News

35703 readers

2892 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.

Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.

7. No duplicate posts.

If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.

All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

JonsJava@lemmy.world

gedaliyah@lemmy.world

little_cow@lemmy.world

270

Middle-class buyers are increasingly springing for homes they can barely afford (www.nbcnews.com)

submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

73 comments fedilink hide all child comments

One in 4 middle-income new homeowners — twice as many as a decade before — are buying into cost-burdened situations.

The share of middle-class Americans who are buying wallet-squeezing homes has more than doubled in the previous 10 years.

Almost 30% of middle-class homeowners bought homes with monthly payments costing more than 30% of their income in 2022, an NBC News analysis of Census Bureau data found. That’s more than twice the share from 2013, with experts warning it leaves many households with less money for groceries and emergencies and less able to get ahead in the future.

That “cost-burdened” benchmark — in which a household devotes over 30% of income to housing costs — is a widely used measure of affordability for both homeownership and renting. The Census Bureau measures housing costs against it, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development has used it for decades.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] kobra@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah but repairs don’t get taken care of by a landlord. When you buy a home, you have even less monthly funds available for mortgage because you also need to be saving a little for the big repair things that come up.

Renting allows those repair expenses to be handled by the landlord rather than the tenant. Renting is not inherently a worse decision than buying, there are pros and cons to both.

[–] irotsoma@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I own a small house that is 118 years old with plenty of issues, and the amount I put into repairs and maintenance is nowhere near the difference in what it would cost to rent a similar sized home in my neighborhood compared to my mortgage, taxes, and insurance. That includes a major sewage issue that required digging up and replacing the old clay pipes, something I couldn't do myself.

And I've only owned it for 3 years, so I haven't even gotten to a point where inflation has increased rent over the mortgage payments yet, mosly because the rental market is insane in most cities due to short-term rentals and offshore investors leaving lots of properties off the market, so landlords can charge way higher rents with so little competition. In 10 years, assuming there's not a market crash, I'll be way better off.

Renting only saves repair cost in the short term, spreading out those costs across time, because otherwise there wouldn't be profit in renting. As a renter, you're never in a position to do that saving because rent is always so much higher than mortgage cost. Even if you have to pay more for the home than the asking price like I did. I just happened to get in before the interest rate hikes is all that I benefited from.