Hairbyashleyv

And let’s not talk about groceries and gas.

"Just buy a house." Sure. Which one? The $429,000 one with the 6.5% mortgage rate?

I want to be fair here. The tweet says rates are at 7% and the average home is $420,000.

The actual numbers as of this week are a 6.52% rate on a median home price of $429,300. So the tweet is actually underselling how bad it is.

Here's what that payment looks like with 10% down.

You're financing roughly $386,000 at 6.52%. That's about $2,450 a month before taxes, insurance, and HOA. Add those in and you're realistically looking at $3,000 a month to own the median American home right now.

The median household income is $106,800 a year. That's $8,900 a month before taxes.

So the median American household would be spending somewhere around 34% of their gross income just on housing. Before utilities. Before groceries. Before the car payment. Before anything.

I bought my first home in 2005 at 4.75%. I thought that rate was painful at the time. I had no idea.

And here's what makes this conversation so frustrating to watch play out online. The boomers giving this advice aren't wrong that homeownership builds wealth. It absolutely does. They're just describing a game they played with completely different rules.

Different rates. Different prices relative to income. Different inventory. Different everything.

The finish line didn't move. The track got three times longer.

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