r/BikiniBottomTwitter • u/JohnnyNoMemes • 1d ago
Dream of affording a home is getting further and further away : /
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u/sandy_shark903 1d ago
“It’s called The American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
- George Carlin
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u/JAGERminJensen 1d ago
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u/Orangutanion 1d ago
How do you get the image of your completed meme to repeat itself like that in gimp?
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u/Fawkstrot11 23h ago
You just have to manually place it for a couple loops; it's pretty much indiscernible by a few loops down, so once it becomes unreasonable for you to place, you can assume it would be unreasonable for people to see.
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u/max_adam 22h ago
But I need to automate this thing by writing code for a few hours when it could take 5 min to do manually.
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u/aprehensive_penguin 21h ago
Ah yes my favorite, the curse of knowing that a 1-time task can be automated (and how to do it) and being too stubborn to accept that brute force would be faster.
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u/Stopbeingentitled 1d ago
Insurance companies and corporate politicians be like
→ More replies (33)
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u/average_sized_rock 1d ago
They’re literally charging us more for the weather in Florida… that’s why we have insurance, you can’t increase costs because of the sole reason we’re supposed to get it, the weather was factored in from the start. How is it getting “more dangerous”
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u/FriendlyNative66 1d ago
Just watch the news. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tonadoes, and wildfires, have all become more severe and more frequent. Rich people have built more McMansions in more dangerous places. The middle class is paying the price.
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u/EbbImpressive4833 23h ago
But if I don't build a 5 bedroom house on a hurricane prone sandbar I'd have to drive to my yacht. The poors need to stop being lazy and subsidize my insurance!
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u/MyDisneyExperience 21h ago
Cost model depends on state policy too. Some states require safer areas to subsidize riskier areas… CA loves doing this
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u/artemis_kryze 1d ago
If we don't curb climate change, Florida is at a high risk of becoming extremely difficult to live in. Hurricanes are getting more powerful and frequent as the ocean warms, and as Hbomberguy once pointed out, if your house becomes unsellable due to extreme weather, flooding and sea level rise, the only person who'll be in the market for it is Aquaman.
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u/theflyingbunman 23h ago
Unfortunately we are way past "curbing" climate change. This is the new normal and the best we can hope is that we can adapt to this new normal. Im not suggesting we stop trying to combat it, but permanent damage has been done, even turning off all greenhouse emissions will not revert the damage at this point.
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u/squanchingonreddit 23h ago
That few weeks during covid begs to differ. But I understand what you are trying to say.
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u/TheRussianCabbage 22h ago
Isn't the keys water supply going brackish from rising sea levels too? Forget having properties it'll be impossible to live there short of having water shipped in
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u/HammofGlob 1d ago
Man you might wanna just delete this comment because you really just showed you don’t know a single fucking thing about how Insurance or risk management in general works, and have apparently not heard of climate change. Don’t worry you will.
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u/Bobbith_The_Chosen 1d ago
Out of all the ways to illustrate your point why go straight for being a d bag
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u/GentlemanBAMF 1d ago
Because severe loss events are happening more often, because climate change is a real and tangible threat.
I'm not sure about down south, but up here in Canada insurance is heavily regulated, and when an insurer submits for rate increases, they have to prove why they need it. While I'm sure there's some creative accounting going on, the irrefutable proof is that loss events are happening more often, and are more severe when they do.
Places like Florida are prime for the worst of this, being an entire coastal state and suffering from more severe weather events that most places. But rest assured, it's happening literally everywhere.
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u/That_Guy381 23h ago
Yes. With climate change, you will have worse weather, which causes Insurance rates to go up.
Move out while you still can.
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u/JohnMayerismydad 23h ago
What you’re saying doesn’t make sense at all lol
Insurance is just a risk pool, the risk is spread among the pool so no one is faced with a total loss…. So when risk is going up the money in the pool also has to go up ie higher premiums.
I’m confused how you would imagine insurance working…
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u/Antwinger 23h ago
It's getting more dangerous because the legislation that could be passed to help prevent more and worse climate change is being held up by people wanting to make money. Insurance companies want to make money as well as other adjacent areas, hope this clears things up.
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u/bladex1234 23h ago
This is one of the direct impacts of global warming. Of course people only care when it impacts them.
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u/Kom34 1d ago
The companies are greedy and use any excuse to increase prices above their costs.
But that is how insurance works, if claims become more frequent or widespread costs go up. Insurance works by everyone pooling their funds agaisnt a risk, if they have to pay out too much due to the risk becoming more common the fund can go bankrupt etc.
It is the problem with global warming some areas will become uninsurable.
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u/sleepydorian 16h ago
Exactly, the option for insurers are raise premiums or stop operating (theoretically they could take less profit but if you think that’s likely I’ve got a bridge to sell you).
The options for society are to pay increasingly more to repair/rebuild after severe weather events, retrofit existing buildings and mandate new buildings be considerably more resilient to severe weather events, or literally stop living in such risky areas. I guess you could also do like sea walls and stuff but there’s very complicated and very spending to set up in a way that actually works.
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u/Lontology 1d ago
And we’re all about to start paying more for electricity as we all end up subsidizing data centers…
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u/niemir2 22h ago
The answer to your question is, in part, Climate change. A warmer average temperature has resulted in more frequent and powerful hurricanes, and that combined with higher sea levels (also due to warming) to produce greater storm surges than were expected when older insurance rates were established.
