[derekj]

Wow. I live in the Midwest so housing is dirt cheap compared to other places, but half a million dollars for ANY house seems insane to me, let alone this "small" one he's talking about. I don't have any sympathy for him.

I also don't understand how he could have "near perfect" credit score when he had thousands and thousands of dollars of debt with massive interest rates.

Just goes to show that your income doesn't make a whole lot of difference if you can't control your spending. I pay all my bills and save about 10% of my income making $40k a year. And I really do have a near perfect credit score.

[lief79]

The same house and yard that my aunt can't sell in central Illinois for $50,000 would be worth a good 200,000 - 250,000 in the area I'm currently looking in (Philly suburbs) and more then the $400,000 or so that my fiancee's brother paid for his place about an hour South of NYC. The .5 acres of land alone would probably be worth more then $400,000 there.

Credit scores will stay perfect as long as they are paid off. Greater debt with no faults creates better FICO numbers.

[earl]

Seriously, you do understand the concept of different costs of living, right? Your astonishment at paying $0.5MM for a house is irrelevant; that's the going rate and probably cheaper than renting in that area.

[billswift]

The cost of a home varies a lot more between metro areas than rent does. Similar rentals vary about 4x between the most expensive and least expensive metro areas; home prices vary more than 10x between the most and least expensive metro areas. (Both vary even more between particularly expensive and inexpensive neighborhoods - the numbers are metro area averages).

[randallsquared]

I live in an area very close to there (still in the DC metro) which has houses which go for 400K and up, and yet I pay just over $1200 in rent. Renting and buying are often out of sync with each other, for whatever reason (in east Alabama a few years ago, it was the other way around; you could easily buy for less than rent).

[earl]

You pay $1200 for rent for yourself; or yourself plus a significant other; or for yourself, significant other, and three children?

[randallsquared]

Just me, but it's easy to find a three bedroom apt for less than $2000 around here.

However, after looking on Zillow, I find things have either changed considerably in the last year or I misremember, since I can see a bunch of places for well under $400K around here, now. So, never mind.

[mchristoff]

if it's a major city on either coast it's pretty easy to pay $1000+ for rent. most 1 bedrooms in sf go for $1500+

[jimbokun]

"that's the going rate"

Didn't the "going rate" turn out to be dumb and unsustainable for the nation as a whole?