Here we go again. Housing bubble. This reminds me of 2005...

[Queenie60]

The rich can afford to pay more for public services than the poor.

If they made all pay the same tax the poorest wouldn't have money for food.
With the current scaled tax obligation, the rich have less money for ... uhm ... luxuries.

I prefer how it is now, but then I'm not in that unmentionable political party.

But also there's this ... the higher prop taxes in wealthier neighborhoods mean their local public schools get more money.
So, when little Jonny and Susie go to better schools they grow up to earn more money.
This way the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer ... the American way.

The rich can afford to pay more for public services than the poor.

If they made all pay the same tax the poorest wouldn't have money for food.
With the current scaled tax obligation, the rich have less money for ... uhm ... luxuries.

I prefer how it is now, but then I'm not in that unmentionable political party.

But also there's this ... the higher prop taxes in wealthier neighborhoods mean their local public schools get more money.
So, when little Jonny and Susie go to better schools they grow up to earn more money.
This way the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer ... the American way.

This is why school choice is a better option. And personally, I would not send my children to the “government“ schools based on their teachings regardless of property tax dollars being shuffled in via the “wealthy” neighborhoods. And yes, why shouldn’t those who work hard have the ability to have luxuries? You’re on a diamond forum for Gods sake.

 

[Austina]

We’ve been looking at houses in the Austin area, and they’re going for $100,000 over asking.

 

[nala]

We’ve been looking at houses in the Austin area, and they’re going for $100,000 over asking.

Austin is a hot market now... tech companies are moving there and leaving CA. We went on vacation a couple of years ago and the home prices were already super high, but then a tour guide showed us all of these high-rises that were unoccupied bc no one was buying. Odd. Have you checked neighboring cities?

 

[nala]

My DD#1 bought her 2 story home about 9 yrs ago at the low of the market but now she wants to buy a 1 story house. I advise her to wait b/c once interest rates starts to rise (which it will within the next 12 months) the housing market bubble will burst again. She is living comfortably based on her income now so I don't want her to stress over a higher mortgage payment.

All our family members loves her current 2100 Sq ft 2 story home. Her 12 yrs old home still looks brand new but she don't like walking up and down the stairs. The current market price for a nice one story 2000 sq ft in our area is going for about $725K +, and a one story are hard to come by in our area. There are no more lands to built new homes in our area, so if she is gonna find a one story home it would be between 25-35 yrs old. The funniest part about all this is that our house is a perfect fit for her. Our house is 2350 sq ft with 4br, 2.5 bath on one story.

I would tell her to do it now bc now she can get top dollar for her house and snag the lowest interest rate possible. If she waits, she will sell her house for less even if she buys her new one for less—but with higher interest it will even out. No sense in waiting. Unless she is paying cash, that is. If the market busts, prop taxes are readjusted—if I recall correctly.

 

[Austina]

We’e going with new build a little further out @nala, at least we’ve got a fixed price and a no escalation clause in the contract, so we know what we’ll pay. It’s been ridiculous, the houses we have seen have been OK, not our dream home, but then to find out that offers are 100,000 +, we just walked away.

 

[Ally T]

It's beyond ridiculous here...

https://dailyhive.com/toronto/toronto-house-sold-620000-over-asking

 

[Dancing Fire]

I would tell her to do it now bc now she can get top dollar for her house and snag the lowest interest rate possible. If she waits, she will sell her house for less even if she buys her new one for less—but with higher interest it will even out. No sense in waiting. Unless she is paying cash, that is. If the market busts, prop taxes are readjusted—if I recall correctly.

Very hard to find a one story 2000 sq ft house in her area. She should just stay put.

 

[kenny]

I am not sure if i agree with higher prop tax means the local public schools get more money. San Francisco's property values are thru the roof. You would be called crazy to try to buy in SF. Property tax revenue is estimated to be $2,067M for the fiscal year 2020 - 2021, $48M above budget, yes I believe that's a lot of income for the city. The city is rich, yet the schools are awful, facilities are dated, and teachers are unhappy. The school district is just a highly dysfunctional agency with all these crooks and their political games at the expense of children's education.

Gosh! I forgot the term 'generally'.
I thought it went without saying.
My bad.

There will always be exceptions to generalizations, and exceptions do not make a generalization not true ... generally true.

 

[Arcadian]

When a certain someone moved into a the people's house in DC, my county property taxes doubled that year. Because I live in unicorporated land, I don't pay a "City Tax", which has its pluses and minuses when it comes to services and I'm literally 3 houses away from where the "city" starts.

For instance, county EMT services can't go above 150 dollars, and I'm not allowed to use city services. Thankfully county is right down the street from me. City services is astronomical. I can't use city police either, only sheriffs office (also right down the street). The people across the waterway on the same block who do pay city got a double whammy. But we don't get our part of the street paved unless the county does it (which is never) and, no street lights here. Officially its a dark sky neighborhood but some tried to change it and the county said no. there's only street light on the City owned corner.

