The 'old American Dream died,' Realtor details salary needed to buy a home, afford a middle class life in 2024
The 'old American Dream died,' Realtor details salary needed to buy a home, afford a middle class life in 2024
TL;DR: Americans now need to make $120K a year to afford a typical middle-class life and qualify to purchase a home. Minimum.
Where we failed is that $120k was supposed to be a middle-class income when living costs this much. The fact the median is 63k is a sign that all the excess value has been sucked out of the masses and funneled into the coffers of the billionaire class.
100% this. It's not that costs rose as much as it's that salaries didn't increase.
In the late 70s around 23% of US corporate revenues went to pay salaries. By 2012 that had fallen to 7% - in other words, just before neoliberalism really took off almost 1/4 of the money workers spent buying goods from US companies was almost directly back in workers' pockets, whilst by 2012 less that 1/14 of what workers spent buying goods from US companies ended back in workers' pockets.
All that excess money that doesn't get recycled back to workers anymore has got to be pooling somewhere.
It's both. If the price of homes aren't reflecting an affordable price, you have to ask, who's buying them? It's not the average family - it's corps sucking up homes as investment assets, driving up prices to sell to each other and the "lucky" family or two that get to empty out their retirement fund just to have a place to live. That's not reflective of a natural, reasonable increase. That's the result of hedge funds destroying the housing market for the rest of us, just to pad their bank accounts.
The link gives great context to the article. Thank you.
The problem is you need to be a couple to have a house.
In the 80s and even 90s the mother of the house probably didn't work. I know mine didn't. Now they have to. The prices have gone up to match this "new normal" because there simply aren't enough houses. Or at least not enough houses in the places people want to live.
The free markets have settled on the idea that a house should cost two incomes. The government needs to step in to build affordable homes and get them into the right hands. No landlords scoffing them all up.
I honestly don't even know why this upsets me so much. I am 50 and all set. I don't have children and barely any debt. I never considered myself particularly patriotic but somehow this whole thing gets under my skin. I guess it sours my achievements and fruits of decades of struggle (it took three generations of planning and hustle to get us out of poverty). It's like being a kid having a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese by yourself while all your friends are locked outside and you can see them through the glass windows.
It gets under my skin because the west was on the right trajectory; improving wealth equality, quality of life, work life balance, etc — Then Capitalists killed all those gains using Conservatism, Neoliberalism, and a bastardised version of Libertarianism — just to enrich a tiny percentage the human population and return the rest of humanity to feudalism.
Why should they own all the gains from humanities collective efforts, when all of us have a rightful claim to a share of those gains?
In the early 1900s we had huge fights for labor. Strikes yes, but also some literal armed fights.
We won a lot. They conceded a lot.
But they've eroded those wins, little by little, for a century or so.
This is what will ALWAYS happen when you live in a system explicitly designed to extract profit from workers and reward greed. It cannot be reformed. It cannot be controlled. It will always slide backwards into this. We need a different system altogether.
Yup, we could be creating an amazing life for more people - and damaging the environment less while we are at it; but instead "we" keep doubling down in the other direction
the west was on the right trajectory
A lot of the west is still on the right trajectory. It's the US that is not.
There are a lot of developed countries, especially in Europe, where the "American Dream" is much easier to attain than in America. But, more often than not, they don't even want that dream. For good reason.
Because you're not an awful person trying to pull the ladder up while saying "fuck you I got mine"
I'm in a similar boat, except in my early 40's.
My parents are in their 80's and working for DoorDash. They are lucky they at least paid off their home, because they didn't save enough and this country is sucking every penny it can get from them.
I bought a condo that I love, have almost all my debt paid off, and am saving for what I hope will be an early retirement. It breaks my heart to see people struggling everywhere, and if I had Elon Musk money, I wouldn't be blowing it on a vanity space program.
I'm so glad my Dad, also in his 80s, programs COBOL. My parents have owned their home since 86, but I'm sure that without the random COBOL job they'd have to do door dash or something as well.
