The lowest county average sales price within a commuting hour of my workplace is probably $700,000, to live somewhere fairly isolated and dead.
It would only be "that easy" if I made $150k a year. That is still a top-10% salary in 2016, and yes my current salary is location-dependent, so I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place on that. I would start planning for a purchase 10 years out, but my down-payment savings money pretty much flies out the window toward debt and utilities. And most of the homes in my area sell in instant cash deals anyway, down payments are a joke. (Thanks, anonymous LLCs representing foreign wealth!)
I'm in a very particular situation with a lot of unusual disadvantages, but I'm also a web dev working for a large consultancy in one of the big US cities. Every one of my peers in the workplace is struggling with suburban homebuying expectations; while every one of my urban social peers holding less-prestigious jobs is almost certain to be working poor by age 50. The grind is already happening. There needs to be more political support for regulation and infrastructure projects that create the opportunity for working-class home ownership investments. It sounds like you support this, and your efforts are needed in politics too.
We may be agreeing, but I'm always a little worried when people vaguely argue for more infrastructure. We pursue such enormous and unproductive road-building in this country in the name of growth. Induced growth is a siren's song to our governments; they've already driven us onto the rocks, but it would at least be nice if we'd address the problem before we sink the country anymore with huge debts, public and private.
I love the SF/San Jose/Marin climate, but it's too crowded and too expensive to live there :-(
Why not buy a single apartment? Or buy and afterwards inhabit a house together with a small group of friends so that the amount of money is shared between the group?
In places where it's much more, buying is a bad idea (unless you're really committed to living there forever and are really committed to speculating that prices will only even go much higher there -- but that's taking on a huge risk, not decreasing it).
Remember, you can always just SAVE the money you would have put towards mortgage principal. Sure, with a mortgage after 30 years you have a house free and clear. But at the same price, a renter who saved the money that would have gone towards mortgage principal still ends up with a pile of money after 30 years -- a pile that is probably more diversified rather than being all in one single asset correlated to a single metro region's economy. I mean, who knows if the area I buy in will still be popular in 30 years?
I'm married & the thought of doing a "house share" with other married couples seems very cramped up & a recipe for disputes. This is aside the fact that it's absurd that dual-working married couples would have to resort to this at all, it's a completely unacceptable arrangement for most couples in the US at this point. But nothing's off the table it seems
But perhaps this is a different mentality between US and Germany.
Yes, we do a lot of roommate shares here in the US; I lived in about 7 of them through my 20's. But I didn't live with my wife in a room share. I'm now married and I live with my wife, and we are effectively rent-sharers now.
It's still not enough to have a 20% cash savings rate, much of what would be saved as cash instead pays debt (mostly college debt + debt originating from emergencies/unemployment). But we almost certainly couldn't afford a local property of any type, save a studio apartment on the outskirts of the city, with a 20% savings rate over the next 5 years. And part of this has to do with down-payment financing arrangements nearly always losing out to deals paid in cash on-the-spot. (Indeed, there are people roaming the streets with certified checks from $800,000 - $2,000,000 who are viewing new-to-market properties daily)
I've seen both (OK, they were not married, but in a commited relationship), where of course the latter case is more common.
Buying a home can be profitable, but it can also impact the career (e.g., tie one up in the wrong geography). Many landlords make this work by investing lots of time in it (and scaling it up to multiple properties).
A younger person working in tech will IMO be much better off investing this time into learning new things, networking. My 2c.
Was a thing. The 0% down have been thoroughly killed off by the financial crisis. I could agree with everything you said right up to 'easy', because it's incredibly hard. London is full of young renting professionals who aren't able to save enough to outrun house price inflation to even get a deposit together.
Except for all those folks who had to declare bankruptcy during the 2008 crash because their mortgage reset and the value of their house plummeted.
Essentially, not a single dollar paid to a landlord comes back to you. At least a percentage of every dollar will come back to you with a mortgage. Not to mention if you buy a home, you'll often pay less than you would renting. This makes perfect sense if you think about it, the landlord is trying to make money.
Point being, buying a home is a "nest egg" which is why 0-5% down was and is a thing.
If you don't like landlords move, and buy your own home. It's really that easy and will benefit you in the long run.