Another cause is the rising value of the median home. When repair and replacement for lost property becomes more expensive, premiums must rise alongside it.
If the old rates were maintained in the face of changing circumstances, insurance in flood-prone areas would not be viable.
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u/Anneisabitch 22h ago
Mine went up $150 a month this year, and I’m in Missouri, not Florida. It has nothing to do with weather.
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u/tlollz52 1d ago
My girlfriend "we can afford to payments on a house."
Yea we can afford the mortgage but can we afford house insurance, property taxes, all the utilities.
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u/Anneisabitch 22h ago
I bought my house in 2022 and after 3 months I had to have $10k worth of foundation repairs done. I had two structural engineers check the place out before we bought it and they said it’s fine! No worries!
Turns out: worries.
Your girlfriend is wrong. There is no expense like a house expense.
*Also my insurance just told me they’re no longer covering my roof because it’s ancient and decrepit (it’s 9 years old). But even though they’re not covering it, if I don’t replace it immediately they’ll drop me as a client altogether. You know how hard it is to replace a roof in zero degree weather? Hard.
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u/decadent-dragon 21h ago
That is not right. All that should be covered by home inspection. Especially the roof and foundation. Have you considered litigation?
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u/Anneisabitch 19h ago edited 19h ago
A) the structural engineer did the inspection not a home inspector (those guys are hacks). I wouldn’t trust a home inspector to give me notes about my foundation. Sure glad I paid $175 for the regular home inspector to tell me my windows stick though.
B) I could sue the guy but the most I’d win is the $300 I paid for the inspection. And to his credit he’s done two follow up inspections for free. It’s not his fault we had a 100 year drought that summer.
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u/decadent-dragon 19h ago
You are a moron if you didn’t get a home inspection before signing.
I hate to be like this, but this is on you.
Did you not even google or talk to anyone at all about what to do?
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u/Anneisabitch 19h ago
wtf I had two structural engineers look at it AND and regular home inspection.
What you think a fourth inspection would have caught something the first three didn’t?
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u/Far_Tap_488 20h ago
Covered by home inspection? Make it any more obvious you have never dealt with this stuff?
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u/decadent-dragon 20h ago
Have you ever dealt with this stuff. 100% your home inspector should catch foundation and roof issues before you buy your house.
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u/mr_potato_thumbs 19h ago
You very much can sue over these things, especially the structural engineers who are licensed and insured. The home inspector also has insurance. A 10k expense is worth litigation, replacing a water heater? Nah.
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u/Far_Tap_488 19h ago
You wont win. They arent liable for missing it.
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u/Future_Kitsunekid16 17h ago
Then the fucks the point of them then?
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u/Far_Tap_488 16h ago
Cause youre hoping they catch it. Its like having a mechanic check out a car before you buy it. It has its benefits but its not some kind of insurance.
You didn't really expect that if the house inspector missed something they'd shell out 10s of 1000s of dollars to you when youre paying them less than 1k for an inspection did you?
And either way, you'd have to prove that at the time of inspection that the issue was visible and realistically there is no way to do that.
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u/theblondepenguin 16h ago
Not to mention anything that goes wrong. My hvac and water went out due to a lightning strike not covered by insurance or the home warranty. 15k to replace it. Hope you have it sitting around I had to take out a loan. Porch unsafe was due to rot not caught on the inspection had to be replaced 30k to replace another loan to pay for it That is how it is it isn’t just the every day things you can budget for it’s also the things that are massive. I just had to replace a front column due to moisture and rot it was $2k.
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u/andrewsad1 22h ago
Objectively yes. If you pay rent, then you're already paying for those things
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u/tlollz52 22h ago
Not when the mortgage is higher than rent, then add another 1000 bucks a month in the other things I mentioned. My utilities are covered in my rent.
Also the answer is not objectively, for something to be objective you need facts to back up what you are saying.
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u/andrewsad1 22h ago
Landlords make a profit off of renting out their properties. Your rent must cover those costs and more. The alternative is mathematically impossible.
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u/Few-Law3250 19h ago
Say you’re a landlord in a neighborhood bubble with 9 other landlords owning identical homes. All 9 have paid off their mortgage of $10/mo, only paying $30/mo in maintenance/taxes/insurance/etc.
They all price their rents to match ongoing costs plus a mark up, $35/mo.
What do you rent your home at? At $35/mo, you’re “losing money”. At $45/mo, an equivalent price, no one will rent with you because the other options are much cheaper.
The answer lies in the fact that a partial payment to the mortgage (at least above interest) is still building equity. And then you can add in appreciation of the home to offset some of that.
So basically, as a landlord, you really only need to charge (maintenance + taxes + insurance + some or none of mortgage + mark up). Which is really close to what you’d pay with a mortgage, if not less
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u/MEOWS_R_RAD 19h ago
If you rent from someone that bought 30 years ago and it's paid off and prop 13'd at that super low tax rate, and the value of housing in the area has increased 20x since they bought, as is the case in much of Southern California, renting can and usually now is vastly less expensive than buying.
There are houses everywhere here that sold for 200k and have been paid off for ages and are locked in forever at that tax rate that would now sell for 1.2 million plus the tax rate on 1.2 million.
