I'm going to buy a House!

some of us knew exactly what the last panel was about... 😆
- I saw the same joke in Two and Half Men
  
  That’s quite an indictment.
- He’s going to unplug his life support

Where I'm from, the median house price has risen 600% relative to median income since the 70's.
That means that we're dropping more than the entire value of their home as our deposit, while we compete against capital-heavy boomers that benefited from that growth looking to downsize.
There's a reason they could have a house and 12 kids on a single summer job income - they were handed a strong economy that they ransacked for their own benefit before blaming the poor schmucks that are inhereting the stripped wreckage they've left behind. Couple that with the cost of the massive environmental pivot we'll need to make to survive as a species, and I'm sure you'll forgive me for wanting to drive the nose of the next boomer that preaches about smashed avocado toast and bootstraps through the back of their skull.
- I'm fascinated by how idioms have gone a complete 180. Now we tell people that they just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but that idiom is used to describe an impossible task. You can't pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, it's literally impossible. Same with it's just a few bad apples to excuse bad behaviour. The idiom is a few bad apples ruins the barel, that one bad person or thing jeopardizes the whole thing. I don't get it.
  
  People are rather ignorant as a whole. Many of us here probably use our brains for genuine thought, but I find that to be the exception.
  Look at the shit people focus on as important and how they mimic what they see and parrot what they hear and it becomes clear how they can't even get simple sayings right.
  Also I put my hand into a bag of apples last night and my finger dug into a rotten spot in one apple with mold in it. Thankfully it didn't get a chance to spread... close one.

Last month I had this random conversation with an old lady while on vacation. She mentioned that quite lightheartedly, that "we bought our house just on our salaries, we worked hard back then and needed to settle down". I wasn't expecting to have to explain to her that this is not such an easy option for us right now. She seemed genuinely surprised and disappointed at the facts and I didn't know whether to feel enraged or amused by her true or not ignorance.
- At least she was open to listening, hopefully you've made an impact on her going forward

I'm solid GenX.
My grandparents bought a house on a corner lot in the northwest suburbs of Chicago for $6000. Which was about a years salary for Grampa, who worked as a welder. This was in the late 60s.
ETA: Their mortgage was around $50.00 a month.
- I'm GenX as well and I will straight up admit that my wife and I got lucky, purchased a house in a "distressed" neighborhood in Portland because it was all we could afford, and now, 20 years later, the neighborhood is fully gentrifying and our house and property is worth way more than what we owe on it.
  I'm conflicted as to how to feel about it. While on the one hand we very innocently bought the place because it was in a shitty neighborhood and was all we could afford, on the other hand I now know that we were what the urban studies people refer to as "bohemian colonizers," meaning that without knowing it, we were, by moving into the neighborhood as poor artist types, part of a much longer process of gentrification.
  Again, I am of several minds regarding how I feel about the whole thing.
  
  be poor
  move to a poor neighbourhood
  I really don't think that you should feel bad about this personally :)
  
  Meh, gentrification is the result of bad policy, not personal, individual choices (except maybe for people flipping houses and landlords). Neighborhoods, and the people in them, should not stay poor forever. Rent controls, grants for people to start businesses or coops or whatever, allowing mixed-use zoning, and stuff like that can reduce the harmful affects of gentrification.
  
  Pay it forward by voting on low cost housing initiatives and not becoming a nimby.
  
  Yeah, I don't think you should feel bad. You can't really individually control processes like this and well... you needed a place to live.
  
  You shouldn't feel guilty for being lucky. Just pay it forward to your community if you can or care.
  
  I feel bad because I think the house I sold went to a landlord. At the time it didn't really occur to me that a cash offer probably implied land lord. I put some blame on my real estate agent for pushing lower cash offers over higher loan offers but it still makes me upset. The HOA in that neighborhood only allower 10% of the homes to be rented out and when we moved in they had a ton of signs saying that. I assumed that would be the case when we were selling.
  It was one of the nicest while still being affordable townhomes in the area.
  It doesn't keep my up at night or anything but at the same time it's not like I'm going to be selling my current house soon. It's an opportunity you only get so often.
  
