I saw a commercial today where they are spinning homemates, go in on a mortgage together with your friends. It's disheartening to live in a time where homes are so expensive that the solution is to go in on a thirty year mortgage with two other people in the same boat.
Zillow: we know you can't afford a house, so why not have forever roommates?
“Let’s turn the poor on each other”
Yeah they’ve been doing that and, unfortunately, too many people keep falling for it from companies to politicians this shit is just the modern version of rich lords and ladies looking down on us commoners
Edit:Many and fuck you autocorrect you pos
It get's even better. Apparently a few Walmart stores are moving back to human cashiers, most likely due to theft.
I was going to use the self checkout at Walmart but it was for scan and go customers. It was empty.
I hate the fact that they don't have the NFC pay
lol that’s kinda the truth though. Regular people do treat regular people like this. It doesn’t matter the dollar value associated with your identity that makes it less of a regular person thing.
Look at drug dealers. They know this too
The self checkout and automated fast food things annoy me so much. I absolutely refuse to accept this closing chapter on human interaction. If I go into a fast food etc. restaurant and there’s no one at the cashiers/only the machine is available, or if I go into a supermarket and I see all the cashier lines are closed and only self checkout is available, I leave immediately and just go buy my stuff elsewhere.
I know it’s not always possible for everyone, but if we all do that whenever we can, we might make a difference.
Some of us like the self checkouts and automated fast food kiosks. As someone who worked at Starbucks for almost 3 years, I much preferred when customers mobile ordered so I didn’t have to talk to them - there was about a 50/50 chance any given interaction would be a good or bad one. It was better when the customers just came in, grabbed their drinks and left.
I know lovely people who enjoy them too.
But you must realize that those machines make your job one step closer to being replaced with another machine too.
It’s a step in a bad direction, imho, even if it might feel good to avoid interactions sometimes.
Do we really want these jobs though, they require hard work but not smart work, there's no creativity and as many have said working front for hospitality usually suuucks.
Not to mention it's a position that has almost no skills to learn to take to something else other than interacting with customers. The pays bad, there's almost no chance of moving up the ladder or other opportunities.
Idk man I think these jobs are like when we first invented machines for plowing digging and hauling things. Tons of shitty back breaking jobs were gone because now John can plow multiple gigantic fields a day by himself.
Sure you may like the human interaction but let's face it these jobs are dead ends that lock people into low pay and long hours.
Thanks for listening to my ted talk
Maybe you don’t need it, but there’s someone out there who does, and they’ll go hungry after automation.
This is a horrible idea. I'd fire the marketing company for even suggesting it.
What a great way to ruin your credit rating. All it takes is a dead beat housemate.
lol this kind of idea doesn’t come from a marketing team but a product/engineering team. someone has to develop and code this nonsense before it’s thrust onto the marketing team to try and sell.
That's definitely not how companies work. It's pretty rare for engineering to just go code something random and then give it to marketing and say here market this. For something like OP described why wouldn't it be marketing coming up with this? Just because someone has to code it doesn't mean it was their idea.
Why? Maybe this works for people.
Who would this work for? You’re going to bank on the fact that the two roommates you choose will never decide to date and move in with their partner, get married and want their own house or apartment, lose their job, or simply flake on the payments, FOR 30 YEARS?
I think you hit the nail on the head. Maybe this works for the present, but what about future plans? When a baby is crying from the next room over during the night? I do wonder what happens when one doesn't make their share on a payment, if others are penalized?
You have to understand that Zillow doesn’t give a shit if you default on your mortgage. They just care that you bought the house. They’d probably prefer if you default so that it can be sold again honestly. It’s about getting the sale, not what comes after.
Right? I'm 33 right now. I look back into my early adult years... a lot of the friends I had back then, I don't even talk to anymore. In some cases, we realized we just weren't compatible as friends. Plus, many of us are married now and/or have families! I couldn't imagine being locked in a 30 year commitment with those same people. At that age, you don't know what you want out of life and what kind of people you get along with best yet. This is some really disgusting shit.
Just move their partners in, more people to pay rent /s
Maybe Mormons?
