The affordable housing situation right now is desperate.
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Real Estate Broker · Cody, WY · Member since 2010 · 28k+ posts · 41k+ votes
4yThat's a pretty nice apartment for a D-class neighborhood.
It is tough. I am working with a friend's daughter who is looking for her first home to purchase. She's qualified for $275,000 and there's only one house on the market for under $300,000. Three years ago, $275,000 would buy a pretty nice house in a nice neighborhood.
The thing is, people are acting like this is new or unique to their area. That just isn't true. My grandpa came home from WWII, got a job, and couldn't find an affordable place to live so he rented a chicken coop from a friend, cleaned it out, and moved in. They washed in a creek and cooked on a campfire. He was a wounded combat vet with more than a few demons to fight (we call it PTSD now) but he got his butt up and worked hard to save up and find an apartment in time for my mom to be born.
It may sound harsh, but most people could fix their situation with some effort, but it's easier to complain about how hard life is. People want to keep working a 40-hour week (or less) and spend their money on $1,000 iPhones, car payments, and other unnecessary purchases while watching TV or taking selfies all day and complaining. I can't even advertise a vacant apartment on facebook because the masses bombard my post with complaints about evil Landlords or how this town used to be compassionate. I'm in a small town and know a lot of the posters personally; they aren't making any effort to improve their situation. The truth is, two people working at a fast-food joint can easily make enough to afford any apartment in this town or even a decent house. Every employer is hiring, and they have been for two years. Most our restaurants are closed 1-2 days a week and working shorter hours and using smaller menus because they are short-staffed, even in the winter without tourists!
There are some tough situations, but most people could improve their situation if they just put in the effort.
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76 Replies
- Handyman · Pittsburgh, PA · Member since 2018 · 5k+ posts · 13k+ votes4y
@Bruce Woodruff and @Nathan Gesner do have a point. No one is willing to do what must be done these days. Except the immigrants, everyone is too good for anything that looks like less than an attractive lifestyle. I find myself watching these YouTube videos of Millennials living in their cars and spending tens of thousands of dollars and hours on hours of DIY effort building out Mercedes cargo vans to live in. They can't just be homeless young people living in a van down by the river to save money, oh no...they have to be enjoying "the van life."
This society excels in keeping you poor because it trains you to believe that everyone has an important viewpoint, and so you should spend all your time worrying about what other people think.
But immigrants still come here, they're no invested in this culture, they don't give a damn about keeping up with the Joneses, and they make the sacrifices they have to in order to have a better chance to succeed.
- 4yPeter TverdovBusiness MemberDeveloper · New Brunswick, NJ · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 2k+ votes
We have nearly 200 units under management and our occupancy has never been higher. We are at 100%. It's insane. Anything we list is gone in DAYS and we list stuff in D class areas. Hell, we have a D class rental where shootings happen and we just did a showing today before the cleaners even came. Have a list of 4 people for this apartment.
This is what happens when you can't evict for 2 years, pay people NOT to work, fire people for not taking a vaccine that is proving to be less and less effective and throw stimulus checks out of a helicopter for 2 years to people who didn't need it to start.
- Real Estate Agent · Sisters, OR · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes4y
Immigrants will live 5 guys in a 2 bedroom apartment so employers can pay them crap wages. Immigrants can work here for 2 or 3 years go back to Central or South America and buy a ranch. American kids could only dream of an opportunity like that. I say BS these kids have it tough way harder to start a family now, establish yourself financially, or feel like your desires are legitimate. Materially they have tons of cheap Chinese crap but I would argue older generations have failed to inspire them, install grit, and pass down values that give life meaning. If you wanted to raise a generation of people that were going to sit in some trendy studio with a bunch of cats you would do exactly what this country has done.
- 4yJay HinrichsBusiness MemberReal Estate Consultant · Summerlin, NV · Member since 2014 · 45k+ posts · 66k+ votes
Originally posted by @Quincy Lockett:
@Jill F.
I agree with @Jay Hinrichs . There is no affordable housing crisis at least in the Midwest. There is a shortage of $250K homes that sell for $150K. There are PLENTY of affordable decent rentals and homes, lower income buyers just believe it’s “beneath” them to live there. So they’ve opted to overspend on rentals and homes which cramp their ability to save and KEEP those homes. In my experience, buyers and renters who earn middle and lower middle class incomes expect luxury living on their marginal incomes. I operate rentals in mainly lower C and C Class areas. The showings I give to prospective tenants who “should” rent from me (based on their incomes) NEVER rent from me. Social media and HGTV has warped perceptions of how far your 50K a year takes you.
