Okay I don’t have friends to ask…, but I have relatives and a lot of my parents’ friend circle and a lot of them apparantly own their homes… and apparantly there are a few that even own rental properties…
(USA, their social circle varies from Seattle, Boston, NYC, and Philly)
I’m with my parents and they own this house…
Poland. 30-something years old. I am the only one with a house, half of my friends have flats in the city and the other half rents or lives with parents.
I’m in my late 20s. I live in rural Texas, but I’ve got friends all over this hemisphere. Only one of my friends ‘owns’ a house, and at the moment, he’s only been able to afford it by renting out all the spare bedrooms. I don’t know how he managed to scrape together a down payment. Everyone else I know is renting.
edit: plenty of my family members have houses, some even paid off, but I cut contact with nearly all of them years ago.
I live in Australia, where the housing market is absolutely cooked due to decades of bipartisan cowardice.
Mum and dad own their home, and an investment property that my youngest vrother rents now.
My youbger brother owns a nice house, but he spebt decades driving yachts for billionaires to be able to afford it.
I’m pushing 50 and may be able to buy something cheap a couple of hours drive from work soon if I’m lucky.
I don’t see myself ever owning a home. I’m in Los Angeles making ~$100k per year. I have friends who’ve tried to save and make down payments toward properties for sale but they always fell through.
Los Angeles
I quickly skimmed the map in zillow… holy shit they are like 900k and 1m range…
My parents got this house in around 2014 for 100k ish (plus a bit more for rennovations)
Philly
But the issue is…
I was in like 5th grade at the time…
and the school here were horrible and I got bullied a lot more often… I got called a “Ching Chong” (racial slur against ethnic Chinese) all the time… casual racism became way more common than it used to be when we were in Brooklyn (which is too expensive and we’d never be able to afford buying a house there…)
School ratings were like between 1/10 to 4/10… horrible…
But for childfree people its not too bad really… my mom only got robbed once for the decade we’ve been here…
(I sometimes hear a lot of weird “fireworks” at night… and its kinda concerning… but whatever its 'murica… its just another night of “fireworks”… 👀)
It hurts to see thousands of dollars every month leave my bank account knowing it could be building equity instead.
You can find a place to buy. You just won’t enjoy living there.
Lots of people won’t make lifestyle or other compromises for home ownership, some will. It’s a choice.
Affordable properties are not going to be desirable.
Does it really count as owning if you have a mortgage? (partly tongue-in-cheek, but only partly)
Edit: Bah, someone else already made this smart remark. That’s on me, I didn’t read the whole thread before posting.
Edit again to answer your “how common” question: Most of my older friends/relatives/acquaintances own their homes. Most of those younger than me do not. Or maybe it’s 50/50 by now? I’d have to make a list and try to count, but that’s too much trouble for a lemmy comment.
My parents never got a mortgage…
They sort of borrowed money from a friend that immigrated earlier and already established here and somehow was able to afford a house in Brooklyn, NYC.
Parents somehow accumulated enough from going around borrowinf money, plus their own savings, to buy a Philly home approximately at $100K in cash…
Of course they have to work overtime to repay those debts back to those friends and relatives they borrowed from…
Kinda like a “mutual aid” network… sort of… lol…
Eh, I’ll still count it. Even if it’s not a formal “mortgage” from a bank, it’s still a loan to buy a house.
Northern Indiana / Chicago, millennial. Basically everyone in my circles own. Have one friend who rents (lives in NYC).
It seems not too crazy to own in IN, but the problem is you have to live in IN.
Chicago, and same, at least among college friends. And neighbors. Many work colleagues are renters, though.
Own as in already paid off mortgage or still in the process?
People almost exclusively consider it “home ownership” even if you still have a mortgage.
Then I am an outlier. To me, until you paid it off it belongs to a bank.
Most of my friends own a house now, but almost everyone stil had a mortgage to pay. This is the Netherlands. Some of them bought their house during the banking crisis of 2008-2012 when houses were relatively cheap. Others who more recently bought their house have moved to smaller villages with lower prices.