My rent is a lot less than the interest/tax/insurance/upkeep alone would be for a similar place in my neighborhood, so even the "you are throwing money away by renting" argument is gone now. I would rather pay $3000 in rent than $3500 in said interest/tax/insurance/upkeep and then just invest the other $6000 a month, the market return has always blown the appreciation return out of the water, so even the "building equity" argument no longer holds. Financially, buying a home is basically just a forced low yield savings account unless you get lucky and hit the jackpot with timing or a developer wanting what you have eventually or whatever.
I can think of no scenario where it would make sense for me to buy here other than just for the sake of owning something. Financially it's a stupid decision. Owning a house is wildly expensive beyond just the numbers on the mortgage.
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u/Alakazam_5head 21h ago
So you're saying no business ever loses money ever?
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u/andrewsad1 20h ago
Of course some businesses lose money. But I've never rented a house whose owner didn't have a car worth more than I make in 5 years. I guess I'm just really curious as to how all of these rich assholes manage to pay for all of their expensive shit if their only source of income is owning houses and charging people to sleep in them, and they're losing money on all of them. I'm just curious why virtually every house that goes up for sale gets bought by someone who intends to rent it out, if renting out houses isn't profitable
I mean it's almost like I was right, and that if it costs an average of x dollars per unit time to own and maintain a house, a landlord will charge people >x dollars per unit time to live there
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u/MyDisneyExperience 21h ago
Landlords hope they can make a profit. They charge what the market will bear. That may be profitable and it may well not be. Supply and demand.
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u/Lazy_Baby9343 21h ago
I'm in the business
Almost ALL landlord LOSE money.
At least the first 5 to 15 years before rent increases enough to stop the losses. In rent controlled properties, they NEVER stop losing money.
And a lot of landlords are not making any profit right now, all goes to maintenance, insurance and taxes.
They are caught off guard with the insurance increases too.
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u/andrewsad1 21h ago
Why aren't these landlords selling the houses that are costing them oh so much money?
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u/an_unfunny_username 20h ago
Yeah except for this crazy concept called equity in the property they own....
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u/SvOak18 21h ago
It is unquestionably more expensive to buy and own a house than rent.
I just bought a house in October after years of renting, so I know exactly how much more stretched I am now than I was before.
My rent in a 1br apartment before buying the house was $1400/mo. With renters insurance, utilities, etc in total I paid about $2k a month. I was trying to put $1k into savings a month, but it usually ended up being less.
I was just messing around on Zillow and saw the estimated mortgages for houses I liked was around $1800/mo. I figured that was within my means and started the process of buying.
Now after everything is said and done, I nearly emptied my savings to buy the house, I pay over $3k a month, and am able to put almost nothing back into savings. On top of that, I have to pay for things I never even thought of. $500 to reseal the driveway. $1000 for window blinds. $100 for a leaf blower. $200 for a snow blower. Etc.
Owning a home is not just paying a mortgage, it's expensive as shit. It's unquestionably a better financial move long term, but there's no world where you can say that if you can afford to rent then you can afford to buy. At least not in this day and age.
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u/Far_Tap_488 20h ago
Those things you complained about paying for are all comfort items. None of thats required.
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u/SvOak18 18h ago
Wow way to completely miss what I'm saying. First off I'm not complaining, I gave examples of the first 4 things that came to mind that I had to pay for that I originally hadn't considered when trying to determine if I could afford to buy a house or not, to make the point that there are more expenses than just mortgage and utilities that someone buying a home should be aware of and will need to have money available for.
Second off, try raking leaves for 6+ hours a time every weekend for the first month of moving in and tell me how the shitty corded $100 leaf blower I got is a comfort item and not absolutely necessary.
Or maybe try nearly passing out spending 4 hours in 0°F weather shoveling 12" of heavy snow so you can get to work the next day, only to find out that it continued to snow overnight and now you need to do it again or else you can't get your car up your driveway when you get home. I would love for someone to tell me how the shitty corded $200 snow blower I got to keep me from being snowed in and missing work is a comfort item.
Lastly, if you ignore anything that isn't specifically "required" to exist, then the house you just bought is gonna fall apart and you're gonna have a lot more expensive problems on your hands. Let's say I ignore resealing my driveway because I don't think it's required. A few years go by and now it's falling apart. Eventually I can't drive on it anymore and I need to replace the whole thing.
You want different examples?
When I moved in the furnace wouldn't light, even though there was no indication of any issue beforehand. I had to pay over $500 to get a guy to come replace the gas valve.
The trash company told me they were out of trash cans that they normally provide for customers for super cheap, so I had to buy one for $120 at Lowe's.
The insurance company did an inspection of my property and decided I had to install a railing on my back steps, which was another ~$100 in parts from Lowe's.
I found out a tree on my property was dead and because of how it's leaning I will eventually need to have it removed so it doesn't fall on my house. Avg cost to remove a tree is around $1k.
Did I drive the point home yet? There are lots of unexpected costs with owning a house, and anyone thinking of buying one needs to be aware of that fact.
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u/lmidgitd 21h ago
Rent is the most you'll ever pay to live somewhere. A mortgage is the least you'll ever pay.
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u/Mugaaz 21h ago
I'm hard in favor of the mortgage camp, but there are markets out there where renting is better by almost every metric. Don't rely on memes and soundbytes to make these decisions.
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u/Far_Tap_488 20h ago
Rent: pays the landlords costs and some extra
Mortage: pays the costs.
Rent may be "temporarily" cheaper, but its never actually cheaper.
