The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 7.09% in the week ending August 17, up from 6.96% the week before. Rates have been above 6.5% since the end of May and climbing higher since mid-July. This week’s average rate is the highest the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage has been since April 2002 when it was 7.13%.
I unfortunately wasn’t able to refinance, but I’m still significantly below 4%. I don’t think I could afford to buy my own house today with current rates and house values because my mortgage would more than double.
I’d rather have a town house or condo than a separate house with almost no separation between neighbors.
In fact, when I was looking for a house, we looked at one of these and I straight up noped out. We then looked at townhouses and almost made an offer until a more traditional house in an area we preferred became available, and that’s where we live today.
I’m thinking we’ll probably move to a townhouse or condo at some point when the kids move out.
Almost every American suburb has an hoa just like condos, cities make the HOAs take care of common ground like street lights, roads, minor water features, etc so they don’t have to. My HOAs is responsible for our road, sidewalks, retaining walls on the hills surrounding the subdivision, the creek running through our subdivision, streetlights, and a bunch more. So the city collects our tax dollars as residents but spends very little on infrastructure we use. And I guess technically it’s my land, I consider it as belonging to the bank until I pay it off in another 27 years lol
Nah fuck townhouses and condos. I lived in apartments for almost a decade and I never want to share walls or floors/ceilings with other people again.
I don’t want to pay a quarter million plus to still here my neighbor walking around or playing music in their living room or anything else. Even the few feet of space plus exterior walls in OPs picture eliminate so much noise
I lived in three apartment buildings before buying my house, and each had very different noise characteristics. The first (old but remodeled) was very quiet, the second terrible (old and poorly maintained), and the third was acceptable (new-ish). It all has to do with how it’s built, and that’s something that can usually be figured out before buying if you talk to the neighbors.
So if you can find a good townhouse or condo where noise isn’t really an issue, then you get the benefits of a more compact living area, like being closer to downtown. Getting downtown from my current house takes 20-30 minutes, but for my coworkers who live in townhouses in the city, it’s like a 5 min train ride.
So when the kids leave the house, I’ll be more interested in being close to things than the benefits of a house (space, quiet, etc).
The "suburban dream" looks to be dying out for capitalism reasons (not to mention the exaustion of land a commutable distance by car from cities) and the yard is becoming inceasingly vestigial. Soon they'll reinvent townhomes
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