  What were you supposed to do live in a tiny apartment to make housing more available for the poor fuckers nearby who just happened to have started slightly closer?
- Which would be round about $55000 in today's money, for those interested.
  
  It's disgusting. And even more disgusting at America and Canada's disregard for the unavailability of owned housing at an even remotely appropriate cost.
- Today a the median yearly salary for a welder is a bit less than $40,000.
  For this price you can maybe get a camper, not too big though.
  
  So, welders today make about 30% less, while houses today cost about 5x as much.
  Progress!!
- This is actually worse than it sounds 1 year of salary can be paid off in 2.5 paying the same amount someone pays for rent on their apartment. In 2.5 years you wont pay much in the way of interest. Over a 30 year mortgage paying the median home price of 388k means paying almost 3x the face value or roughly 1.1M or roughly 17 years of median income.

I live in a small town in the SE US. I bought my house for $89,900, 12ish years ago. There are 3 vacant houses on my street and they are all listed for $250,00 or more. My house is bigger than all of them. They have all been empty for over a year.
- They really should tax empty houses at 100%. You'll see how fast they will sell, and how low the price will go to achieve that.
  
  absolutely agree. It's insane that we allow corporations to hoard housing and artificially jack up the price. I'm just outside the city limits and I see soooo many homeless people now. A lot of them have jobs too, they just can't afford a place to live. Some local churches have opened up their parking lots for people to sleep in their cars.
  
  Agreed, if no one is resident in the house then the taxes should go way up.
  This way any house where the owner isn't living there and it's not rented would see the taxes increase quickly. We can even add a multiplier according to how many years the house has been sitting there empty.
  
  We do that in Vancouver and it's good. The fines are steep.
  But it's opened a mini industry of people being paid to visit homes so they aren't 'empty'.
  
  True, homestead exemptions can only do so much.
- I just bought a house in the eastern part of the Midwest in the US. The tax assessment in 2021 for the house was about 193k. In 2023, it's 275k. That is a 30% increase in 2 years. During those 2 years, nobody lived in the house, and no improvements were made in that time. Neat! My mortgage is still about the same as my rent for a 2br apartment in Oregon earlier this year. I suspect the Midwest is about to start hating Oregonians as much as Oregonians hate Californians soon!

I'm here to laugh. Not plot murder.
- In this instance i kinda agree, but there's a line that gets crossed where that doesn't apply, so perhaps sturdier logic is needed.
  EDIT: For instance, if this Ricky Gervais meme were posted to justify a joke making light of police brutality against black people, that's clearly far over the line. This joke isn't even close to the line IMO. But where is the line? And - genuinely, out of curiosity because dark humour is a deep love of mine - what is the correct line of reasoning? I really do think "just take a joke, it's fun, have a laugh" like the meme implies is the correct stance in regards to things like this. But, since the logic doesn't really hold up at the extreme, it to me implies the logic may be a little off.
- Why not both?

I don't get the last panel.
- Unplugging them from life support is how I read it. I like the darkness.
- He’s practicing pulling the plug on his dad
- I’m going to ~~buy~~ inherit a house!
  
  Reverse mortgage says the bank will.
  
  ROFL, get it now.
- It's as vague as taking a sledgehammer to the head...
  
  He's practicing unplugging his father (grandfather?) for when he's on life support. It's a bit of dark humor.
  
  I have some Garfield comics I can send you. Might be more your speed.

They’re so dense. My conservative uncle gave me a bunch of shit for taking out student loans. He worked at McDonald’s over the summers and paid his rent and tuition for the whole year! Meanwhile I was working full time year round going to school, barely making enough to pay rent without enough leftover to make a dent in tuition. Obviously that world doesn’t exist anymore. This was over 10 years ago, I’m sure it’s way worse now. At least I was able to find “affordable” rent.