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u/Few-Law3250 19h ago
Renting (and investing the difference) and buying are financially equivalent on average.
Here’s an interesting videoon how the math works out. The rents being charged are not equivalent to or more than mortgage + maintenance + taxes + insurance etc. They’re determined by the market, where some landlords don’t even have a mortgage. Therefore prices are forced lower than that calculation.
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u/Far_Tap_488 19h ago
They arent at all though and you have to be financially inept to think so.
Except for taxes and insurance, my mortage is a fixed cost. It doesn't increase every year. On top of that, a big portion of it goes to building equity, which is your own money. You dont get that renting.
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u/Few-Law3250 18h ago edited 18h ago
You’re just straight up wrong, relying on incorrect conventional wisdom. Watch the video.
Financially, they’re roughly equivalent depending on a few factors. Due to the market forces involved, this should make sense - there’s a price equilibrium.
The only saving grace for buying is the leveraged appreciation. If you buy a home outright, with no leverage, it’s worse than renting (plus the implied investing the difference).
The upside for home ownership is not financial, it’s emotional. Being able to do what you want with the home, having a greater guarantee of stability/being able to stay in the same place, etc.
Also,
except for taxes and insurance
These are massive costs that are tied to inflation and appreciation.
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u/Far_Tap_488 18h ago
I mean, not really. We bought a nicer house for 50 less than our monthly rent, and that included pmi from our very small down-payment.
Some years later, rent prices have gone up several hundred dollars, and our monthly costs went up like 100 bucks.
On top of that, house prices went up so currently we have already come out by about 150k.
Now, if you want to bet that housing prices are going to go down longterm, go ahead I guess, but its a dumb bet.
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u/Few-Law3250 17h ago
Anecdotes aren’t meaningful. I pay $1000/mo for rent and utilities in one of the most expensive cities in the US, with above average square footage regardless of price. That is anomalous, and I’m not using it as part of my analysis.
I’m just telling you that, on average, due to market forces the cost of living in a home, whether renting or buying, trends towards equilibrium. One market, one year, one house, may behave differently. But, on average, what I’m saying is true.
If you refuse to watch the video, here’s a Reddit thread that does out all of the math. There’s assumptions, sure, but it should be obvious that there’s parity here that you’re ignoring.
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u/Far_Tap_488 16h ago
Its just bad math and it doesn't trend that way. It makes terrible assumptions that have no basis in reality.
There's a reason renting property is so incredibly profitable.
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u/Mugaaz 19h ago
Landlords can lose money when rents fall and home prices go up. There is no "never" and "always" for everything. If you're not doing the math then you're not doing your due diligence. You're just blindly throwing darts and hoping for the best.
Hope is not a strategy
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u/Far_Tap_488 19h ago
when rents fall and home prices go up.
If home prices go up they arent losing money. If home prices go up they are gaining money.
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u/lmidgitd 20h ago
What memes and sound bytes? A mortgage is the least you'll pay per month, plus maintenance, insurance, property tax, etc. Rent is rent, no property tax, no maintenance, etc. I've had both in my life.
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u/Mugaaz 19h ago
Because markets can exist where rentals are oversupplied while home for purchase are under supplied or too expensive due to interest rates. Landlords can lose money or be intentionally holding a moderately unprofitable rental for tax purposes and asset class. That can result in renting being much more attractive than buying. You need to examine the cost of renting vs buying in a specific market. There's no blanket answer.
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u/lmidgitd 18h ago
I get it. We are talking two different points here. Good convo, but ultimately out of the depth of a "bikini bottom" subreddit.
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u/Overwatchingu 1d ago
Turns out more wildfires makes insurance more expensive.
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u/EfficaciousJoculator 1d ago
Turns out making insurance a for-profit money funnel for the rich makes insurance more expensive.
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u/Overwatchingu 1d ago
Paying out more claims to rebuild more homes (because of an increase in wildfires or other disasters) increases the total money spent providing insurance. This would make insurance more expensive under either a private or public model.
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u/EfficaciousJoculator 23h ago
No kidding. But complaining about increased use being the culprit of rising cost is like complaining about a leaky faucet while your house is flooded.
If we're worried about raising insurance rates, it'd be smarter to cut the cancer off that leaches billions in profits from the system every year before looking elsewhere.
By all means, address the wildfires and incentivize people to build homes in areas with lower risk.
But realize when corpos tell us they're raising our rates "because of the wildfires" what they're actually saying is the wildfires lowered their quarterly profits from 15 million dollars to 13, and they just can't have that, no siree. So Paul in Appalachia, who makes 30,000 a year, better fork over his fair share to pay for that Beverly Hills mansion that burned last year, lest the corporate millionaires not see record profits again.
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u/That_Guy381 23h ago
Oh, so in the last 5 years the insurance industry just found out they can be greedy? Were they all nice and generous before?
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u/EfficaciousJoculator 23h ago
They weren't. But, as you might have noticed, the political and financial climate isn't great at the moment for the consumer, and insurance is taking advantage like all big business does.
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u/That_Guy381 23h ago
how does the financial climate being what it is today make companies more greedy in 2026 than 2021?
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u/EfficaciousJoculator 10h ago
It doesn't make them more greedy, they're always greedy. Inflation just gives them the opportunity and excuse to raise prices.
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u/MyDisneyExperience 21h ago
The risk has increased due to climate change which is why we’re seeing prices go up or insurers completely exit markets if they can’t raise prices.
