In my mind, it having a house would be really nice and is my top goal. I’d like to put up one or two streetlights outside, use some of my lamps and light fixtures in the house, and have more storage space.

But I feel like I missed the boat on this ever happening. I’ve spent my 20s and half my 30s now saving for what feels like a carrot on a stick. The more I save, the higher the prices get.

They doubled in 2020 onward and then the interest rate went up. Now they’re talking about lowering rates which I assume means prices will go up again.

I don’t know what to do. I’m so tired of saving, and the they say a house can’t be more than 2-2.5x your income… well there’s nothing here that cheap.

Of course, the biggest problem for me is I’m not married, it seems like a lot of people don’t buy homes until they’re married. Well I’m not interested in that and probably aren’t getting married. So I guess that means I’ll always have to rent an apartment and never be able to really have a workshop and enjoy my streetlights outdoors?

I keep beating myself up for not buying in 2019 when homes were half the cost now. But reality is I couldn’t afford it then.

Fortunately I just got a substantial raise this month which I am happy about, but it still feels irresponsible to even consider buying a home. ☹️

I’ve tried prequalifying for a mortgage three times in my life but I always backed out because I realized I couldn’t afford it.

I just don’t know what the answer is if you aren’t planning on marriage but still want a home. Most people I know my age are either married and make a lot of money, or parents gave them houses.

The inventory here just stinks right now anyway. Overpriced new homes that have been sitting for months or existing homes that need too much work and are also overpriced. And a lot of the houses are in HOA/deed restricted area which means NO streetlights allowed in your yard of course.

I'm I’m in a similar situation and trying to move out of my mother’s apartment and I don’t even have a car, job or even a drivers license.

(...)'s (...), it's simple as that.

I make only barely below the national median salary, but i can fully forget buying anything at all, and neither can i rent in the free market sector because of the income demands (if you're alone, the rental company can demand that you make 3 times the rent as your monthly salary before tax, which would come to well above median salary). I am completely dependent on the way too small stock of social housing, and i am on the waiting list and have been for 8 years or so.

Being me, it's also not likely i'll have a partner for life any time soon. Hell, i want my *own* house for a change, even if i had a partner. I've moved out of my parents' place twice - once to go to university, once to move in with my then-partner, but never had a place i can fully call my own.

It finally seems like i can get a small, 1 bedroom apartment in a meh part of town in the course of next year. But it's not what i expected to be able to get, when i got out of high school. I mean, i didn't expect to get a 'nice' house, but at least a small rowhome with a backyard and a shed... So yeah. I don't have space for stuff, and neither does it seem i will ever have space for stuff.

Either way, this is all a matter of local and national policy. Although there is a lot of demand, real estate companies have no economic reason to build affordable housing, because artificial scarcity and more expensive houses simply make them more profit. Housing is a critical life need, so they can essentially ask whatever price they can for their houses. Unless you do something about this situation where real estate companies can just say 'nope, not building that, i don't wanna because it will reduce my profit', the current situation will just get worse and worse. This goes for most areas in the western world, where you have a city that has jobs within commuting distance. I could still buy something in the countryside, but that would get me an hour of driving (which i hate) and on top of that, all the costs of owning and driving a car everywhere would make it not much cheaper at all to just stay in my city.
Side note: a ton of people don't drive a car to work or to get groceries here. You just cycle or walk to the supermarket or to work.

Until about a decade ago, squatting was legal here if a property was left empty for a year or more. That was great, because it really discouraged property owners from just buying buildings to speculate with while leaving them empty. Once squatters got in there, they would have similar rights tenants have here, as in 'you can't evict them without a year long court case'. So either the building was used for something, or people would build a stable life there. Be aware that these are not your stereotypical american crackhead squatters - these people literally build a normal, stable life in their squatted place, because they had no real risk of getting evicted without at least a year of warning.

Houses here are now rarely left empty, but parts of offices and other commercial buildings are often temporarily leased to individual people to live in for like 300 euro per month - but you can be required to leave with only a month's notice, which doesn't work for me because i have too much stuff to move. But for some people who don't really have stuff except for a gaming PC and some clothes, it is a definite option.

Yes, it’s same here in the United States. We will never overcome the “housing shortage”, I don’t think, because builders won’t keep building so much that the price of houses goes down and they can’t charge a higher margin. They would never do that, they would just stop building if it became over saturated.