I'm English so can't comment on the situation in the US, but reading the comments in this thread it seems quite similar to the one here.
I bought a house in 2010, just before I turned 23 and I'm very much the exception to the rule. I live in an area with some of the lowest house prices in the country. I didn't go to University and got my first full time job when I was 19. It didn't pay well but I lived at home and I was a stoner. I didn't go out much, just to friend's houses to get high. My town is walkable enough that I didn't need to drive (I get that not driving isn't really possible in the US, or even in some parts of the UK).
This meant I saved up a lot of my money without really trying. The house I bought cost £41,000. I sold it in 2022 for £39,000 which should give you some idea of the state of it.
My Dad bought a house in 1986 for £12,000. I can see that house from the one I live in now, which cost me £79,000 in 2022.
- That is some achievement to lose money on a house in that time period, did it fall down 😂
  
  Nearly. It had awful damp, no central heating and an open coal cellar at the front.
- Those house prices sounds absolutely insane to me.
  I'm also in the UK, but I'm in the South East, so house prices are very high. Still managed to find a "cheap" house recently due to the location being a bit rough.
  For comparison, my house that I'm buying is £345k (it's 2 bedrooms with a separate garage and 2 bathrooms). I saved up a £125k deposit by living with my parents for the longest time (I think it took me about a decade). The exception being for 3 years when I house shared - the rent was £325 per month with bills included, but my room was effectively a glorified cupboard.
  I will also say that I was saving lots and lots of money with my old job. I'm a software developer, so my salary was good (started off at £22.5k, went up to £45k with about 10 years experience and being a senior dev, then our company got bought out and my salary went up to £55k). A year later and I switched jobs as the annual salary increase was £150 (for the whole year). Ended up with a £75k salary w/ bonus, private healthcare, etc etc. I really lucked out at that moment.
  As to why I didn't buy a house earlier with my deposit, there was two reasons:
  I had saved up about £100k before for personal savings, then that money went to help a sibling (call this sibling A) with their property. My parents sold a property aborad to effectively give me back the money, but the money was split between me and another sibling's bank account (call this sibling B) because of financial advice given by my uncle. What then happened was sibling B didn't give me back the money and was being incredibly difficult about the money, and since they have a history of being difficult in general, I decided I was going to save that money instead.
  Sibling A wanted to start their own business, but it effectively flopped for all sorts of reasons. They had amassed a loan of £15k, and I helped pay that off. This was while sibling B was being incredibly difficult.
  Main reason: At the time, I didn't know if I really wanted to stay at the job for so long, and if I did want to stay, I didn't want to move into the area where my job was - despite the convenience, the area was incredibly rough - almost GTA like (and that is no exagerration). I didn't know where I wanted to live, and the places I would be interested in, I effectively had no clue as I was living with my parents at the time.
  So yeah, buying a house in the South of UK isn't easy at all. It requires a ton of patience and luck.
  
  Jesus, that's insane.
  My house has 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and no garage. It is, I'd say, in the second worst part of town but crime rates here are still fairly low. I paid over 4 times less for it than yours just 17 months ago.
  TBF house prices here have increased since then and you're looking at around £100k minimum for a place like this now, but still, that's mental.
- You bought a house for less than $45K? Excuse me?
  For comparison, a 2 bedroom 1 bath house at about 1000 square ft in my area would cost 250K for a place that needs repair and remodeling.
  
  For us using metric who are not used to freedom units:
  1000 square ft = 93 m2 (92,9 m2 to be exact)
  So I guess you can divide by 10 to get a rough estimate in m2 that is 7% off.
  
  That almost exactly the size and price of the house we bought, and I live in th most affordable city in Canada. Also needs repair and remodeling.
  