Here's what happened in a nutshell.
Lyndon Johnson had great plans for the US, but wanted to win the Vietnam War with one huge push. That quickly turned into a giant quagmire. LBJ and later Nixon, ordered bombing of the North. That meant the US factories were working 24/7. Nice for factory owners and union workers, but LBJ was paying for it with paper money because he didn't want to raise taxes. Ironically, Nixon ran for President as an anti inflation and pro peace candidate.
Nixon and Kissinger doubled down on the bombing and inflation started to spiral. Also, those factories were getting a bit worn down. Unable to met the deamnd for the bombing and supply foreign markets the US ceded local steel making to Germany and Japan. This is going to bite the US in the ass when the Arab Oil boycott hits. US steel is much more oil dependant than the newer factories, so suddenly Toyotas and VWs are the hot cars, and US manufacturing takes a huge hit.
Carter tried to control inflation and cut oil use, but got kicked out over the Iran hostage mess. Reagan came in and cut taxes for the rich. This increased the debt, but gave the economy an unrealistic jolt.
tl dr. In 1960, minimum wage was $1.00/hour. The average house was $11,000.00 and $1 million was considered a vast fortune.* Middle class meant a High School graduate with a Union job supporting a family of four.
By the time Nixon, Reagan and Bush Sr were done, 'middle class' was two college degrees supporting the house and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
The massive difference in the purchasing power of what the Official Inflation Figures tell us, when we used them to adjust the amount for inflation, is the same salary now as in 1960, shows just how fake Official Inflation Figures are.
The reason for Official Inflation Figures being so much bullshit and always on the understating inflation side, is because the lower the Inflation used in calculating the Official GDP figures, the higher that figure gets.
All that talk of GDP Growth in the last few decades is the product of some very consistent (and hence likely purposeful) understating of the Inflation so that the Maths used to produce the Real (i.e. Official) GDP output a higher number hence politician can proudly declare GDP is growing strongly.
As Mark Twain once said,
There are lies and there are big damned lies, and then there are statistics!
Lyndon Johnson had great plans for the US
I recently learned that Johnson's "Great Society" plan was partially a continuation of Kennedy's "New Frontiers" plan (which he wasn't very successful in pushing through Congress before he was assassinated).
LBJ is probably the most WTF President of the 20th Century. He pushed the Civil Rights Act, and created the Vietnam fiasco.
I like this story. Someone who worked for Kennedy and Johnson put it this way; if JFK came into your office and saw you reading he'd assume you were working. If LBJ saw you reading a book he'd think you were goofing off.
If we hadn't had Wilson we wouldn't have had Hitler, or Stalin. We may not have had Nixon and Reagan.....
$1 million today is still a vast fortune to most people tbh
I think most people would see the gulf between owning one moderately nice house and a small business [$1 million in 2024] and owning an estate with several acres and some horses, a half dozen cars, and enough in the savings account to keep a few families going. [$1 million in 1960]
https://www.rd.usda.gov/sites/default/files/fact-sheet/508_RD_FS_RHS_SFH502Direct.pdf
the federal government will loan you the money for the house at below market rates, and if their rate is still too expensive, they can give you a deferment.
my effective interest rate today is 1%.
please take money from the federal government.
fuck the banks.
Lots of sellers will prefer cash or regular loans so your application is very likely to be last in line. Plus the applications are much, much more complicated and mortgage applications are already a removed. But then it's usually a once in a lifetime experience and may be the only option for a lot of people do this is more of a heads up than an attempt to discourage anyone from applying.
"applicants must be without decent, safe, and sanitary housing" is that a hard stop or is there some flexibility on that condition? im not trying to pry into your previous situation, but that makes it sound a bit more dire than the average renter.
Saved bro i need to marry a real welfare qween
Humans can't marry corporations.
fair warning: my application packet was around 100 pages
This happened because people were lulled into voting for the very people who gave their fair share of corporate profits to the rich. Looking at you, Republicans, especially Ronald Reagan.
