Dream of home ownership is turning into a pipe dream

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, July 30, 2006

“From the 500s.”

That sentence in a recent Herald article on the price of new homes here in Snohomish County caught my eye.

Did more than that.

Made me get down on my knees and say a prayer of thanks for the mortgage my wife and I strapped on back in 1985.

Back then, though, I remember my feelings at the closing. There were six digits (admittedly, the numbers started with a “1”) before you got to the decimal point on the papers I signed.

For the son of a New Orleans bus driver who never made more than $8,000 a year, the pucker factor was running pretty high. Still, it was doable. And it wasn’t our first home purchase. That occurred in 1977 when we bought a small (really small), three-bedroom home for less than what many new cars now cost. The thing is back then, even as a graduate student with a wife and baby, it could be done.

We’d saved for a down payment and I was working part-time while attending school on the G.I. Bill. The money was tight, but it paid for a $226 monthly mortgage, tuition, insurance, electricity and food and still left us with enough to go out to a movie every now and then.

Lately, however, I’ve taken to grabbing one of those flyers that gives a description of the house and the asking price whenever I see a house for sale in the area.

I usually end up getting back into my truck and wondering how young families these days break into a market like this. The only options I see combine the robbing banks with signing off on mortgage plans that are scarier than a Stephen King novel.

I’m a firmly entrenched member of the middlest part of the middle class. I make a fair salary. I’m retired from a career in uniform and work full-time at another job. I even manage to wring the odd dollar or two out of this newspaper by churning out 800 words every week.

In addition, my wife and I have some savings, live within our means, always wait for sales, clip coupons, and consider dinner and a movie every now and then to be high times indeed. Even so, the thought of strapping on some of these new mortgages is so far outside of our comfort zone that, were we to do it, I’d never sleep again because I’d probably be putting in 26 hours a day, 9 days a week to cover it.

Where I work, I pretty much know the salaries of all of the kids (I now define “kids” as anyone younger than 30) who work there. Let’s say that their pay ranges from $13 to a little over $20 an hour depending on their skill, education, experience and time with the company.

Do the math.

How does a young man or woman afford a home in this area when the price might be more than 10 times their yearly salary?

Maybe condos and town houses are the answer. Maybe moving out to the “boonies” and “enjoying” a long daily commute is the solution. Maybe the idea of a home with a nice yard is headed out the door. Maybe being able to borrow a cup of sugar (or a towel) from your neighbor without leaning very far out of your window is the future. But even these solutions are, sometimes, too expensive for many.

There’s been a recent spate of articles about young people moving back in with their parents. Such stories are now well past the anecdotal stage. My wife and I know this all too well. My daughter, her husband and our granddaughter are staying with us until they can put together enough money to get into a place of their own.

My son-in-law is a hard-working kid (it’s that under 30 rule again) who’s willing to put in a ton of hours to make this happen. Still, the prices in the current market may be rising faster than he can save the money.

We love the fact that we get to see our granddaughter every day, but we worry that they may never be able to afford a home in the local area.

Ever noticed that, in many countries, several generations live together in one home? Wasn’t so long ago that a lot of families did the same thing in this country.

Stay tuned.

I think the start of another trend is already on the not-so-distant horizon. It’s the one where “everything old is new again,” especially as regards the “family” home.

Larry Simoneaux lives in Edmonds. Comments can be sent to larrysim@att.net.