Netherlands, all of us also. Two of them solo, one of which bought it like 3 years ago. Me and my wife bought ours in 23, we’re in the market currently.
All of us have hbo level jobs, one of us used to be entrepreneur. Sold his company. The guys all work in IT.
USA… Most of my friends over 25 have houses and are married.
Under 25, renting townhouses.
Rented until I got married and we decided it was worth shaving our monthly housing costs down by taking a 30 year mortgage. We locked in our lives and weren’t going to be moving away anytime soon.
And then we refinanced when we’d made enough payments and most of all when fed interests rates were insanely brought to 0%.
Now we’re locked in paying a fraction of what the landlords charge my neighbors. And we are constantly barraged with calls and mail to sell to corpo landlords.
People with rich parents own homes, pretty much nobody else does. Because their parents gave them the down payment or purchase it outright for their adult child. Ironically, these folks are the most vocal and whiny about how they don’t have enough money…
I don’t know very many people who own their own places who bought it entirely on their own, and those that did, usually live in a crappy tiny house in a undesirable town outside of the city. And they bought their homes around 40 years old, no in their 20s or 30s like the rich kids did.
This is coastal USA in major city areas. In rural areas or midwest… most people are buying homes around 30. It’s much cheaper.
People with rich parents own homes…
Wait, I own a home, and my parents aren’t rich…
Well…I didn’t think so when I was growing up, and my parents divorced when I was in high school, so that colored my perceptions a bit…
OTOH…my dad went on a 10-month “world cruise” two years ago, and my mom is wealthy enough to snowbird. Still, my childhood was “a normal-seeming house in Small Town USA, going to public school”. Hardly gold-plated.
Because their parents gave them the down payment
I bought my first house at age 28, no direct help from my parents (in before “but check your privileged upbringing!”). I won’t whine about how I don’t have enough money, though. I budget and save pretty aggressively.
coastal USA
Yeah, that’s fair. I’m firmly in MCOL flyover country. Completely different world for housing than the bay area or NYC.
You are the problem.
You claim you’re life was normal, but what you don’t understand is that you had it better than like 90% of your fellow citizens.
Don’t worry, you’re in good company. I regularly meet people who live in million dollar homes who think they are impoverished and struggling and life is unfair and cruel and they are ‘barely getting by’. Nobody will ever admit they are rich, because ‘someone else has more than me therefore i can’t be.’
I have 500K in assets. I am rich by any definition, but sadly people tell me I am poor and struggling because they seem to think ‘rich’ is 50 million in assets, minimum, and that 5 million in assets is ‘middle class’. Again, because they are clueless people who live in bubbles and don’t interact with people outside of their wealth bracket in any meaningful way and endlessly compare themselves to their peers rather than a broader spectrum of their fellow citizens.
Canada, and nil. Unless you count my older relatives (boomers), everyone I know that’s my age rents (from boomers).
Canada, Vancouver (HAHA I LOVE THIS CITY HAHA).
USA 31, most of my friends (all close in age) do but some still rent. Most work pretty good jobs. 3 I know own one or more multi family buildings they rent. Those are the ones with particularly good jobs, one is a very well to do real estate guy. I own my home with some property I operate a small farm on as a side gig. I’ve had a good income and been wise with my money since my very early 20s though. Home ownership in the US varies on location but is pretty much exclusively for 100k plus annual individuals or couples it seems like right now.
Pretty common - Romania
Though in big cities… Good luck owning. The strategy seems to be, for developers, to build really expensive apartments that nobody can outright buy, the rent is super high, therefore you can’t save, and you stay a renter your whole life there.
Nobody is building modest apartments I swear… Every new block is for the elites only, even in my shitty little town.
Most of us are lucky enough to own an apartment or house outright but we usually own modest, old, commie or post commie buildings.
Some are renting, some are under heavy debt for a run-down old house they are stressing out over as they are legally obliged to fix it up to certain standards within a set period of time (usually 5 years).