  No, I bought a house for £41k. Not sure of the currency exchange rate at the time and how that relates to now, but pretty sure it's always going to be above $45k
- Which city is it? I would very much like to move in. The housing market is so ridiculous now that even in my crappy city, in a terrible country that lost millions due to COVID, and is now at a goddamn war losing thousands of people by day, the prices are still skyrocketing. Currently, even the cheapest 12m² room inside an ex-USSR barrack costs like 20 grand, and the situation is even worse outside the cities.

Is he going to unplug his life support

Image Transcription:
A four-panel comic called Pervis by Zach M. Stafford.
The first panel shows a young man in a brown button-down shirt and orange tie standing in a street with a house in the background. The young man is saying "I'm going to buy a house!"
The second panel shows a much older man, now bald but still wearing the brown shirt and orange tie, speaking to a man in a green button-down shirt and green tie. The elderly man is saying "...and that was how I bought a house when I was 23!"
The third panel shows a close-up of the older man's face, he looks agitated, his eyes scrunched up and his mouth open wide as he yells "I worked at the drive-in all summer for that house!! Nobody wants to work anymore!"
The fourth panel shows the elderly man and the green-shirted man again, this time both are facing away from the viewer and the green-shirted man is holding the end of an electrical plug that he's just pulled from the wall. The older man is saying "...why are you unplugging my lamp?" To which the green-shirted man responds, "I'm just practicing"
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]

Credit: Pervis (@PervisTime) - Twitter
Nitter link: https://nitter.cz/PervisTime/status/1700928952670245321
RSS Feed: https://nitter.cz/PervisTime/rss
- Nitter RSS is working?
  
  I was having issues adding this one to my RSS Reader. It worked on my browser, but commafeed said Connect timed out.
  I tried a different instance (nittercz) and it worked. So I edited the links in my comments. Thanks for noticing.

I guess that is how he'll a house, high risk, high reward. .
- I think you a word there.

home ownership has been stable around 65% since the 1960s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeownership_in_the_United_States
- The homeownership rate in the United States is the percentage of homes that are owned by their occupants.
  
  Yes, that's what it means

Wait until Zoomers and Millennials find out that the house grandpa bought was probably under 900 sq feet, didn't have any AC, had one bathroom and if he was lucky had 2 bedrooms for the 2 adults and 3 kids. And when he furnished it, at most the family had one 13" B&W TV (if they were lucky), the tiniest fridge and the washing machine probably had a handle which you needed to crank by hand and the dryer was the clothesline out in the tiny backyard.
Every prospective homebuyer under 35 these days would turn their nose to a house that small and with such few amenities. And god forbid it actually needed some work done to it. With how mechanically inept (and lazy) younger folks seem to be these days, they aren't even willing to look at cheap fixer-uppers to save money in exchange for sweat equity.
- Hahaha, you're hilariously out of touch.
  Zoomers and Millennials would be lucky to find a small home for sale, as greedy real-estate and construction industries have pretty much decided that building starter homes isn't profitable. My local 900 ft sq home costs just 20k less than a larger home, and they're all over 300k
  Kids? Who can afford kids? Zoomers and Millennials aren't likely to be in the position to have multiple kids.
  And its a lot easier to live without A/C pre-2000, you know, before people polluted the fuck out of everything we depend on to live
  But go on claim a worldwide housing crisis is due to a generation of lazy people and definetly not due to giant investment industry that 's squatting on top of housing. Did you have to fight airBNB to get a bid in in your day, grandpa?
- I would love to even find a house like that on the market.
  