You can argue that Democrats inability to support the working class and unions helped to kill the American dream. “Both sides” are capitalists.
And they'll do it again.
dude ronald regan gave my family papers my cousins are named ronald and ronny
i am a communist too. sometimes bad people do good things
Smith explained how, just a few years ago, $60-$70K a year would have been sufficient to qualify for a home.
Yeah, no. It was more than a few years ago.
I think that this has been trouble since 2007. Financial institutions went from giving lots of home loans to only giving corporations and the elite loans.
2007 was 4 years ago.
checks math
Everything checks out here
I don't have a full Orlando market research report but pre-pandemic (2018) you could get a house in my neighborhood (Davenport) for $265k-325k. In 2024 the starting price is ~$650k. In 2018 I bought a house (Orlando) for my aunt to live in for $150k. After buying the little bungalow, I saw the rest of that neighbohood get gobbled up by investment funds and now it is almost completely rentals. The current comps have it at $325k.
Homes were dirt cheap from 2009 until about 2013, but everyone was broke. Prices were reasonable from 2014 to maybe 2018 (maybe). The post lockdown boom and investment fund buying spree has been insane.
Poor tax laws on the richest 1% killed the American Dream.
Capitalism did that too. Capitalism is in a constant state of decline with short upward bursts of innovation that too will decline. Enshittification infects all.
My wife and I manage it because we both work.
I didn’t intend on marriage as a way to own a home but I couldn’t do it without my partner.
A friend was looking at getting a home lately and I offered to look into co-signing with them, so we gave our information to see what they would qualify for. With both of our details, they offered them a home loan of something like $100k, really not even enough to get anything that's on the market now except for the worst crack houses possible. I then looked at what would be possible if I just applied by myself and if I applied for a home loan for a place that I would rent out. Not sure if it was considered a business loan, but I wouldn't be the occupant, it would be an investment property for me. Suddenly, by myself, I qualified for a $300k loan, same loan agency, just different terms. I do have great credit, so maybe that helped, it's just weird how they come up with the numbers sometimes. Like you would think two people together would qualify for more than what a single person would qualify for.
What happened is that the other person apparently has absolutely terrible credit, so holy hell don't cosign with him!
I mean, operated as an investment property they have near certainty you will have a stable income source (the tenant) so it makes sense that the loan value is higher. You're guaranteed to have the income of the rent checks and just as likely all your other potential income on top of that. You actually can afford higher mortgage payments in that situation -- and substantially so.
Which is a strong, strong, strong argument why all cities which have housing shortages (basically all cities) should be exercising policies that discourage non-owner-occupied properties.
Don't cosign anything for a friend, ever. It will screw up your friendship.
It's a risk assessment. A low score as a primary borrower is more risky, even with a secondary borrower, the hassle to get paid if the first defaults isn't worth it. Investment vs primary residence is also a different risk profile, you can assume some level of income from an investment property.
What's to prevent someone from buying a house this way and then just "renting it" from themselves? lol
You're not renting it from yourself. You happen to be renting from a corporation that you happen to be sole director of. Gotta emulate what the rich do.
If you buy a house declared as investment, but you really intended to live there, it's mortgage fraud.
Generally, mortgages for your primary residence offer more favorable terms then ones for investment properties. The issue in the above story is likely related to the friend. If they had tried the same thing, their offer would likely have been even worse than what they got for a primary residence with a cosigner. Assuming they got an offer at all.
TL;DR: Americans now need to make $120K a year to afford a typical middle-class life and qualify to purchase a home. Minimum.
Maybe in the middle of nowhere America. Meanwhile my wife and I make well above that in Los Angeles and we can't afford the monthly on a two bedroom house in a sketchy neighborhood.
So why do people live there?
All I ever heard is how absurd the cost of living is in Cali, is the weather really that good?
