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How old were you when you bought your first house?

First house and wife at 26 in 1991. Bought house number 2 in 2001 for 156k now worth 525k
 
I'm impressed at the MFers that bought before they were 25! I felt like a hero for buying at 29 !
 
I'm impressed at the MFers that bought before they were 25! I felt like a hero for buying at 29 !
It was a different time and place, and also rural. Our parents instilled in us not to waste money renting, and i can say I have never rented in my life. I went from the parents house to owning my first one. I owned it a year before getting married, but my parents let me accumulate a sizeable down payment by staying with them after college for a year.
 
19 it had 5 rooms. Bedroom, living room, dining room, kitchen, and bathroom. Solid house on 3 lots. Paid 7K in 1984. Payments were less than rent. I gutted it, new Insulation, and sheet rock. Bought used kitchen cabinets. Bonus 2.5 car garage.
 
I was a late bloomer, spent most of my teens and twenties drinking beer and smoking dope. Started to get my **** together at around thirty and married and bought first house, actually a new prefab at 33. Paid cash.
Sold it ten years later for a hundred percent profit and paid cash on the older but much larger home. We pay cash for everything; basically if we can’t afford it we don’t buy it. I use a credit card but pay it off to zero every pay day so as to not pay interest.
Daughter and her fiancé were 22 and 23 when they bought their acreage with a ramshackle house on it. I suggested that they bulldoze the house and build new but they wanted to keep it and rent it out. Before they could do that it burned to the ground, nearly killing fiancé. He nearly burned, then nearly bled to death crawling out a broken window. Insurance wrote a huge check for replacement and they now have a modern, state of the art home on eight acres on the river. High enough to be flood proof and one of the most beautiful spots around.
 
Thank God they both survived, good luck to all.
Thanks. It was close. He was sleeping in the bedroom when the smoke detector woke him. He opened the bedroom door to find the living room engulfed and himself trapped. He smashed a window, threw both cats out, then crawled out, badly gashing himself on broken glass. He ran down about a hundred yards to the neighbours in his bare feet and underwear to call the fire department. The house was a total loss, apparently started by squirrels chewing the wiring. Caught one cat the next day but the other was so freaked that it took about two weeks to live trap him.
 
THIS is disappointing if true.

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Got to thinking about the year I bought my first house.....had just turned 22 a couple of months prior.
 
It was a different time and place, and also rural. Our parents instilled in us not to waste money renting, and i can say I have never rented in my life. I went from the parents house to owning my first one. I owned it a year before getting married, but my parents let me accumulate a sizeable down payment by staying with them after college for a year.
A friend and I rented an apartment until a bottom feeder stole his car. It wasn't long after that we moved into a rent house. I wasn't ready to buy anything since I was draft age and did eventually get drafted. 4 months after discharge, I bought a house.
 
THIS is disappointing if true.

View attachment 1896214
I wonder what it would be teens, especially unmarried single men
to buy tangible property of any kind
I'm sure it's a very small %

Married @ 30 y/o's 'with no kids', talk about being selfish...

I bought early, all my friends had "rented" party houses 3 or 4 of them
living there at a time or crack shack apartments...
I absolutely hate apartments, wasn't going to do that either
(I almost bought a Mobile Home, got good advice, to get a house)
I had a granddad (dad's dad) & several uncles (on dad's side too)
(thank goodness they cared/shared great advice)
all told me "buy, not to rent"
(to not just piss good $$ away, have it work for you, equity)
if I could swing the down payment
back then (1977) 10% was a min. down (new houses, inhouse developers financing),
usually 20% was the norm (at a bank or brokerage) & after the down & closing,
if your payment & property taxes & + PMIs, if applicable
was less than 33% of the buyers NET income,
to even qualify
I put $5k down (most all my HS/work savings, 2 jobs) on a $33.3k house,
interest rates were crazy then since Nov 1976, 14%-18%+ mortgages in some cases,
at least in the SF East bay area, suburbs, Concord or Antioch (was $10k cheaper) areas
but;
it was everywhere, no avoiding it for several years still, until Jan 1981 at a min.

Especially for a 1st time buyers an 18 y/o single male, I did have 2 decent incomes
only card I had was a Chevron gas card for credit history, since I was 16
& my parents were of no help or advice, at all...

By the summer of 1984 I had 2 houses, 1 of them on acreage in Palmer Alaska,
the other in Antioch Ca. I rented to an older couple, 2 year lease w/options for 5
when I knew I was moving to Alaska, Anchorage at 1st,
then Palmer out on the tundra, right behind Polar Raceway dragstrip
see it from my back porch...

7.5% on a 15 year mortgage/loan, what a difference a few years made
almost 1/2 the interest I was paying on the 1st...

A nice lil' 1,500 sqft 2b 2 bath attached 2 car "heated" garage, $59k
(sticker shock, almost dbl of what I paid for my 1st in Calif., but not much more in payment)
property & real estate was going crazy, a huge boom up there, at 1st
250k-ish people moved there (the whole state) that 2-3 years,
1/3rd rise in the states population...
Then it was like 300K+ people left, after a couple years not finding good jobs
unless you knew someone & worked for the state or city
or Oil industry, the airports, not much commercial hiring, at all...

Lots of Unemployed people, dreamers thinking they were going to
work in commercial fishing or for the pipeline/oil co.s, it ain't happening,
it's who you know, not what you know, I was one of the lucky ones...

Mostly demographics around Anchorage & Fairbanks,
two biggest cities, that are several hundreds of miles apart
But;
it didn't last long, many houses sat empty after a couple years,
you couldn't sell them, or rent them, not enough buyers (I was a lucky one)
tones of them were given back to the banks, people just walked away...
Moved back to the lower 48...
 
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I neither follow nor completely understand how the economies of different eras compare. The best that I can guess is that 40 years ago, the dollar bought more. A man making $20,000 a year was somehow able to buy a house with a price of $35,000.
It took dual income and almost 40% down to buy where I live now in the year 2004.
It isn’t exactly apples and oranges though.
The three bedroom, two bath tract house many bought in the 70s are not as common anymore, at least out here in California. With land being so expensive and the BS fees and regulations, builders have to build UP with large 2 story houses on tiny lots with small yards.
 
I neither follow nor completely understand how the economies of different eras compare. The best that I can guess is that 40 years ago, the dollar bought more. A man making $20,000 a year was somehow able to buy a house with a price of $35,000.
It took dual income and almost 40% down to buy where I live now in the year 2004.
It isn’t exactly apples and oranges though.
The three bedroom, two bath tract house many bought in the 70s are not as common anymore, at least out here in California. With land being so expensive and the BS fees and regulations, builders have to build UP with large 2 story houses on tiny lots with small yards.
I betcha the chart you posted has the same downward angle as to how much the dollar bought from back then till now.

When you have more of a commodity, it is worth less. IE print more dollars out of thin air with nothing really backing it but "the full faith and credit of the United States" and each dollar will be worth less.
 
I don’t pretend to know all of the elements affecting today’s house buying and young people. What I do know is I have three adult children with ample income that are simply not motivated to buy a house. I think it’s some combination of deferred adulting and home ownership being a bunch of work.

Just an observation.
 
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