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Comment by jonbarker | Hacker News Reader

Having lived there and now living in a cheaper real estate market I am grateful for having lived there, where I could not afford a house. I am now no longer interested in owning residential real estate no matter where I go!

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The housing market is flooded with buyers right now, all-cash offers and waived inspections. It's obvious to me that most buyers don't realize the risks associated with their investment, don't understand how to monetize them against rents from long-term buyers, and are just generally thinking emotionally and irrationally. Terrible market to buy in if you don't like spending the rest of your life paying off a money pit, unless you're somewhere like Cleveland where there's a lot of decent supply and less demand (I saw some pretty solid houses there for ~50k).

Good general rule of thumb is your cost of housing shouldn't exceed 30% of your income.

To that I'd add if you buy make sure you are pretty sure you will be in the local market for work for 6-7 years, so even if the mortgage is below 30% and rent is more like 50% if you aren't confident you'll stay put for a while you still shouldn't buy. I think there is an irrational scramble to buy going on now too although I think it is not at the scale that caused the global financial crisis.

> Good general rule of thumb is your cost of housing shouldn't exceed 30% of your income.

The 40x rule in New York (annual income must be at least 40x monthly rent) conveniently works out to be 30% too.

https://www.nakedapartments.com/guides/nyc/beginning-your-se...

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