Back in 09 the GFC I was buying foreclosures in Fort Meyers ( lehigh Acres) FLA basically brand new never lived in 3 and 2 1600 sq ft homes and I was paying 30 to 40k for them.. at that Time I was telling my wife that is some of the best deals in the entire world for a family to buy.
US health US schools new homes all for 30 to 40k.. of course I just flipped them for 60k as soon as I could .. but you get the drift.
there are still areas of the US I work were you can buy a decent home that is livable for under 50k Especially in Jills neck of the woods and a little east over into PA.. I know I have been funding them for years now. Do I want to live there no.. but if your on fixed income or service work hubby and wife you too can own a home if yuo want to.
- Member since 2020 · 671 posts · 937 votes4y
I feel like my compassion is dead for those that voted (and continue to vote) for it. Maybe tomorrow, but today I just can't get there. I do feel bad about not feeling bad about it anymore though...
- Investor · Greenville, SC · Member since 2016 · 5k+ posts · 13k+ votes4y
Desperate situations provide prime opportunities to deliver solutions and add value to people. Provide affordable housing in decent locations (at whatever income level we service) and it's a win/win for residents and investors. The OP does exactly that. It's tough (and won't be solved in my lifetime) but some investors will find (and are finding) creative ways to deliver solutions through rooms to rent, rehabbing old places, redevelopment, and zoning changes/variances. I hope to be one of those investors.
- 4yTheresa HarrisPro MemberMember since 2019 · 15k+ posts · 11k+ votes
I have rentals in an area like that and there are lots of stories-some are true and some aren't. Find the best tenant and don't focus on why they are looking for a rental. We have had to take the ad down after 2 days because of the number of calls. You have a really nice apartment.
- Handyman · Pittsburgh, PA · Member since 2018 · 5k+ posts · 13k+ votes4y
Originally posted by @Mike Dymski:
Desperate situations provide prime opportunities to deliver solutions and add value to people. Provide affordable housing in decent locations (at whatever income level we service) and it's a win/win for residents and investors. The OP does exactly that. It's tough (and won't be solved in my lifetime) but some investors will find (and are finding) creative ways to deliver solutions through rooms to rent, rehabbing old places, redevelopment, and zoning changes/variances. I hope to be one of those investors.
I know when I bought the duplex I'm writing from for $45K cash in January 2017, there were almost no investors interested in driving prices up in my target area. No young people here in Munhall, PA bellyaching about how the dream of homeownership is utterly, utterly dead for their generation, killed by greedy real estate investors. Instead, this place sat empty and the community was a heroin ghetto with routine shootings happening every month like clockwork. I knew, though, that the area's four municipalities were running out the last of the tax increment financing program that built the Waterfront complex over the site of the old Homestead Work steelmill fifteen years ago. The next year was 2018, and I knew the upper Steel Valley boroughs and the Steel Valley school district would see a 50% jump in their budgets, and that had to lead to something. To learn that, all I had to do was read the paper and search on Google.
And yet at the time, no one else was buying, and when you told locals you were planning on moving to Homestead, you got a look. Now, the Steel Valley is routinely billed as "an up-and-coming area." The rough trade is being driven out by rising property prices, real estate investors are gentryifying the s*** out of the small multifamily that used to deal all the baggies and pills to any car that honked outside, the school district is making good use of the money coming in to modernize and make better hires. Five years have given us about 100-150% appreciation in this former ghetto. My brother's old house up in the nicens far suburb of Cranberry, on the other hand, has taken twenty years to double in value.
So I just have no pity for the twenty-somethings looking down over well-trodden, well-described roads and complaining that it's horribly unfair that they just can't go on autopilot and do as mommy and daddy did and be fine and dandy forevermore. You have to take chances. You have to think outside the box. All that our governments, federal, state, county, municipal ever do well is fix their own wagon, set their own people up. If you keep looking for help in that direction you're going to be screwed for the rest of your days.Fix up that chicken coop and live in it. So people laugh at you. So what? Buy a duplex well over asking with piddle down using FHA financing and live in the basement behind a sheet while you AirBnb both sides out. So you don't get laid for a year. Deal with it. Stop driving anything you need to make payments on. Pick up side gigs. Learn how to use power tools. Work at Home Depot and make contacts. Stop thinking that the Chinese export happiness in the form of consumer goods. This country is exploding with opportunities. They just all look like hard work that doesn't Instagram well.