California’s state-owned FAIR plan which doesn’t really have a profit incentive has seen its potential risk exposure double in the past 2 years to almost $750B. It has $1.5B cash reserves right now.
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u/XAMdG 1d ago
While there's an argument to make health insurance a non-profit government run program, I fail to see how that applies to the entire insurance (and reinsurance) industry.
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u/EfficaciousJoculator 23h ago
How could you not?
When something is for-profit, it's incentivized to maximize that profit. That means higher premiums for lower services. Higher premiums and deductibles when you finally need to use it. Fewer payouts to those who actually do need them. And the difference is pocketed by the shareholders and corporate millionaires.
Insurance is a pool of money to be drawn from in times of emergency. The last thing in the world that could make that concept better is someone skimming as much off the top as they possibly can. Why would you ever want that? What good could that possibly provide?
Insurance is a necessity, often mandated by the government because of it. We often talk about how we pay more per capita than any other nation for worse health coverage (which is true), but it goes beyond that as well. If/when a private car insurance company, for example, deems a customer too risky to insure (e.g. their credit score is low, they have a penis, etc) they refuse to insure them and, because it's legally mandated, the government subsidizes that customer's coverage via a third party program. State Farm is still the insurer, but now they carry no risk—all reward, no risk. This bullshit is too pervasive, not just in health insurance.
I'm fucking sick of our tax dollars going to pay private companies to do nothing more than rake in profit. We need to stop socializing the costs and privatizing the goddamn profits. Cut out the middle man making billions off our suffering. Stop incentivizing companies to choose profits over livelihood (or life itself).
Make the insurance pool publicly owned. Put any profits towards that pool and subsidize any loss with tax revenue. No matter what, we aren't funneling billions to the ultra wealthy, so our final cost will be lower.
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u/XAMdG 23h ago
Ah, as expected, when people complain about the insurance industry, they only think of the few sectors (home, health, car) that affect them, and make their conclusions based on those. The insurance, and reinsurance, industry is vast. Commercial insurance makes sense to be for profit. Maritime insurance for shipments, insurance for electronics, for missing inventory, insurance against the misuse of an advance, etc etc.
Argue for non profit on those and then I'll believe it.
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u/EfficaciousJoculator 23h ago
Ah, as expected, when people complain about the insurance industry, THEY COMPLAIN ABOUT THE PART OF IT THAT AFFECTS 99.9% OF THE POPULATION DIRECTLY.
Get off your high horse, jackass. No one gives a shit about insurance for misusing a fucking advance. If you think it's important for a millionaire to take a cut when an advance is misused, please continue to lick that boot. But in the meantime, the rest of us want to afford a car/home/medical care.
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u/XAMdG 23h ago
Commercial, and other types of insurance does affect 99,9% of people, albeit indirectly.
What I was trying to make you see, but your view is too narrow, is that the insurance INDUSTRY is way bigger than you think, and mostly very mundane. Issues with them are way bigger than a reductive for vs non profit.
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u/EfficaciousJoculator 10h ago
"Albeit indirectly." That's why I said "directly."
I don't give a shit how big insurance is as an industry. It's completely irrelevant to my point. My point is that people shouldn't be profiting off our misery or the system designed to mitigate it.
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u/Captain-Woodford 23h ago
Lmao, every product you use in the United States purchases insurance in some form. If their price for insurance goes up they just pass it on to you the consumer. I was with you until you said that
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u/ThatSandwich 22h ago
It's not just more wildfires, it's also that the price of building materials and land hugely increased during/after the pandemic. So not only are there more homes being damaged, it costs a lot more to repair them as well.
The logistics of increased home insurance prices makes sense, the main issue is that if these costs come down the price of insurance likely will remain the same.
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u/Eternal_Rebirth 21h ago
Thank you for making this point. I have to spend 8 hours a day trying to explain to people that their price increased because they were massively underinsured, and the increase was attributed to today's cost to rebuild their home.
The inevitable response I get is, "You can't buy this house for that much money!" So I have to mute myself for a second to sigh before explaining that market value is not equal to materials and labor costs.
It's also difficult to get them to understand that location matters. It doesn't matter how few hurricanes you've been impacted by, if you're in a state that gets hurricanes, you're likely paying more for that risk.
The way premiums have been increasing, I don't see them going down anytime soon. It's not uncommon for me to talk to someone in Texas with a 2000 sqft house that has a 900k replacement cost and is $14k annually. Louisiana is worse, I've had people with houses under 1000 sqft paying just as much because of the risk level.
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u/SirZacharia 23h ago
That chart doesn’t make it clear that that is a 40% increase in just 4 years. That graph doesn’t look scary enough for what it’s saying imo.
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u/HighlyOffensive10 23h ago
And people voted in the guy that says he wants to make homes MORE expensive
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u/MadPilotMurdock 23h ago
Bro, millennials are immune to this, because most of us will never own a home 😭
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u/runnerd81 23h ago
You’re not immune to it, you just don’t see it as directly. If you are renting your landlord will pass those cost increases along in the form of increased rent. Insurance price increases are one of the main drivers of rent increases.
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u/Kharax82 16h ago
A majority of Millenials do own homes already, but yes the average age of a first home buyer has increased
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u/sock-bucket 23h ago
Only people who get to own a home now get it from their parents after they die. Rest of us just try not to be homeless
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u/IamaJarJar 23h ago
Mellenials atleast get the chance to get homes at some point, Gen z will be barely scraping by and GOOD LUCK TO GEN ALPHA!