I’m not sure I even agree with “housing shortage” anymore, it wasn’t a problem before 2020. And houses in my area aren’t selling much anymore unless it’s a really good deal, which is rare. Even the fixer uppers are not selling, because they’re overpriced when you factor in the work. I think affordability is a factor now, but yet couples with two incomes I think would still afford it. 🤷🏻‍♂️

There are new homes that have been on the market for half a year now and they still will not lower the price, or if they do it’s insignificant, like $10k drop, which is barely anything.

The apartments they are building here are also crazily expensive, somewhere in the $2500-3000 a month range, you might as well buy a house if you can afford that kind of rent.

I do think for people with interests like us it makes the kind of property difficult, because we need space, etc. where most people I know are like you say, just have clothes, shoes, computer or video games. Maybe collecting cards.

I’ve almost to the point where I’ve just decided myself a hoarder, and need to get rid of everything, forget having these kind of hobbies and live in an apartment forever, and just stay “minimalist” like everybody else these days who is “normal”. But I don’t know what I’d do for fun.

I’ve also considered just having a house built, but try to eliminate any wasted space, to keep the square footage lower, but the cost of construction right now is so high of course that it wouldn’t matter.

Plus then you’d have to take a construction loan, which is higher rate than normal mortgage loans.

I’m getting so frustrated with these realtors and builders and homeowners that brag about how much “equity” they have in their homes and that prices only go up, blah blah blah. Oh, they know so much more!! 🙄 But this is just getting beyond it. Homes shouldn’t be able to double in price in there years and then keep going up. Everything is an excuse to keep prices going up so they can line their pockets.

But what I want to know is, how are these realtors making money anymore? They can’t just sit and sell houses without having to do anything like they did the last four years! Surely they aren’t making much volume anymore, because sales here have pretty much dried to a trickle. 🤔

It really is a case of the haves and have-nots. You either bought before 2020 and hopefully got a nice house and have tremendous equity and will never sell, or you did not and will never own anything.

I have wanted to buy land so I can put up street light poles and build a house since high school but I'm 34 now and still haven't gotten there. That's my fault though I haven't actually focused on that goal and put any real effort in getting there. It's basically just been a dream all these years. I'm hoping since I'm trying to get my bad spending habits under control maybe I can get there before too much longer. How old are you anyways Cole?

Yeah my dream would be to have a house and a small steel building to use for a workshop.

I’ve been trying to save as much as I can, but I have bad spending habits too. I don’t buy expensive things, but I spend too much on eating out often because I get bored and just want to go out. So it does add up.

I usually put as much as I can into CDs and high yield savings accounts, which at least helps a little with the interest rates being higher.

Even if I could afford to build something, the process seems so daunting and confusing. I really don’t think I can though, and I’m not sure what it will take. I also worry about buying a house and losing my job and then losing the house, or the prices crash and then I wasted all that money to buy it. 🙁

And I’m 35. 🙁

One thing that has definitely helped my financial situations was learning how to cook basic home food. Eating out is pretty expensive here due to the high price of labour and even takeaway isn't cheap either so being able to cook at home can really save some money but also being way more healthy than eating out. It even helped me lost some excess weigh. I was also able to save some more just by rationalizing my grocery shopping and minimizing food waste. Of course, this wasn't quick thing and it took some time to figure it out.

Yeah my dream would be to have a house and a small steel building to use for a workshop.

I’ve been trying to save as much as I can, but I have bad spending habits too. I don’t buy expensive things, but I spend too much on eating out often because I get bored and just want to go out. So it does add up.

I usually put as much as I can into CDs and high yield savings accounts, which at least helps a little with the interest rates being higher.

Even if I could afford to build something, the process seems so daunting and confusing. I really don’t think I can though, and I’m not sure what it will take. I also worry about buying a house and losing my job and then losing the house, or the prices crash and then I wasted all that money to buy it. 🙁

And I’m 35. 🙁

I also have a habit of eating out. But I also don’t know how to cook much of anything, resulting in myself buying frozen meals and junk food that I eat almost every night. I’m only 21 and weigh over 300lbs. I keep buying stuff at thrift stores, have 2 storage units packed full of stuff and unable to work because of being disabled.