- 4yBruce WoodruffPro MemberContractor/Investor/Consultant · San Diego / Phoenix · Member since 2021 · 12k+ posts · 15k+ votes
Originally posted by @Lisa Ma:
this is awful. sometimes i feel guilty about converting my place into airbnb...
If it bothers you so much, it's easy enough to just turn it back into a regular long-term rental. You could do it tomorrow.....You could even allow extra people in like 4 for a one bedroom. Lower your prices too so more people can afford it......
- 4yBruce WoodruffPro MemberContractor/Investor/Consultant · San Diego / Phoenix · Member since 2021 · 12k+ posts · 15k+ votes
Originally posted by @Eric Morel:
True that Bruce. They should though
No they shouldn't.....in order for wages to keep up with inflation, you would have to mandate employers to raise worker's pay. Imagine how many small employers that would force out of business, causing a huge jump in unemployment.....
- Austin, TX · Member since 2019 · 5k+ posts · 5k+ votes4y
Originally posted by @Jill F.:
I just listed an apartment on Friday. It's in a "D" neighborhood. It's my first turnover in over 3 years (39 months) in these buildings (2 side-by-side quads). I had **13** solid, completed applications (not just vague inquiries).
This is a clean, very basic apartment...
https://www.zillow.com/homedet...
I feel really bad for people looking now around here... I had 2 people with long term jobs submit applications both saying their buildings were recently sold and they'll be homeless if they can't find anything in a month or so. both said they've submitted many, many applications and heard crickets. It's been a while but I sure didn't have this kind of response when I last rented one of these apartments. In addition to actual applications I had many, many inquiries from people that sound so desperate . It's really heartbreaking.
Hi Jill,
I sure don't see this as Heartbreaking, I see it as supply/demand = possibly more profits.
Maybe this is a little bird sitting on your shoulder telling you to buy more units (???)
But then again, maybe your rents are too low and your drawing a lot of hopefuls due to that.
Are these new cradle to grave section-8-ers just coming onto the market, or existing ones looking for a better place (possibly due to a crime increase in their present neighborhood)???
How does a building sale make them go homeless--(increased rents ???) are your rents at market (???) are you offering any incentives (mos free, etc...), is your location GREAT!!!! (for them and their needs, wants and desires) and the competition is a place of great despair, is your first floor brick at least half way up and the competition they are leaving is not (drive by shooting barrier for those sleeping inside).
Just my 2 cents.
- Handyman · Pittsburgh, PA · Member since 2018 · 5k+ posts · 13k+ votes4y
From 2000 to 2007 when I lived in Greece, and yes, the standard Q&A joke for people my age from middle-class, left-wing families that supported the socialists was:
"What do you do for a living?"
"I'm waiting to be appointed to a government job."
Talk about your cradle-to-grave welfare. The government didn't even know how many people worked for it. Just look how well that worked out. - Real Estate Broker · Pueblo, CO · Member since 2013 · 368 posts · 303 votes4y
I'd just like to add my written vote to the cumulative thoughts of @Bruce Woodruff @Nathan Gesner and @Jim K.
By the way Jim, I didn't know you were a Homestead boy. I bought one of those "Pittsburgh new" houses in Homestead by Barrett Elementary and lived there for a few years. I heard gunshots nightly, saw drugs peddled right outside the elementary school and my house, watched a vacant house get torched in the dead of winter, very entertaining/frightening to say the least. I simultaneously quit my $30k/year gig hopped in my paid-for 2005 "bubba blue" Buick and hustled real estate to the moon. All that aside, I had some of the best neighbors to this day at that home.
- 4yJay HinrichsBusiness MemberReal Estate Consultant · Summerlin, NV · Member since 2014 · 45k+ posts · 66k+ votes
Originally posted by @Jim K.:
Originally posted by @Mike Dymski:
Desperate situations provide prime opportunities to deliver solutions and add value to people. Provide affordable housing in decent locations (at whatever income level we service) and it's a win/win for residents and investors. The OP does exactly that. It's tough (and won't be solved in my lifetime) but some investors will find (and are finding) creative ways to deliver solutions through rooms to rent, rehabbing old places, redevelopment, and zoning changes/variances. I hope to be one of those investors.
I know when I bought the duplex I'm writing from for $45K cash in January 2017, there were almost no investors interested in driving prices up in my target area. No young people here in Munhall, PA bellyaching about how the dream of homeownership is utterly, utterly dead for their generation, killed by greedy real estate investors. Instead, this place sat empty and the community was a heroin ghetto with routine shootings happening every month like clockwork. I knew, though, that the area's four municipalities were running out the last of the tax increment financing program that built the Waterfront complex over the site of the old Homestead Work steelmill fifteen years ago. The next year was 2018, and I knew the upper Steel Valley boroughs and the Steel Valley school district would see a 50% jump in their budgets, and that had to lead to something. To learn that, all I had to do was read the paper and search on Google.
