This is absurd. If you're willing to live somewhere moderately unfashionable, the vast majority of people on HN could easily afford to buy a house. For example, this 4 bed, 2 bath, 1800sf house just sold in Cleveland for $272k: https://www.redfin.com/OH/Cleveland/2548-Cheshire-Rd-44120/h...
That's a much nicer, larger house than almost all of our grandparents grew up in (plus has some great bonuses such as running water). Definitely larger than you need when you're retired, but maybe you want plenty of room for grandkids to visit.
Most people on HN have a couple of failed startups - maybe an investor pulls out suddenly when you're expecting a cheque - mean you'll have likely missed a bill or two, and your credit is ruined, and you'll never get a loan.
You now need $272k cash. Not undoable but as previously mentioned:
> Most people on HN have a couple of failed startups
I doubt it. There may have been a time when most people on HN were startup founders, but it doesn't seem to be the case today.
> mean you'll have likely missed a bill or two, and your credit is ruined, and you'll never get a loan.
I don't have any failed startups, but I have missed plenty of bills, including going more than a year without paying a mortgage before short selling the house.
Credit isn't perfect now, but was able to swing a home loan on reasonable terms only a couple years after; missing a few bills isn’t a “you can never get a loan for life” situation.
> I don't have any failed startups, but I have missed plenty of bills, including going more than a year without paying a mortgage before short selling the house.
Doesn't your house get repossessed if you do this, and you end up with nothing? I accept I may be wrong here, but I've been told the above a thousand times.
> Doesn't your house get repossessed if you do this, and you end up with nothing?
Foreclosure is a long and expensive process and can result in very bad deals for the lender. Particularly during and in a fairly long shadow after the Great Recession, lenders were very reluctant to pull the trigger on that if they believed they could get a better resolution, and for most of the time I wasn't paying I was in the process of trying to get the bank to approve the short sale (had a potential buyer lined up.) Also, had located and, during the time in question, moved into a rental with an independent landlord and no management company who was more-than-typically flexible in assessing credit, so wasn't dependent on having the house. (Because of the same changed market conditions that left the first home loan underwater, the rental of a larger home in a better neighborhood was also less than the mortgage on the underwater one.)
Yes, though, foreclosure was a risk, but in a no-recourse state with an underwater loan being left “with nothing” is better from a narrow financial perspective (potentially worse for other reasons without alternate housing arranged, given how credit can effect that) than having the house and mortgage,
bankruptcy stays on your credit file for just 7 years. And nobody is going to care about a missed bill or two in 2-3 years. As long as you don't take any payday loans, that is.
That's a much nicer, larger house than almost all of our grandparents grew up in (plus has some great bonuses such as running water). Definitely larger than you need when you're retired, but maybe you want plenty of room for grandkids to visit.