There's a definite housing situation down here, depending on where you are.

 

[rainydaze]

Same story here. I am always perusing listings. One house that caught my eye was under contract by the time we called - which was just three hours after the listing went live. We ended up chatting with the seller's agent and he said it was bought sight unseen, the offer was waaaay over the list price, they had three backups already, and a hefty deposit was already placed (the next day). Another house we mentioned had 54 showings over the weekend and he said the offer on that was obscenely over list. Crazy!

 

[maryjane04]

Same story here. I am always perusing listings. One house that caught my eye was under contract by the time we called - which was just three hours after the listing went live. We ended up chatting with the seller's agent and he said it was bought sight unseen, the offer was waaaay over the list price, they had three backups already, and a hefty deposit was already placed (the next day). Another house we mentioned had 54 showings over the weekend and he said the offer on that was obscenely over list. Crazy!

I think a lot of it is also to do with FOMO. They probably missed out a few times so everyone is going crazy paying extra to secure something. We were in a similar boat recently and were desperate so had to pay more otherwise moving in with the in laws did not seem like an option.

 

[baublelove]

Housing market is insane in So Cal too. People are removing all contingencies and paying $100k over asking!!

It’s insane here in North FL too. Signs don’t even have to go up as it’s running on word of mouth at the moment. A realtor friend of ours had to make a spreadsheet for his seller for 21 offers submitted, one of them $125K over asking. Many buyers are offering to skip inspection. Multiple offer situations are common for condos too as there is almost no inventory. We are mulling downsizing and same realtor friend ran numbers for us (almost fell off our seats) and said it’s worth it to list on the high side. Another realtor friend called me yesterday to ask if we are selling as she has a pre-qualified couple ready to buy. She had no idea we were even thinking of downsizing. Tempting enough I had a moving company come Wednesday to give us an estimate.

DD and SIL are looking for their first house in the burbs outside Burlington, MA. These poor kids buying their first home in these times. The competition for homes is fierce.

 

[mom2dolls]

My co-worker has been looking for months and recently put an offer in $30k over asking and was still denied. Her agent ended up telling them to stop looking. With an FHA loan, they didn’t have a chance in this market. I feel horrible for them.
My best friend is an agent and keeps telling me to list our house. Houses in our community are selling for $490,000. We owe $308k but we couldn’t rent a shack for what our mortgage is right now. I know the bubble will burst at some point but I can’t sell our house right now.

 

[Rubymal]

My husband and I just really started our home search and we looked at six houses yesterday. Most of the houses I liked were already pending before the weekend after being on market for a few days. There was only one house we both liked, location was good, but were told we needed to make a decision by 7AM the next day because bids were due later that day. It's just insane and we didn't want to feel super rushed but I guess everyone is buying up these houses like hot cakes.

I'm also in SF/bay area.

 

[doberman]

We're farm-assessed and pay $30,000 in property taxes per year. Yet we have to pay to get our garbage collected and the roads i need to travel to get out of.our area are unpaved. I often wonder who's getting all this money and what they're doing with it.

The housing market is much hotter here than it was a year ago, and the currently favorable interest rate is definitely going to go up. People are jumping on the bandwagon now to get the good rates.

@Dancing Fire why does your daughter not like stairs? Is she disabled or does she have poor balance? My opinion is that if you're a healthy adult some stair walking is beneficial, provided you're not elderly and at risk for falls.

 

[Dancing Fire]

@Dancing Fire why does your daughter not like stairs? Is she disabled or does she have poor balance? My opinion is that if you're a healthy adult some stair walking is beneficial, provided you're not elderly and at risk for falls.

She had knee surgery like 15 yrs ago when one of her knee kept on popping out of socket, but now her knee seems fine to me, so IDK what's her problem with walking up and down the stairs since after she comes down stair in the morning she hardly ever go up stair again till bedtime.

 

[voce]

Ugh, poor daughter of yours. That's painful. I guess the two story doesn't have a master on the first/ground floor?

My dad had that problem a few years ago. Had a fall, and his knee kept popping out of the socket until he got a knee brace and took bone supplements for quite some time. Because he had a lot of upper body strength he kept joking that if he had to move to a two-story house, he'd install a fireman's pole so he'd climb and slide down between floors instead of dealing with stairs. We were seriously discussing having them move to Toronto for a time, but the lot sizes for homes under $3M are ridiculously small, so you're looking at two story buildings for anything more than 1500 sqft.

 

[Cerulean]

I am furious about the bubble! But worry is that - in some markets - it won't be a bubble.