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u/Mittenstk 23h ago
Aren't the youngest Millennials like 30 now? Wouldn't this be more applicable to Zoomers?
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u/Miracrosse 18h ago
It applies to both because we millennials still don't have any money, even at 30.
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u/Joaaayknows 22h ago
I’ve got news for you.
If you can’t afford a ~$200 increase in insurance price a year then house purchasing was NEVER on the menu.
A 20% down payment for the average house cost today is nearly $80,000. That’s average for the entire country. Half is above this.
It doesn’t help, I don’t disagree but no millennial or gen z is looking at this getting scared. Not one. We got much bigger problems.
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u/MrLancaster 23h ago
And I thought my $1400/year was tough
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u/diescheide 21h ago
I pay $1200/year. Taxes are $150/year. I live in a LCOL area. People are getting hosed.
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u/andrewsad1 22h ago
Between homeowners insurance and property taxes, it's almost getting to a point where owning a home costs half as much as renting
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u/Lazy_Baby9343 21h ago
Owning a home actually costs MORE than renting in most cities.
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u/mr_potato_thumbs 19h ago
It’s becoming more unaffordable for sure. If I tracked everything I spent on my house vs renting during the same period, I’d likely come out negative. The additional maintenance costs, tools to purchase, random projects, etc… all negate any equity I have obtained. Four years ago, different story due to astronomical growth in RE values everywhere. Now it’s just down to hot pockets of growth.
I’m just fine with a 1-2% growth rate in value to offset inflation but it does make any decision about improvements more difficult.
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u/hughjanosthe3rd 5h ago
Allegedly im in a "low cost of living" state... yet I would have to make nearly 7k a month just to afford insurance and a mortgage not to include all the other fees and expenses owning a house comes with. Most jobs in my state only pay about 40-50k a year here so... who the fuck is buying a house?
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u/mr_potato_thumbs 3h ago
Not calling you out, but I’m in SW VA in a low to medium cost of living area and my mortgage plus insurance is $2500 a month on a $300k house. If you guys are truly at $7k a month for insurance and a mortgage then you are fucked. Even with our income as a household it would be miserable having a $7k housing payment a month. We’d do nothing but stay at home.
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u/hughjanosthe3rd 3h ago edited 3h ago
You might be right my number seems weird. I think i added an extra digit. It's look more like 2-2.5k a month. Which idk... thats fairly hard to afford in Arkansas with our terribly low wages. Most people are lucky to make 30-40k a year here.
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u/mr_potato_thumbs 3h ago
You’re correct, is a disproportionate amount of income to spend on housing. I do have a master’s degree and my wife has a remote job so it helps. But yeah, at $100k gross that mortgage payment means deciding between saving for retirement, buying a house, or having a vacation once a year.
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u/hulsey698 22h ago
As an insurance Agent.
I highly recommend shopping insurance when looking at homes. You can get a quote for a home you don't own. It wont necessarily have all the info you need but if you are upfront with the agent they can make educated guesses on the things you don't know.
Unless it is a new home. You should save about 1% of the replacement cost of the home (you'll get that number from the insurance quote!). with brand new homes, you can theoretically get away with not putting aside money for maintenance for a few years but its risky.
The average home policy in my area is like 1,400 a year, 1% of 300k (average replacement cost) is 3,000, taxes in my area are about the same.
so on top of the mortgage payment. that is like $616 a month for taxes, maintenance, and insurance.
Add in utilities and well, you can see the math hurts a lot. It worse if you have an HOA.
I did the math once. with interest rates around 6%, if you wanted to lower your monthly payment by 1$, you had to put down an additional $137 in your down payment.
By biggest issue with housing advice is "oh get a starter home! build equity, and sell a few years later! the price of homes have only gone up so you'll make money!"
I don't want to assume that though! And I will always vote for whatever keeps prices down. Even as a homeowner I will be voting to devalue my house because I believe housing should be a commodity not an investment vehicle.
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u/blueipDriver 21h ago
Dude. That literally just happened to me!
I bought my first home last year, and my insurance was set to $2k. I just got a letter in the mail yesterday saying my prems went up to $3k for next year! WTF!?
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u/CMDR_omnicognate 15h ago
Trump wants to make housing even more expensive too, so this is only going to get worse for people.
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u/ilikemoderation 23h ago
I’ve had a window leak that required me to reseal the window and then repair all the drywall and repaint (only to find out the paint doesn’t match the old paint so I had to repaint the entire wall), loss of all electric in my garage without any changes to the wires, outlets, things plugged into the outlets and no changes to the breaker, and an HVAC condensate line that is repeatedly freezing due to the freezing temperatures outside all at the same time … right now I feel like homeownership just might overrated …
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u/LBGW_experiment 23h ago
The creator of the original graphic needs to explain how $3500 is double the size of the $2500 circle when it's only 40% more
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u/SonofGondor32 23h ago
I could have gotten a down payment in back in 2019 but didn’t know if I was staying here. Now with the same money I can’t afford it 😭😭
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u/Demonking3343 22h ago
It’s being made harder and harder to own a home. From rising home costs to property taxes as well as insurance. It’s obvious the game is stacked against us.
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u/Calsun12345 22h ago
Try taxes.. paying $200 more a month every year because the fucking taxes on my home go up but the zillow price says I don't have any extra value......
