Too good to be true offer!

[LDAHL]

Credit card companies were all moving to places like South Dakota and Delaware to get around usury laws.

There was a lot of gold buggery and schemes to invest in “tangible assets”.

[ApatheticNoMore]

So interest rates were higher but housing prices much lower, and all that matters is the monthly payment really.

[JaneV2.0]

Can you still claim mortgage interest on your taxes?

[iris lilies]

Can you still claim mortgage interest on your taxes?

Yes, but with the tax simplification carried out during the Trump administration, That amount has to be pretty high because the standard deduction was raised to be very high. But I suppose in place like .california, it is not hard to reach that level paid out in mortgage interest.

The idea of that gives me the creeps. But to each his own.

[catherine]

So interest rates were higher but housing prices much lower, and all that matters is the monthly payment really.

Yes, but adjusted for today's dollars, until the recent housing market boom, the houses tracked pretty much on par with everything else, including income. But it's true that the market over the past two years has changed things.

I purchased my house in Dutchess County NY for $85k. If I google "what's 1980 $85000 worth today" it comes out to $301,000, which is about right for that area and that house before COVID. Zillow says that same house now is worth $394k-463k.

[iris lilies]

So interest rates were higher but housing prices much lower, and all that matters is the monthly payment really.

I did a comparison of my salary back in the year 1982 when I was househunting, and I think I made a case for houses being as affordable now as then, if not more so.


But I deleted it because I was unsure of one number, assumption about sale price of the house in question 45 years ago.

When I have time to dig into the newspaper archives back then, I really would like to revisit that little cost study. I was using a house in Las Cruces New Mexico as the test case, a house that was my dream house at the time, and nearly 45 years later would be my dream house now. It serves as a good test case because it really hadn’t been renovated in these 45 years. It looked exactly on the inside like a place I rented in that same town at that time.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I've looked at the numbers many times for housing prices in California. Housing prices have gone up significantly more than inflation.

[jp1]

It still makes sense for me to itemize and deduct our mortgage interest. But probably only because we also pay $9000ish/year property taxes and significant state income tax.

Just read today that the average mortgage interest rate last week was over 6%. If we were paying that much our monthly payment would be $1250 more than it is. In order to get our monthly payment at a hypothetical 6% down to what it is at our current rate the purchase price would be $462,000 instead of the $727,000 that we paid.

[iris lilies]

I've looked at the numbers many times for housing prices in California. Housing prices have gone up significantly more than inflation.

California is another country. And now that disease has spread to Portland, Seattle, and various points around that away in the PNW.

When I was a young professional I specifically did not want to work in a high cost of living area because I wanted to buy a house. That was what I valued, does not mean that’s what everyone values

[bae]

California is another country. And now that disease has spread to Portland, Seattle, and various points around that away in the PNW.

My Dad bought a condo here in WA, on the island, about 2 months ago, $179k. Hugely below the average cost of anyplace liveable here - he was previously renting an under-the-radar "studio apartment" for $1100/month, and it had no kitchen/cooking facilities, and was essentially 1/2 of a two-car garage converted to the "apartment". His payments on the hellhole condo he bought are less. We had to gut the place and remodel, but that cost <$6000 with labor/materials.

An identical unit there, needing some remodeling/repair, sold for $225k just a month later.

Last Friday, another identical unit, also needing work, sold for $279k!!!

I suspect Dad kicked off a wave of gentrification in what was the island's worst apartment/condo complex. (It used to be the second-worst, with the worst being completely full of drug dealers and drug users, but some locals bought that complex in its entirety a couple years back, threw out the tenants, renovated it, then "flipped" it to our community land trust to be used as affordable apartments.)