Being born there, living your entire life there, your whole family and all your friends are there, you went to high school and college there so it's easier to transfer to a CSU for grad school, and cheaper because you won't have to pay non-resident fees, etc etc. The same reason people don't move from other places. Besides, it takes a lot of savings to move, especially out of state, especially when you have to keep going back and forth to look at places. There's also just not wanting to move. I am really not ok with being forced out of my home and away from my family because of bullshit like this.
And yes the weather really is that good - in Southern California.
Good thing investment "firms" are buying up all the rental properties, right, guys? Neofeudalism for the win!
But you can buy a microshare of the fund through Robinhood, so it all works out. Right?
This is what happens when most people think the disparity in wealth should grow.
It does.
Just a reminder that high prices are a markets signal to build more.
Let people build housing, is it too much to ask for?
All the housing in the world won't matter if the same 10 people are buying everything up. Supply isn't our problem.
Op is saying it's a problem of supply not meeting demand
You're saying that supply can't meet demand if the rich have infinite demand
These aren't exactly incompatible. I haven't seen good evidence that demand from the wealthy explains the massive increase in housing cost, but you can both build more housing to increase supply and try to limit the wealthy buying too much housing. They're not incompatible
That makes no senes. We can literally build as much as we want.
It's literally illegal to build more in most places. Go read the zoning code.
I know... let us build!!!!
Or maybe part of the reason the prices are so high is that the price of building is also high with labor and materials cost increases?
Or maybe there is also a shortage of affordable, well placed, viable, empty lots to build on?
its a land problem. if you gave every homeless man half an acre yes they would literally just do that. however land has property tax and bums never open letters
so a simple micro acre tax free law would probably solve homelessness. it would have to be someplace like alaska or arklaska. of course these would be called concentratation camps by the far right but its a two bird solution. alaska could easily fit 50 million people
would you sign up for the free half acre in north alaska?
Arklaska?
Texas and california could easily fit an extra 50 million people. They're both massive.
Smith explained how, just a few years ago, $60-$70K a year would have been sufficient to qualify for a home.
"Most people are carrying student loan debt, which is at an all-time high, and the average payment in the country is $500 a month for your college degree. [There are] some people I'm seeing in my comment section saying ‘$500, I wish, it was $1,200 a month for me’," said Smith.
"If you are someone who bought a house before 2020 and you have it paid off or you have a 3% interest rate, you are not burdened by the housing costs like the 2024 adults are now," the relator said, explaining how debt, especially college debt, housing costs and childcare are burdening millennials and Gen Zers starting their lives.
It’s scary how everything seemed to change so fast, yet the ingredients for this very situation have been simmering for some time. It’s no coincidence that since student loans ballooned it didn’t take much for the dominoes to really begin to fall and have drastic effects on everything else downstream.
At least part of the equation is that Trump pressuring the Fed to lower rates (that were already historically low in the first place) to add even more fuel to what already was an overheated market prior to COVID completely wrecked the housing market for the foreseeable future.
I bought in 2020 and I'm glad I did because if I hadn't I would've likely been permanently priced out.
Yeah, I bought a couple years before and I’m glad I did, but it’s really sad to think of everyone who couldn’t or didn’t for whatever reason.
Everything is so messed up now and the uncertainty will probably continue for awhile.
If you want the results of the American dream the only way to do so is crime. Probably always been true, but boy is it truer than ever now.
I achieved the American dream by leaving America.
dont glamorize it man criminals get gulag /supermax
That or they get elected/promoted.
I can technically afford my house and acre on my wife and mys income
Doesn't mean I'm not currently planning and setting up my network of legit customers of shitake and no other mushrooms to help make sure I can survive, no sir
It wasn't perfect but there was dignity to being an American 24 years ago. Inequality is not helping anything at all
Probably always been true
No, it really was true for a long time (as long as you weren't a minority). Wealth disparity has skyrocketed in the last few decades. It's why boomers can't grasp that people just can't afford to live--in their day, anyone who couldn't afford to live was just plain lazy*.
