Yeah, Right !
According to CNN Money's article on Net Worth Killers, an individual or family should never spend more than 2.5 times their yearly income on a living space.
Obviously these jokers have never seen prices in the Bay Area.
Even the cheapest, crappiest condominium in Fremont is more than three times our yearly income. If people here in the Bay Area followed that rule, nobody would own anything, and we would all be renting forever.
My friends and family in Toronto are absolutely flabberghasted when I tell them what we paid for our modest, 25-year-old townhouse with 3 bedrooms and a 2-car garage. But that's what people pay around here. And that's a reduced price from a year ago. It's tough to fathom, but that's what the land and dwellings are worth, in the best state in the country, with some of the best weather and best activities around.
We vowed that we would never be in a "house prison", where we could not go on vacation, do the activities that we like to do, or go on the little adventures we enjoy so much. What we paid is significant, but it will not cramp our style like some of our friends, who are prisoners in their own home, unable to afford even a dinner out.
The fully-detached houses around Danny's parents' are well over $600k, and had we considered one of those, we would have been prisoners ourselves. But our townhouse, an end unit, has most of the benefits of a fully-detached, with the extra perk of the HOA doing all the yard work. So that is perfectly fine with us.
This house will not be a prison. It will be a castle. Our castle.
Obviously these jokers have never seen prices in the Bay Area.
Even the cheapest, crappiest condominium in Fremont is more than three times our yearly income. If people here in the Bay Area followed that rule, nobody would own anything, and we would all be renting forever.
My friends and family in Toronto are absolutely flabberghasted when I tell them what we paid for our modest, 25-year-old townhouse with 3 bedrooms and a 2-car garage. But that's what people pay around here. And that's a reduced price from a year ago. It's tough to fathom, but that's what the land and dwellings are worth, in the best state in the country, with some of the best weather and best activities around.
We vowed that we would never be in a "house prison", where we could not go on vacation, do the activities that we like to do, or go on the little adventures we enjoy so much. What we paid is significant, but it will not cramp our style like some of our friends, who are prisoners in their own home, unable to afford even a dinner out.
The fully-detached houses around Danny's parents' are well over $600k, and had we considered one of those, we would have been prisoners ourselves. But our townhouse, an end unit, has most of the benefits of a fully-detached, with the extra perk of the HOA doing all the yard work. So that is perfectly fine with us.
This house will not be a prison. It will be a castle. Our castle.
posted by Andrea at 12:26
1 Comments:
Congrats on owning your own place!
I'm sure you can have a house and still have holidays, we do :-)
Hope your moving day goes smoothly.
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