  I've heard that before, then you tell someone they might have to add 10 minutes to their commute, or you tell them the closest Starbucks is 15 minutes away, or Gb internet wasn't offered, or some other lavish luxury that people are spoiled with these days wasn't available, and all of a sudden it is a dealbreaker.
  Used to be in the /realestate sub on Reddit and the number of spoiled buyers who would endlessly complain about not being able to find a house was infuriating. And when you'd point out to them that with their budget maybe since they were single and had no kids, they might not actually need a 3 bedroom house, they would get all snippy.
- I would buy that house in a heartbeat if I could afford it
- You truly have no idea how zoning, home construction, or really anything works today and this very ignorance is informing your biases.
- Man, I saw houses in Portland that were smaller than 900 sq ft, did not have central AC, no appliances, and had water damage and wires ripped from the walls above $200k. That's not the case in all markets, but it is for a great many. Get on Zillow and start looking around as if you were in the market. Ask yourself if you'd be willing to offer some of these asking prices.

(It is entirely possible to buy a house in your twenties)
- The point isn't that it's impossible.
  The point is they act like it's just as easy as it was when they were in their twenties.
  Back when you could comfortably support a family with one job working 40hrs/week. Any job.
  
  I didn't have issues. Saved for about a year, nothing crazy, and asked for a loan. Now I own a nice two-story house about a 15 minute walk from the city center. I don't really get this "buying a home is impossible" -meme, I believed that too before I actually tried and was surprised how easy it was.
- It's also important that you can start off wealthy in the sense that:
  your parents have lots of money they give you or
  you can start off wealthy because the generation before you worked hard and set their children up with an economy that can let them succeed.
  If the generation before you are a bunch of ladder-pulling-bastards, you don't have a chance.
  
  Extremely true statement, though I didn't, and still aren't.
- Possible and feasible are two different things. It's possible for everyone in America to buy a house, there is no law against it, but it's not feasible for everyone to. This concept of "you just need to work harder and you can" is the brain dead, privileged AF fallacy this is calling out.
- Just need a small loan from your father for a million dollars, right?
  
  Addressed this earlier, I mean I don't blame you for not picking it up it's since grown into a quite a comment tree. But no, my parents are doing average and I'm getting none of the average other than the socks they get me for christmas.
- It's entirely possible you'll be an olympic figure skater in your 20s too.
  
  For sure, but that would take an unreasonable amount of work and effort so I wouldn't compare the two.
- Ok boomer
  
  It really is a disgrace this comment came so late. I was expecting it much earlier.
- with the help of your wealthy parents as cosigners and an income of $150k a year or more
  
  I have no cosigners on my loan and my parents aren't all that wealthy, not that it matters unless you count the socks I get each christmas as a gift from them large enough to warrant such financial relief.
  And I make around 30k a year (4-day workweek btw, excluding summer months) and am single.
  Like I said I too was surprised at how easy it was, literally try it before knocking. Though admittedly interest rates were much easier a few years back when I applied for the loan, so that probably changes your mileage.
- Do the math - Median house price, median wage of a 20-something, median cost of living.
  How would an average 20-something achieve this without assistance?
  It's not impossible, but do you think that's what we should be shooting for as the leaders of the developed world - you win with intergenerational wealth or a snowball's chance in hell? Have a little more pride in your country and be less cucked by the interests of those that have ransacked the economy.
  
  Have a little more pride in your country and be less cucked by the interests of those that have ransacked the economy.
  I just pointed this out to someone else here, but how I see it, doomer-propaganda like this comic is exactly what keeps the status quo. Making young people scared enough to not even try to improve their situation is exactly what keeps their positions untouched.
  I mean we here had this same type a sentiment shoved down our throats, press talking about how impossible it is for young people out there. That was true to me, until I tried out and learned that nah, it aint that bad. Badder than what it used to be, for sure, but not that bad at all.
- I bought a shitty house in shitty Toledo for $48k with zero down and a $13/hr job in 2007. I was roughly 22 at the time.
  This is probably not possible today.
  
  48k is a bargain though. I mean I checked google maps and yeah Toledo looks kinda ass (sorry Toledoans) but that's a steal especially considering it was the boom before -08 bust. Prolly could've got a nice subprime to along with it.
- It is definitely possible you just have to break in to a high-paying career and dedicate your entire life to working