they have gone up the last few years!

Dont move to Vancouver Canada
I was there last summer and checked out a open house near where I grew up and it was a "knock down" for 1.9
we all want a housing collapse but we DONT WANT ONE as it would DESTROY  the economy in MAJORLY over priced markets like London / Toronto
what is NEEDED is FAR MORE homes build and of MORE "types" and built at a RATE that is BEYOND market demand to allow price "deflation" without bankrupting most home owners AND banks carrying the mortgages

As much as I agree, it depends where you go. I literally bought a $20k fixer upper in a dying farm town in Central Illinois, with a $258/mo, 3.25% mortgage, but that's also in an economically depressed area where nobody wants to live.

Needless to say, as a result, I usually work out of state, currently in Alaska.