And yet at the time, no one else was buying, and when you told locals you were planning on moving to Homestead, you got a look. Now, the Steel Valley is routinely billed as "an up-and-coming area." The rough trade is being driven out by rising property prices, real estate investors are gentryifying the s*** out of the small multifamily that used to deal all the baggies and pills to any car that honked outside, the school district is making good use of the money coming in to modernize and make better hires. Five years have given us about 100-150% appreciation in this former ghetto. My brother's old house up in the nicens far suburb of Cranberry, on the other hand, has taken twenty years to double in value.
So I just have no pity for the twenty-somethings looking down over well-trodden, well-described roads and complaining that it's horribly unfair that they just can't go on autopilot and do as mommy and daddy did and be fine and dandy forevermore. You have to take chances. You have to think outside the box. All that our governments, federal, state, county, municipal ever do well is fix their own wagon, set their own people up. If you keep looking for help in that direction you're going to be screwed for the rest of your days.Fix up that chicken coop and live in it. So people laugh at you. So what? Buy a duplex well over asking with piddle down using FHA financing and live in the basement behind a sheet while you AirBnb both sides out. So you don't get laid for a year. Deal with it. Stop driving anything you need to make payments on. Pick up side gigs. Learn how to use power tools. Work at Home Depot and make contacts. Stop thinking that the Chinese export happiness in the form of consumer goods. This country is exploding with opportunities. They just all look like hard work that doesn't Instagram well.
One issue that we have not discussed is that in many areas with little to no historic appreciation and or depreciation falling prices.. Many folks look at owning the home as a liability and just prefer to rent.. they dont want to have Cap ex and on going maintenance issues. Its a different mind set than the RE centric BP member I got to get to 1000 doors so i can buy my freedom..
- 4yJohn MorganPro MemberRental Property Investor · Grand Prairie, TX · Member since 2018 · 2k+ posts · 2k+ votes
In my area, many landlords have been decimated by the eviction moratorium. I lost over 34k by not being allowed to evict some of my non paying tenants when ended trashing my properties when I was finally able to reclaim them. Therefore, many landlords have thrown in the towel and are selling their properties for huge profits “as is” with tenants in place to wholesalers. They know landlords have no rights anymore and have seen enough. I can relate! These worn out rentals get flipped and a new home buyer moves in. This is causing a major shortage of available rentals. Plus we’re over 4 million homes short in the US right now which doesn’t help the shortage. And millennials are the biggest demographic starting to buy homes. That puts a squeeze on available homes to buy or rent. Even if they raise interest rates 3 or 4 times next year, I see market rent and housing prices to continue to go north. A good time to invest. A bad time to be a renter that won’t ever be able to afford or qualify for a house.
- Real Estate Agent · San DIego · Member since 2019 · 177 posts · 185 votes4y
@Jill F
When a unit is as nice as yours is, well kept and updated, and decently priced for the neighborhood, there will always be high demand. The underscore of a nice, clean unit says to tenants "I am not a slumlord, I care about my home/your home."
When we first started renting, we had the strategy that our rents would be low and we expected the tenants to more or less appreciate the low rent and not bother us too much. We even did some trades back then, barters such as knocking off a bit of rent for handyman services, cleaning or painting. This strategy is an abject failure. The TENANTS feel underappreciated. They resent paying you. The less they paid, the more they expected. They over charge and over rate their their barters, such as sloppy paint job or poor clean up. They want you to discount the rent or pay them for top dollar for any little thing. We used to joke about one tenant that he'd charge us $20 to walk across the street. In a nutshell, this strategy got us nothing but entitled tenants looking for ways to screw us.
Fast forward to today- we have many more rentals, and an entirely different strategy. Our places are immaculate and well kept. If something is broken, we fix it. We hand over a clean property and expect a clean property returned to us. We have nice properties and absolutely amazing tenants. They appreciate us and we appreciate them. We don't barter with anyone, and nobody is nickling and diming us.
You've got what sounds like one of the nicest places for rent in the area. Pick a tenant that will value that.
- Real Estate Agent · Los Angeles, CA · Member since 2018 · 2k+ posts · 1k+ votes4y
Affordability is a challenge.