My husband and I are about to enter into the Phoenix market. Same story there as everywhere else. Prices have shot up, inventory is historically low, demand high, houses are selling way over asking....Californians are pricing everyone else out (I mean no offense). They are selling properties in Cali and buying up multiple homes in PHX for themselves or investment bc property is so much cheaper.

We are frantically trying to enter into the market ASAP so prices don't balloon past what we can afford, which we are nearly there. I think the upward price climb is here to stay.

 

[dk168]

The town in the South West of England about 1.5h's drive from London where I live has recently been mentioned as one of the best place to live in a national newspaper.

Perhaps the plan to build a railway station a few miles outside the town with direct link in and out of London might have helped, and I am in the right side of the town for this station.

House prices are expected to rise as a result.

However, I am not expecting to move as I love my house and location, and hated the stress associated with relocation - I swear I would not do it again after the last one back in 2006 out of London to where I am now.

DK

 

[Mrs_Strizzle]

I was told by my realtor it was exploding because so many jobs have permanently transitioned to remote work and people are leaving the big cities. To be contrary to most posts here i will say this is a good thing for my town with little industry and a large depressed area. Having said that, my town has chronically been WAY below the national average in housing price. We can still find a 2000 sqft house for under 200k, so I know this is a very different scenario to many of you and you might not relate.

 

[Dancing Fire]

Ugh, poor daughter of yours. That's painful. I guess the two story doesn't have a master on the first/ground floor?

No Br down stair. she hardly ever needed to go up stair during the day. There's nothing wrong with her knee now. I don't want her to carry an extra $200K+ in mortgage for a single story home of the same size in her area. Her current home probably worth about 500K now, and her current mortgage balance is about 190K.

 

[kenny]

No Br down stair. she hardly ever needed to go up stair during the day. There's nothing wrong with her knee now. I don't want her to carry an extra $200K+ in mortgage for a single story home of the same size in her area. Her current home probably worth about 500K now, and her current mortgage balance is about 190K.

If her knee is the main reason she wants to move ...

 

[ForteKitty]

No Br down stair. she hardly ever needed to go up stair during the day. There's nothing wrong with her knee now. I don't want her to carry an extra $200K+ in mortgage for a single story home of the same size in her area. Her current home probably worth about 500K now, and her current mortgage balance is about 190K.

Are kids' bedrooms upstairs? Laundry? What exactly is upstairs? I personally hate stairs and only looked at single story homes when we bought ours. Past knee injury doesn't bother me most days, but sometimes coming down stairs not paying attention will tweak it and mess it up for days.

 

[Dancing Fire]

If her knee is the main reason she wants to move ...

Kenny, She ain't old like you!

 

[chemgirl]

Yep Toronto market is nuts. We sold our 2 bed townhouse for well over double what we thought we would and bought a 3 acre lakefront property in my hometown. The new house was cheaper than the Toronto townhouse.

A lot of friends are cashing out and moving outside of the city. Commuter towns are getting crazy though. Think average home price over $900,000 and you still have an hour on the train each way every day.

 

[Dancing Fire]

Are kids' bedrooms upstairs? Laundry? What exactly is upstairs? I personally hate stairs and only looked at single story homes when we bought ours. Past knee injury doesn't bother me most days, but sometimes coming down stairs not paying attention will tweak it and mess it up for days.

Kitchen, family room, living room, dinning area and a 1/2 bath are down stair. All 3 BRs and laundry are up stair.

 

[lambskin]

Where I live, all mid century ranches are tear downs and McMansions are built. Shame as I love a ranch and as I get older the smaller one floor living is optimal. I grew up in a ranch and wanted stairs. My mom said that it was more expensive to build out than up as land had to be bigger for the ranches. Now I hate my stairs as bedrooms are upstairs and laundry is in basement. Ugh!

 

[SomethingNew]

No Br down stair. she hardly ever needed to go up stair during the day. There's nothing wrong with her knee now. I don't want her to carry an extra $200K+ in mortgage for a single story home of the same size in her area. Her current home probably worth about 500K now, and her current mortgage balance is about 190K.

I hear ya, a relatively low mortgage balance is awesome! Just not having to worry about added carry costs every month is priceless. You'll be free to travel, eat well and just no baggage overall.

Is it a single family house and no HOA to worry about? Can you do an extension on the first floor to add a master suite?

 

[kenny]

... Can you do an extension on the first floor to add a master suite?

Kudos for that good idea.

 

[nala]

No Br down stair. she hardly ever needed to go up stair during the day. There's nothing wrong with her knee now. I don't want her to carry an extra $200K+ in mortgage for a single story home of the same size in her area. Her current home probably worth about 500K now, and her current mortgage balance is about 190K.

She’s young. She can afford it. An extra 200k at 2 to 3 percent interest is not a big deal, especially in Ca. I would do it if I was her.