Are you under the impression that Mormons are just people with a lot of roommates?
Lmao
I feel like this would ruin friendships
I barely survived a friendship with an apartment. That's a lot easier to get out of than a mortgage.
The ad even shows this! A roommate suggesting that another broke their good vase? Zillow’s not even acting obtuse. They KNOW what’s going on.
An apartment ruined my friendship of 7 years. But honestly it was a blessing in disguise. Living that close with someone brings out every single one of their flaws.
This really aggravates me
Even the actors all had resentment for each other... Yuck. I'd rather live in a tiny house...
My friend and I bought a condo 10 years ago. We lived there together a few years, both got engaged and moved out, rented it out and then sold it. Win all around.
Don’t be dumb and do this with just any Slapdick you find off the street.
That’s the thing though, you had an actual reliable friend that lasted years without just drifting apart from you.
I have a forever roommate
Is it a spouse or significant other?
A pet? lol
It’s the retirement real estate indexes that are driving up prices.
Can you please explain this?
Hedge funds use retirement funds to buy up large swaths of property. Typically tax sales and other cheaper investments. They’ll sit on them for years if they want to. That removes cheaper houses for people and local investors who would otherwise rent it.
The end result is that large numbers of homes are left vacant and rotting.
Sharing a place with housemates (when u know ull move out on ur own with ur partner eventually) is already torture enough. U dont get nice stuff for the house if u have housemates that dont take enough care, etc etc. imagine for life. Sharing house with people who aren't committed to the house and enjoyment of everyone living there sucks and ideally should just be a phase in most people's life unless they are your friends who bring u value and enjoyment to live with. Bleugh
FYI this is very common in the UK. Siblings and friends go in on houses regularly to get into the property ladder.
I could see this working out for siblings.
Never heard of that before. Thought more folk just stayed in their parents house until their late 20's
"Property ladder" is just an awful phrase, encouraging people to change houses as often as possible to generate more sales and commissions for real estate agents. You're not high enough on the ladder! Live in this more expensive house instead! Never mind all the other hassles selling and buying a house involve.
I didn’t know we had a choice anymore?
They've done this with farms since like forever, but doing it with housing seems like a terrible idea. My grandpa co-owned the farm with his boss. He was number 2 in command, and also did all the mechanic work on the tractors, trucks, etc. He had a big house on the farm and free run of the place. It was a lot of fun as kids hanging out on the farm on the weekends. The caveat was that when one sold their half, the other had to sell theirs too. My grandpa tried to buy out the other half of the farm from his partner, but it wasn't allowed. He couldn't even keep the plot of land his house was on. I'd imagine there'd have to be some sort of similar rule in play here, as you can't sell half or on fourth of a house. Even if you found the situation agreeable, if one of you decided to sell the other would be forced to move as well. Or on the flip side if you had to both agree to sell, you could potentially be stuck in a place you hate because the other party refuses to sell.
Ugh that’s exactly what I did haha. It’s not so bad though.
I know three people who bought a house and worked their asses off and paid it off. They rented that house and bought a 2nd. They use the profit from the rent and are paying down like crazy. They will be ready to buy their 3rd house in about 5 years. The other two will take the houses that are clear and everyone will pay down the 3rd house. They will have bought 3 houses in 20 years clear. They drew up the agreement legally. They are thinking about getting married (all off them have long term partners) the women are talking about buying a cottage together. They work their asses off. Drive shit cars. Vacation is a weekend away. They did each get 15k from their parents so that is a privilege most don’t have. But teaming up is not a bad idea and can make it work. Like mini intentional communities
This type of house flipping is what's detrimental for the housing and rental markets. Also, I chuckled at their parents all having 15k to give away.
Read again. Three people went and bought houses together. So they all could own a home. As for the 15k - I’m working poor and managed to save $15k for my kid to go to school. Guess my priorities are different than yours
I read it just fine the first time, thanks. Yes, you have a child and are old enough (or were sexually irresponsible enough) to have a child of college age. I have no children. I would rather hope our priorities would be different. For some reason you chose to ignore my first point and responded with a personal anecdote and an attempt at an ad hominem attack. Why?
