Comment by jholman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jholman | Hacker News Reader

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> 20% down. Agree 10% down is not plan A.

Right, okay. And, to be clear, back in my day 5% down (FIVE) was totally plan A, so that has gotten harder for the next generation. Thanks, fedgov!

> difficult to work with

Heh, notwithstanding the amusing savagery of my sibling comment, is "difficult to work with" a euphemism for "impossible to work with", or do you have reason to believe that this is even possible?

> It sucks if you are a single person

I would say that it's getting closer to hopeless if you're a single-income family, and being a single-income individual isn't much better, because 1br condos are actually not that much cheaper than 1br.

I'm in a condo, btw, and I could have done it on my income alone when I bought (laxer stress tests, I provided the down solo anyway, rates were lower, prices were lower), but I could not buy this condo solo today, and certainly not with the income I had then.

I guess my overall message is: I think that the type of financial modelling you were doing is excellent to show that it is not yet impossible or hopeless, and if someone wants to make it happen, it's still within reach... but... it's genuinely really hard. For decades I've been scoffing at people whining about affordability, saying that they just spend too much on short-term pleasures, but in the last decade I've kinda stopped the scoffing and shut my mouth.

The math for a 1 bedroom condo in the 20 min from downtown (not that it's relevant to my lifestyle) works out to about $5k a month if I had a clean income history and a 20% downpayment. It's just not an amount I could see my partner and I being able to absorb, nor would it be worth it if we could. It's unfortunate, because we've lived in our already relatively expensive studio basement suite for 4 years. Shit is cray out there.

I mean, I guarantee you can do better than that. The condos you describe certainly exist, but there are other options. Maybe 2 bedrooms for $3k isn't enough of a difference for you to care about, though.

And you don't need a "clean income history", that's not a real thing. You need all the people on the mortgage to have a stable job, typically 6 months. If your source of income is more variable/complicated, they'll ask for 2 years of tax returns.

This kind of doomerism is why I wanted to support applied_heat's post in the first place.

I don't really think 2 bedrooms for $3k, in Metro Vancouver would be a likely find. I'd say even if you're willing to sacrifice literally every other characteristic, but usually if you're in that range now you're looking at very high condo fees or something like no laundry in building.

But again, if space is literally all you're after, and you might be for all sorts of perfectly valid reasons, then that might be your choice. On the flipside, it would be weird for us to work relentless and double or more likely triple our monthly expenditure while basically getting only marginal or specious value for that money.

For example, even if the numbers or stability on our end made sense, and committing to that wild increase in cost didn't increase our exposure dramatically, we'd still be trading triple our shelter expenses for the added utility of basically one room and the power to knock out a wall or something.

No matter how you spin it, without a huge pool of cash and unrealistically high income(s), or a bunch of people subsidizing your mortgage, it's not impossible but generally not a sensible move unless you absolutely must own something for some reason.

I can theoretically earn above $100k, but it doesn't really matter unless that's sustained for a long time with few breaks, and that's not happening enough to bet on, such that I'd take out a mortgage expecting that income to be there long-term.

I'm not sure it's doomerism, as in, I wasn't saying things were "hopeless", just unrealistically demanding to attempt pursuit of what used to be considered a standard gradual path of upward growth. I live where I do despite that, and basically will until it's not feasible to do at all, along the way we'll have to face some seriously tricky choices anyway unless we can find someone else's basement to live in till at least our mid-thirties.

I think mortgage brokers were a bit more flexible than the big banks at recognizing future rental income, especially if you already had one property generating some rental income indicating you would probably make it work again.

For the first property I agree you would need to qualify without taking the rental income in to account.

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