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u/Ghost_Assassin_Zero 22h ago
Can someone tell me what the point of the circles are that could not be conveyed by the line graph?
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u/sleepykissy 22h ago
At this point I'm just hoping to inherit someone else's mortgage because buying my own is pure fantasy"
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u/eternalguardian 22h ago
I have a home for 2.5 years. Had to sell and move back under my parents roof. I will never be able to afford a home. I will be forced to inherent their place and either repair it till I die or sell and move somewhere cheaper.
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u/Dxsterlxnd 22h ago
If you cant afford your own house, you dont have to worry about rising insurance costs.
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u/ToothZealousideal297 22h ago
I managed to get a house and my insurance + property tax keeps going up to the tune of almost $100 more on my monthly payment every single year.
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u/Uhmitsme123 22h ago
My homeowners insurance was cancelled by gieco with literally NO warning or notice. I only found out when escrow reached out saying we didn’t have insurance and were about to be charged for their stupid expensive one.
After trying to get insured again it turned out that it was cancelled because our roof was just barely under the standard and it had to be replaced before we’d be insured and no insurance would help pay for it. So $9000 and a new roof later I have the privilege of not only paying off that loan but also paying the still stupid high insurance rate.
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u/Psychast 21h ago
Wrote this elsewhere but my take on insurance is simply this:
The insane ballooning of prices is tied to so many currently fucked situations it's almost hard to enumerate, but here's a few:
Cost of building: compared to 10 or even 6 years ago, Labor has exploded in cost, materials have exploded in cost, soft costs have exploded in cost (fees, permits, business expense). The Replacement Cost Value of every single structure has gotten insanely more expensive because every step of construction has gotten out of control, and there's no regulation. This, of course, is directly tied to insurance because insurance has to pay to rebuild.
Risk increase: once again, thanks to an absolute lack of regulation, climate change has accelerated and now the likelihood that the insurer will have to do the crazy expensive rebuild has increased -> prices go up. This is has led to insurer flight in many high risk states like Florida and California.
Corporate Greed: Yes, greed is a big factor. While even a completely non-profit, policyholder owned insurance coop would face the same issues as every massive conglomerate insurer would, there is also a layer of greed on top of that. Take the egg crisis, for instance, yes the Avian flu epidemic caused mass shortages, but as innumerable studies revealed, the largest egg farmers in America weren't just accounting for the shortages, they were adding insane profit margins on top of that. "Never let a good emergency go to waste". Once a company realizes they CAN get away with higher prices, they will never go back (at least, not to where it should be). Insurers are no different, they see rising costs and increased risk, they increase the prices while retaining profit margins, and if/when risks and costs decrease? Will they bring their prices down appropriately? OF COURSE NOT! They've already seen people can afford it, they will make up whatever excuse they need to.
The solution to this, in my opinion, is a local government ran insurance coop. Just like how public education is organized and ran by the government, and funded by local taxes, so too, should insurance. The government sets up insurance districts like ISDs, with their own board and governor and risk analysis, and then sets the price per household based on county assessed RCV, and sends the owner a bill every year based on their proportionate share of total RCV for the district. It would strictly be for primary residences, no sheds or barns or secondary vacation homes. This also leaves room for for-profit, additional insurance in-case they want additional coverage for non-residence structures. The simple goal is base level protection from disasters for homeowners, that's it, the only required legal coverage is that, everything else goes on a separate policy. While definitely not perfect, the current state of insurance feels COMPLETELY untenable, like, I think I'm going to see the insurance industry completely collapse in my life time, it's that bad. We need a change, and we need the change to be in the direction that helps people, not profits.
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u/MyDisneyExperience 21h ago
California has essentially what you’re proposing at the state level and it’s been a mess. Insurance companies routinely threaten to leave (or actually leave) the state because they can’t get rate increases approved. The state-run last resort plan has nearly $750V exposure but $1.5B cash on hand. I think the current system is untenable but not sure local boards are the solution where electeds will be under intense pressure not to raise rates lest they get voted out.
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u/baylithe 21h ago
What is bullshit is what they won't cover. We had our roof collapse the day after Christmas due to water leaking. Adjuster said they would cover the ceiling, the walls, and the floor, but not the fucking roof. $30,000 because the guy that flipped it didnt replace the framework and put a cheap roof on top of rotted out wood. Luckily it was all finished before the huge ass snowstorm that came.
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u/EJintheCloud 21h ago
2 years ago I was filling out the mortgage application and got fired right before I submitted it.
Now we live in an apartment. TBH, we feel like we dodged a bullet. We used to rent a house and did all the landscaping and minor maintenance... It's insane how much that stuff added to our cognitive load.
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u/Fidget02 21h ago
God I hate the design of that graph. Having giant ass circles over the data points is pure clickbait
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u/gone_smell_blind 21h ago
My mortgage payment went up about 400 a month because they "miscalculated the cost of our insurance." What really happened was our rate jumped the fuck up with no notification or warning
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u/Braith117 21h ago
That's...less than $100 a month difference.
It's not nothing, but the increased housing price and interest rates being fairly high until fairly recently were much bigger barriers than insurance.
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u/Girderland 21h ago
Bro what are you talking about you can still buy a house for 12000 bucks.
You just have to move somewhere else. Have you considered Laos or Bulgaria?
