Could you all please STOP poking every tender nerve on my body!@ I don't know which nerve to complain about first... but I'll pick Pete's..
I worked on a new house (a teardown/rebuild new) in the neighborhood where my work associate has lived for 27 years. He bought his house for $70,000. The house we worked in was being sold for 1.4 million, and the buyer was 35 years old with two kids, had a big boat and a new truck. The developer told me his parents put down some money to help him afford this nice new house to raise their grandchildren in... The parents put down $500,000. for their 35 year old son and his family...
Those of us who aren't the children of doctors or lawyers, don't have that kind of boost up into the middle class, nor any kind of a net to catch us if we fail when we start our own business. I can't tell you how many times over the years I looked at my bills that were due, the amount of money in my bank accounts, and the amount of money owed to me from contract work and had to scramble to pay all my bills for a given month. My parents never gave me a dime while they were alive, short of funding my college education for a few years until I told them it was not a good path for me.
I rented this "shack" for 10 years because it was what I could afford. I lived from job to job, while also renting a 4,000 sq ft shop and paying a triple net lease the whole time. I usually didn't go home from the shop until 8 or 9pm every day. I took Sundays off to do laundry. I used to say that all the guys who worked for other people were in the bars hitting on the local honey's at 5pm, while I still have a few more hours of work to do, before I went home exhausted... As it turned out many of them were alcoholics, so maybe I didn't miss anything worth fretting over.
If only mom and dad had a spare half million to give me....
The fact that you chose to remain in the shithole area where there is no opportunity to buy into some equity is your choice. Sorry there are no corner bistro's in Cowpie, Idaho to tempt you or your peers to abandon your preferred lifestyle and move there. Let's face it, you have to take a chance to get ahead. You're not stupid, you are just like every other young person. You want both ends of the stick. You want to live somewhere awesome and have fun now, and then also own something valuable to have your equity grow at the same time. It has never worked that way. When my parents moved to Rockland county, it was all corn fields and cow pastures. They put down $500 on their house which was sold for a staggering $15,500. in 1958. My Italian relatives from the Bronx used to make fun of my dad saying, "there's nothing out there but cows. What are you going to do out there?"
After 5 years, almost every one of those relatives followed my dad out there...
You're not some senator's son (as the song goes) so nobody is gifting your a half million bucks. Like I said to you years ago, "Get out of there". Now, with the pandemic in progress, people are getting out of there ahead of you, and rural real estate is booming, and so are the prices to buy in. You can't play it safe and stay on the crowded ladder to success and also get in on the big risk/big reward dynamic.
There's lots of places to go where the bureaucrats haven't taxed the normal working Joe's out of existence, but there's no "urban cafe life" to indulge in. But you could raise chickens and start a huge garden. I hear the chicks did that...
What nonsense. So you are not free because you don't have access to other people's money?... There's some prime real estate that is available near me in the capital hill area of seattle. I warn you though, it's mostly fixer upper stuff...
