where I come from

[flea]

I've been having little email to-and-fro with my father - I sent him the realtor listing for the house two blocks down from where he grew up, and he pointed out (as I had already discovered) that it isn't in the Mariemont district, but in the city proper, and the local elementary is rated "emergency" by the state.

So he rambled on about school and real estate matters, and then dropped this:
"Our house is probably worth a little more than twice what we bought it for in 1993. We would not be
able to afford to buy it now, even were I still working."

Now, Zillow.com is placing his house at $282K right now. Which I think is overpriced - it is 2400 square feet, but poorly laid out and thoroughly lacking in charm. It gets a bump due to size and the school district.

But, people, my father is a 61 year old (retired) doctor! He was a family practice doctor, so a fairly low-paying specialty - median income for family practice doctors in 2002 was 'only' $150K a year. I would imagine that by the time he retired in 2004 he was making rather more than that, since he had many many years of experience. If your annual income is $200K a year - or even if it's only $150! - you can generally afford to buy a $280K house if you want to. I mean, right? A conservative mortgage is 3 times annual income, right?

To sum up: my father = totally out of touch with reality, financially-speaking (other ways also, but we don't have time for them tonight). It is probably not worth the effort of pointing this out to him. But if I am guilty of being cheap, at least I come by it honestly.

Comments

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Oh my total god. On the one hand, that awful, incredibly ugly house is worth all of $280K? On the other hand, freestanding house of several bedrooms for only $280K?

(You know, if they were to try to sell it, they'd have to sink like $20K into renovations. Probably a lot more, if they had any idea of fixing the crappy layout.)

Yes, 3x your income is the conservative estimate of what you should be buying. (I gather it has moved realistically to 4x in some regions, and Flatmate offered me some cockamamie calculus this summer that sounded like the Gigantic Mortgage Party Line rather than an actual metric.) Yes, somebody who makes even half his likely income (say, $80K) should be able to stretch and afford that mortgage, not even counting the equity he was able to pour into the house from selling his previous house in Maine. (Which I know was, at one point, valued for tax purposes in the $75K range, so not a lot comparatively, but not nothing.)

You know, I really thought he spent all these years lying about money. I guess it's a comfort to discover that he's just delusional about it.

[makaidiver.livejournal.com]

I've heard people talk about Zillow but this is the first I've looked at it. Holy cow, it's amazing.

And yeah, he's totally delusional, or, more likely, extremely debt-averse. I'm carrying a mortgage about the value of his house all by myself in Calif. on a legal assistant's salary, so he'd think I was nuts.