Actually, I suppose it would be in line with your first comment, which is also an anecdote and serves no purpose but to reinforce the terrible idea that people should need to have to buy houses together to achieve homeownership and to propagate the bootstaps myth. Not taking vacations or driving cars in poor condition for umpteen years is not admirable nor should that be the criteria for purchasing a house.
Isn’t that called a spouse?
Homemates? What in the actual
Like fractional ownership of a condo—I would never do it, I’ll tidy up the basement in my parents house lol
I thought about this but with a duplex where we each had our own space. You just need to make sure you trust the other person to pay their half of the mortgage
Yeah I saw that one too. And was also very sad about it.
The truth is that there are six or seven different corporations that are buying the houses in America. Driving up the price. There was a piece on 60 minutes about it.
All five houses on my street sold so far this year have gone to companies like this, since they’re paying cash, and thus aren’t affected by high interest rates. Makes it easy for them to outbid regular folks with a budget.
All of them are now rental properties.
The most recent one had 35 offers after being on the market for less than two weeks. No “real” people were able to outbid the corporate buyers.
My next door neighbor listed her house just on Friday, and had three offers within hours. I don’t know how many she has after the open house this weekend, but it probably doesn’t matter. Those first offers came in from big companies as soon as the property was listed,—I assume by bots that monitor MLS and just automatically put together bids, sight unseen.
I’ve begged her to sell to actual people (preferably cool ones), but she’s said they’re just going to take whatever is the highest offer.
Now we’ll have six new rental properties on my sleepy little cul-de-sac. I feel like I’m one of the very few remaining homeowners left in my neighborhood.
The worst part is, since only owners get to vote in HOA stuff, the corporate owners generally just sign their proxy votes over to the property management company, who now holds a bigger voting block than actual owners. We’ve been fortunate to have a really good, reasonable group of folks on the board the last decade or so, but now the management company is eying taking over completely.
In the plus side, as much as I love this neighborhood, I know it’ll be easy as hell to sell and get out if it gets untenable. 😭
I ended up doing this with my roommate/friend but we've known one another for a long time and already knew we got along as roommates. Renting would have cost us both way more.
wasn't there some town in kansas or something that banned having roommates
If you go in with ten people it is alot easier to pay off
ETA once you pay off the first home you can buy off an old school with them and have a super chill hang spot and rent classrooms out and shit
We don't need more landlords!!!
🎶 WE DONT NEED NO EDUCAYSHUN! 🎶
It's called Tennancy in common, it's had a legal framework for like a century in the US.
Paying a mortgage off with friends seems like a fucking nightmare. People who own these properties eventually need to realize that what they want and expect isn't realistic and if they push enough people will find other options. We already barely have anything, why will it matter if we can't buy a house. At this point I'd rather let these people’s extra properties be vacant and get dilapidated.
The solution for this is to set a precedent banning the letting of buildings for domestic purposes and heavily taxing letting for business use. Cooperative or welfare lots for small business startups up to 80k annual income(in the uk). Lower tax on hotels, depending on quality control. Finally, a 100% value tax for constructing on land with no previous buildings(not including stables or agricultural) in at least 100 year history, including a green belt tax thereafter. As an aside, any loan with more than 3% APR is to be considered illegal.
Criticism appreciated
They play up that if 3.5M homes are built this will drive the price of homes down. What will happen is the cost of home building materials will sky rocket making homes even more unaffordable. The obvious solution is to reduce the number of people coming into the country instead of increasing the number to record amounts every year.
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That is indeed disheartening. This reminds me of when self-checkouts first came to stores. We all understood the store was trying to cut labor costs/take away someone’s job. Then they grew and became a sizable chunk of the checkout area. Now, with the shared homeownership, you have any plurality of people who are beholden to one another for the property. Sure, you can calculate taxes, repairs, and any number of other expenses, but what if someone wants to move? Gets married? Dies? Wants to rent out the home for profit? Or just their portion? It all just strikes me as “Let’s turn the poor on each other. They’ll treat each other just like they claim we treat them, and they’ll see we were right to treat them that way all along.”