*Wasn't true, but that's a whole other thing.
Yet disability pays $11k a YEAR that'sthe same as $5.42/hour.
The US government would rather disabled people just not exist. From their perspective, nobody on disability creates shareholder value, therefore you are subhuman. And non-disabled humans to them are cattle.
If we have more than $2k in assets, a number that hasn't changed since 1974, we lose our food and Medical on SSI, too.. it's ridiculous
Note that the source of this opinion piece is TikTok. The salary needed for a middle class existence varies wildly from city to city.
The source is an Orlando area Realtor who happens to have a TikTok.
A local realtor doesn't have the qualifications to make broad claims about income or affordability for the entire nation.
I'm in Salt Lake City, for example, and a recent article has the necessary salary to afford a home around $140,000/year. I moved here in part because it was a much cheaper alternative to D.C. and the minimum salary to own a home is still $140,000.
This is one of the problems caused by zoning laws in the United States, rather than move to a more productive city full of opportunities, you were forced to move to a less productive city because DC has artificially caused housing to be expensive.
People are moving for affordability rather than economic opportunities.
There are some pockets of affordability out there.
The map in this article is nice (though you have to scroll through some annoying stuff to get there):
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/06/homes/housing-market-prices-affordability-dg/
I would guess those would be the areas of next major population influx as people continue to flee high cost of living in other areas. Climate change making much of the west and southeast more unattractive in the long run too. While the more affordable areas are still relatively cheap compared to the rest of the country, most of them have already been seeing large spikes in housing prices too. We need some major policy changes to encourage cheap and higher density housing, better use of land in general, can't just keep building only single family homes in low density areas sprawling out forever.
Doesn't help that corporations own 27% of single family homes.
This is ludicrously false.
The statistic you're trying to say is that about 25% of homes sold in recent months have been bought by investors, which is a very different thing from saying that nearly one-fourth of all single family homes are owned by investors, which falls apart the moment you actually go outside and talk to people, since, for starters, about 65% of Americans own their home.
The homeownership rate of 66.0 percent was virtually the same as the rate in the third quarter 2022 (66.0 percent) and not statistically different from the rate in the second quarter 2023 (65.9 percent).
Corporations have their families to think of
Is that 120k for each, or total household?
That 120k a year is still assuming you buy a house on a long term mortgage.
It even says 120k to qualify, not actually comfortably buy.
also out in the Boonies
Lol I was making nearly twice that before a layoff and still couldn't afford a condo that amounts to half or one third of a house in the neighborhood I live in.
You were making 240k and couldn't afford a condo?
210k.
Condos in my area, part of Greater Boston, are going for $1.1mil at least, usually more in the $1.4mil range.
Even if I could somehow scrounge together 20% down that's monthly payments of over $7k at today's interest rates. After taxes 210 is more like 126, which is monthly a little over $10k. If I'm not saving anything for retirement and basically barely holding together the rest of my expenses and hoping to God nothing happens to my car, my body, my dog, my cat, or the condo, then I could afford the monthly payments.
Now imagine if I had jumped into that situation and then gotten laid off, like I was.
EDIT: it's worth clarifying that in big cities, the points talked about in this article are still true, just scaled up. Adults in their late 20s/early 30s working in tech are easily making 150k+. College grads in Computer Science are getting 6 figures easily. Making $200k was the high end of average but nothing unheard of.
And the prices here adjust to that, happily.
Kill zoning and get lower prices.
I will repeat this here:
While there are a lot of factors, you really cannot understate the size of the homes being built in the US. We are building homes nearly 3x the size (despite cost per square foot only going up slightly), and pretending it has no effect on housing costs. It's actually pretty insane.
You guys really do build giant soulless houses in empty suburbs and think that living in an apartment is a crime against humanity
It died along time ago with the dreamer.
Zoning laws need to change. If you build affordable housing that requires access to a personal car and at least an hour commute each way, then at t doesn't really help anyone. We need to start building dense and we need to increase access to and the quality of public transit.