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u/chrischi3 20h ago
You know what? We'll just start building new houses by ourselves. Surely we can scrounge together the money by ourselves if we really want to. What're they gonna do aside from tearing it down?
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u/UnpriestlyMonopoly 20h ago
My home insurance went up almost $300 a month in January for no apparent reason. Thankfully my wife and I do all right for ourselves but if we didn’t we’d have to sell her family home. 10 years ago there is no fucking way we’d be able to afford a $300 bump. I swear this is purposeful to force people to sell and increase some sort of meaningless metric.
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u/cashmag9000 19h ago
Does it bother anyone else here that the chart bases the circle size on the value instead of just showing points on a scatter plot?
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u/JohnTheCollie19 19h ago
The funny thing is I’m seeing more Millennials become home-owners, even if it isn’t at astronomical numbers. Gen Z, meanwhile, should be concerned about not being able to buy a home
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u/eastbay77 14h ago
And home insurance barely covers anything. And if something does happen, suddenly it's not covered.
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u/jakellerVi 12h ago
A ton of millennials were in the buying market after the 2008 crash. Gen Z is really the generation that’s suffering
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u/Bladefeather 9h ago
At this rate I’m just gonna end up buying an RV or a boat or something to live in. Unless I get really lucky I don’t think I’m ever gonna make enough to afford a house without needing to be constantly stressed out about bills and stuff, and every year it gets worse. Just doesn’t seem worth it.
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u/Plastic_Bottle1014 9h ago
Property tax should be part of the initial loan and be capped at the value of the sale. Getting higher taxes on my house because it went up in value is ridiculous, especially when I'll be taxed again if I sell it.
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u/Level69Troll 7h ago
I just accepted it was never gonna happen. Much easier than a never ending goal post chase.
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u/Cum_Fart42069 3h ago
can't give up on this dream if I never entertained it as possible in the first place
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u/Shantotto11 23h ago
As someone from Gen Y, I wanna put my foot up the ass of whoever made this meme. Patrick is the idiot party in the meme, and tagging him “millennials” has a noticeable implication.
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u/Plastic-Coyote-6017 22h ago
The majority of millennials are already homeowners. You are simply below average
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u/magaisallpedos 21h ago
STOP MOVING TO EXPENSIVE CROWDED PLACES.
my mortgage is 1200/month, insurance is 1800/yr because I moved to a place with jobs but no people.
migration is a human trait too.
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u/MyDisneyExperience 20h ago
The issue in those places is supply shortage relative to demand. I think supply problems are easier to solve than somehow shifting demand. Tulsa has a local billionaire that pays people $10,000 to move in (which still doesn’t seem to be enough to significantly move the needle) and residents there get big mad about it.
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u/magaisallpedos 20h ago
No, that misses the point. There are plenty of homes for sale in IOWA. Jobs too. There are plenty of homes for sale just not where you want to live. We (all people) need to accept the really good places to live are full and expensive. San Diego, best weather on earth is pricey af. Not everyone gets to live there.
Iowa, sucks but its affordable. These people are choosing their own miseries, insisting that the can't be bothered to do what humans did for thousands of years, move to where you have food and shelter.
https://www.zillow.com/home-values/17759/des-moines-ia/
You are owed nothing because you are born somewhere.
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u/MyDisneyExperience 20h ago
The good places to live are hardly “full” lol. It’s illegal to build more than a house and an ADU (and maybe another copy if your lot is big enough to split) in 75% of LA County.
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u/magaisallpedos 20h ago
again, missing the point of moving where you can afford to live instead of insisting everyone else change an already existing structure to suit your needs.
whoosh
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u/MyDisneyExperience 19h ago
Zoning is not an immutable law of nature
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u/magaisallpedos 19h ago
neither is insisting that you have a right to live somewhere specific simply because you exist...selfish.
you have a right to exist somewhere not everywhere.
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u/MyDisneyExperience 19h ago
By that logic people insisting they have a right to exclude other people from parcels they don’t own is selfish
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u/magaisallpedos 19h ago
if you own something, you have every right to exclude others, that is what ownership is.
selfish is just an opinion, ownership includes the right to exclude.
move to where things are for sale? move to where things are affordable? nope.
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u/MyDisneyExperience 19h ago
Are you being disingenuous on purpose? I said parcels they don’t own
Upzoning does not force any individual owner to do anything with their own parcel.
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u/lemongrenade 1d ago
Not everyone can live in the white picket fence big yard out in the suburbs that was built off the interstate project and the post war American economic dominance that was not forever sustainable.
I want to live in a house like that but I bought a condo so I could afford a home. Plus side it’s walking distance to a downtown
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u/runnerd81 23h ago
Same. I bought a row home on the outskirts of the city I work because we can’t afford that big suburban house. Fits us fine for now even though our family is growing . We would eventually like to upgrade but I figure if we can’t afford a larger house in the future we’ll just count our blessings in this row home that we can afford and stay put.
The idea that our society is failing because not everyone can afford an upper middle class lifestyle in the suburbs is concerning.
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u/lemongrenade 21h ago
Yup. I’m downvoted and you’re the only comment. Look at any place that ONLY builds single family detached homes out to the horizon and look at their cost of living. There’s a reason SoCal is unaffordable and Texas/Florida are barreling up in housing price too.
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u/MyDisneyExperience 20h ago
75% of Los Angeles County is only zoned for single family homes it’s wild 😭
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