Inventory is low. The problem is in certain markets (LA, NY, SF), the government imposes rent control thinking that will help, when all it does it makes it less affordable. One way to create more housing is (1) deregulate rent control and building of affordable housing and (2) work with Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac to create loan programs for investors to buy up properties at reasonable interest rates and maybe with less down. For example (and this is not well thought out), an investor could put 15% down instead of 30% with no PMI if they provide for lower income housing. To enforce this, the house and landlord could be enrolled in a specific program.
- Real Estate Agent · Sisters, OR · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes4y
That will inflate prices higher and put even more leverage into an already hyper financialized bubble. If you want poor people to have housing get them better jobs, CA could stop letting tech companies import employees crack down on immigration so native Californians have a chance and employers can't pay next to nothing for wages.
I love investors my self identity is a real estate investor, but the last thing we all need is more perks from the government. We are getting rich and other people who own assets are getting rich and everyone else is getting left behind.
- Real Estate Broker · Cody, WY · Member since 2010 · 28k+ posts · 41k+ votes4yIn 1950, people wouldn't sit around all day complaining about something being unaffordable. They would work two jobs to increase income so they could afford better things. How many of you had parents or grandparents that worked extra hours or extra jobs? How many of them never bought a new car? How many of them sewed their own clothing, grew their own food, built their own houses, saved every penny they could, and made wise decisions over, and over, and over again to ensure they could live a comfortable life?
Our problem is that we have a soft society, raised in prosperity, that feels everything should be available to them without any personal sacrifice. I grew up poor, as did some of you. I didn't get where I am today because of some great opportunity available only to me. Things are only unaffordable to those unwilling to work for them.The DIY Landlord Book4.7247 Reviews - Rental Property Investor · Beavercreek OH · Member since 2018 · 422 posts · 970 votes4y
Originally posted by @Jill F.:
I just listed an apartment on Friday. It's in a "D" neighborhood. It's my first turnover in over 3 years (39 months) in these buildings (2 side-by-side quads). I had **13** solid, completed applications (not just vague inquiries).
This is a clean, very basic apartment...
https://www.zillow.com/homedet...
I feel really bad for people looking now around here... I had 2 people with long term jobs submit applications both saying their buildings were recently sold and they'll be homeless if they can't find anything in a month or so. both said they've submitted many, many applications and heard crickets. It's been a while but I sure didn't have this kind of response when I last rented one of these apartments. In addition to actual applications I had many, many inquiries from people that sound so desperate . It's really heartbreaking.
Jill,
Not trying to sound heartless and I agree with all your points. You may find the reason you are overwhelmed with applications is your rental is simply priced to low.
I'm in the Dayton, Ohio suburbs and clean 1 beds in c or d areas are bringing about $650. per month PLUS utilities. Your listing at $610. including heat seems quite low to me, especially with the predicted colder than usual winter expected.
Unusually high demand is quite often an indication of below market pricing. IMO
Respectfully,
Gary
- Investor · Broken Arrow, OK · Member since 2016 · 210 posts · 314 votes4y
Originally posted by @Eric Bilderback:
That will inflate prices higher and put even more leverage into an already hyper financialized bubble. If you want poor people to have housing get them better jobs, CA could stop letting tech companies import employees crack down on immigration so native Californians have a chance and employers can't pay next to nothing for wages.
I love investors my self identity is a real estate investor, but the last thing we all need is more perks from the government. We are getting rich and other people who own assets are getting rich and everyone else is getting left behind.
Eric, I totally agree with you.. More government programs to solve this issue will only make matters worse. As some have pointed out on this thread, a lot of what got us in this mess is government programs. When will we learn to quit relying on government or at least asking "how can government solve this issue"? As Nathan and many others have wisely pointed out, there are opportunities for individuals to solve these issues and make a lot of money in the process. It is going to be up to the individual, not government, to solve theses. We just got to pray that government gets out of the way!
- Rental Property Investor · Chicago and mainly invests in KS remotely · Member since 2018 · 360 posts · 314 votes4y
There is a lot of virtual signaling in this thread, which I get it, ofc you can make it if you try, this is a great country with opportunities. However, I understand that most people in general are greedy, lazy, and selfish, and that to me is self evident and no need to explain in detail. Therefore, the affordability crisis is real, and I'm a little scared of what the government will do in response to this. Hopefully they just throw lots of money at this problem and call it a day *shrug*.
- 4yBruce WoodruffPro MemberContractor/Investor/Consultant · San Diego / Phoenix · Member since 2021 · 12k+ posts · 15k+ votes
Originally posted by @Allen L.:
Hopefully they just throw lots of money at this problem and call it a day *shrug*.
As long as it's your money, I have no problem with that approach.
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