There is no easy fix, but we can't continue to ignore the problem and assume that something, if not everything, isn't going to collapse.
That’s anecdotal. The study is an average. That’s like saying, “I’ve never been homeless, so obviously homeless people don’t exist.”
Congrats. Do you live in Central Florida (Orlando area)? How much student loan debt do you carry? The article was fairly specific about that $125k. I'm pretty sure you can buy a home and live well within your means with much less if you lived in Gray, Louisiana.
One thing that the author is not taking into consideration is the post-pandemic ability to "work from home". Gray, Louisiana is 45 minutes away from New Orleans and five minutes away from Houma. You can buy a 4Bd/3Ba 2100sqft brick house there for $165k. Crimenis relatively low and there is a university close by. You get the full suburban treatment for cheap...but you have to have a skill set that allows for remote work.
but you have to have a skill set that allows for remote work.
And then you have to live in Gray, Louisiana.
Where are you at?
i dont mean to pry, but i have been trying to work out how i can do this for myself so id be interested how you were able to do it.
im not asking for your life story, and obviously share what youre comfortable with online, but some helpful info would be your salary range, location and cost of home, and down payment (even as just a percentage of the total home cost).
other useful contextual information would be how long it took you to save up for the down payment, whether you did so while paying rent, if you had any other assitance with the down payment (personal loan, gift from family, borrowed against your 401k, etc), state of the home (move-in ready/fixer upper/built yourself), whether you used the loan to acquire furniture, etc.
sorry if thats asking too much but id like to use you as a data point, even if just for myself, and i do need a bit of data to do that.
How close are you to a superfund site?
I bought a house while making $40k/yr.
Grats
What year though?
Gingerbread doesn't count
In Detroit?
With the average cost of a house
Every fucking time with this shit.
The average price isn't the price of a starter home, why do people fall for this clickbait.
That's like trying to use the average price if a car as your starting point for how much you need to make to buy your first car.
Which means about the halfway point between a 1k beater and a fucking 200k rolls royces is what you are pretending a starter car is.
"Oh man the average price if a car is like 80k no one can afford to buy a car"
People are so stupid about this. You can get homes for like 200k to 250k in most major cities, that aren't prime locations but 100% liveable and not a total dump, just need some work. That's not even bottom of the barrel, you can go way cheaper if you want a total dump.
Everytime you see click bait like this, step one is Ctrl+F for the word "average" and you'll find it everytime.
I shared this article because I have first hand knowledge of the Orlando market. Can you find homes in the 200-250k range? Yes. Should you live there? I wouldn't recommend it. The minimum for a starter home in a relatively safe neighborhood is about ~300k and it probably needs work. Also, if you read the article, home prices aren't the only pressure pushing the salary requirements up. That said, you have the right to believe what you want but as someone who recently purchased a home in the area, I think the author was fairly dead on.
He's catching downvotes like crazy, but he's 100% correct that average is a poor statistic for comparing things like home price and salaries. More specifically, average is typically used as a shorthand for "mean", when what's really useful is the median.
Median home price (or median salary) for that matter, will much more closely reflect what the typical person is paying for a house, while mean is going to be skewed by the long tail of expensive prices.
And also to back up Pixxelkick, that single number still doesn't accurately reflect the situation for first-time home buyers, which is the demographic these articles tend to focus on when bemoaning high home prices.
So it's not like anyone's saying home prices aren't going up, and there aren't problems with that, but it does get really annoying to see these articles CONSTANTLY peppered with misleading or irrelevant statistics by authors who either don't know what they mean, or worse are exaggerating to drive clicks.
Do you think starter homes didn't go up? Talk about having your head in the sand. Open a real estate website, the average person can't afford what they used too, it's that simple.
Yup, leave it to Fox Business to convey skewed information in a manner that elicits engagement through enragement
This isn't just fox, this is every single media outlet and tik tok influencer and YouTube preacher everywhere, it's a constant falsehood.