8 ms·

"Cash-strapped", looking for a $560k house, and burning up to $1.1m over the next few years - which friends and relatives lent them. The level of privilege fuc

by sqldba 9y ago

"Cash-strapped", looking for a $560k house, and burning up to $1.1m over the next few years - which friends and relatives lent them. The level of privilege fucking burns.

eeZah7Ux 9y ago
And "desperate"...
Para2016 9y ago
Yea, they can't spend 200k a year over 5 years as mature working adults. That's just preposterous right? You two in this thread sound like children. Grow up.
- Trundle 9y ago
  They can do what they want. What they can't do authentically however is to try to claim hardship status. Which "cash strapped" does. These people had a backup condo to live in after selling their first house. You don't get to use 'cash strapped' when you have a backup condo.
  - Para2016 9y ago
    Perhaps I missed it, I can't find in the article where they claim a hardship status. Could you point be to it? He's an education PhD and she's an online editor, they have two kids. They borrowed heavily and sold their old house to finance their new one. I suppose because it's written by a middle class woman and not a desperately poor person then her story is abhorrent to HN.
    - bshimmin 9y ago
      The strapline: "We were cash-strapped, desperate to move and hemmed in by a hot market." I read the article in full (nothing like a bit of procrastination on a Monday morning) and I think probably the two most abhorrent aspects are: 1) the utter and seemingly limitless stupidity of their decisions; 2) the way their back-up condo is casually introduced about halfway through - "Luckily, we still owned..." (An honourable mention goes to the wealthy English godfather making a sudden, ridiculous appearance. This bit sounded totally fictitious, to be honest.)
- vacri 9y ago
  The average wage in Canada is $50k. The median family income is $76k. That's before taxes and living expenses. If you can drop nearly three times the entire median family income per year for half a decade on renovations alone, you're not 'cash-strapped'.
  - Para2016 9y ago
    They borrowed heavily. Are you really getting upset over "cash-strapped"? How about you just look up the definition of this phrase?
    - epmaybe 9y ago
      I think that colloquially we consider "cash-strapped" to mean significantly lower on funds than the authors were. You're not cash strapped if you have borrowed; by definition you are no longer low on funds. A minor point in the article, regardless. On the actual content of the article: Is the housing market really this bad in Canada? My SO has been pushing for us to consider moving there (Toronto, Vancouver) after school but the more I learn the more I am content living somewhere with a low cost of living. Another thing that does bother me: This seems like classic gentrification. Is there some fund in Toronto that goes towards the lower income/homeless folk who get displaced by these sorts of situations?
      - cdegroot 9y ago
        I moved from Europe, so I probably have a mildly more communist view ;-), but I'm appalled by Toronto's city government inability to do what I'd call table stakes beyond picking up the garbage - public transport and public housing. Neither seems to be going anywhere, and I have no clue whether it's finance ("we will not raise property taxes" is often heard), unions that frustrate everything, incompetent leadership or just outright lack of experience in running a metropolis. I love Toronto, but it sure has its share of big city problems. Housing market wise: expect to be in the CA$750k-1m range for something that doesn't suck bad. Given the weak dollar, that's not a huge amount of money for a major city but it's rapidly rising. Myself, I'm moving to a chalet with some acres of forest shortly, 2hrs from the city, but then I can work from home almost 100%. Toronto is a great place to live, but yeah - check your housing budget before moving here.
- sctb 9y ago
  Please take care not to inject inflammation like this—the threads never improve as a result. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
zkms 9y ago
I frankly wouldn't mind this sort of piece about people with so much wealth that this sort of profligate spending is no big deal for them -- if these weren't the same people who are NIMBYs and have succeeded at preventing the construction of cheap, high-density housing in US by ending public/social housing and with land use regulation / zoning laws that prevent any sort of private equivalents.
morganvachon 9y ago
Indeed. I get that certain areas of certain cities are simply more expensive to live in, but they make it sound like they are practically living in the slums and one missed mortgage payment from the streets in their million dollar house. Cry me a river.
retube 9y ago
That's a pretty churlish take on their story considering the time, effort, stress and money expended in turning a neighbourhood eyesore and liability into an attractive family home and neighbourhood asset. Without efforts like this neighbourhoods would remain forever total dumps.
- jjoonathan 9y ago
  You make them sound so heroic, as if they solved the problems they found instead of offloading, displacing, and exacerbating them. It's probably not fair to expect them to, but it's definitely fair to question their attitude of being put-upon when some of the primary counterparties of this offloading are part of the same damn story.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  They didn't do the work themselves. Construction workers did. Also the "neighbourhood asset" was not donated to the neighborhood.
ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
The level of privilege fucking burns. This is not an understatement for anyone who has just finished reading the entire article. It's in every paragraph. You have to read it just to get a sense of the level of selfishness on display at every level. That said, I don't think these people are evil, it's easy to loose sight of the fact how lucky you are for all of us. We need to guard against it at all times and it's not easy. I'm guilty of having got somewhat irritated by a homeless person in the past and now I think I was an idiot for being like that and having children has made me so much more understanding and loving of everyone. Going up is also easier than going down, if these people had as much money as me (and owned no properties) they might be suicidal, however I'm quite happy with my life :-) Although of course I do aspire to own one home at least for my family.
- Mo3 9y ago
  Yeah. This paragraph Luckily, we still owned the two-bedroom condo at King and Bathurst. I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of the soon-to-be four of us sharing 900 square feet, but I figured it would only be for a few months. almost made my blood boil. Oh dear, how could life treat you that badly. My god. This is nothing but two privileged naive idiots stupidly buying a half million dollar house without even having looked inside and then trying to backwards rationalize and talk themselves deeper into neurosis.. publicly even, so they can farm consolation and attention so their mental abstractions never have to fall apart.
  - mrpopo 9y ago
    That paragraph was when I closed the tab. Nothing to learn from them.
- gutnor 9y ago
  I keep the (UK) National Statistic report of salaries. * 22K is the median salary. The people under 22K get propped up by social security up to around that amount (theoretically, practically not) * top-20% percentil starts at 38K * top-13% is 45K (relevant in the UK as it is the limit for high tax bracket) * top-10% is 50K * top-5% is 70K * top-2% is 110K * top-1% is 160K The average cost of a house is 250K, 400K in London. Only the smallest fraction of the population will be able to get that amount of money from just working. You need to be propped up by something, your parent, luck, post-code lottery on your first ring of the property ladder, ... You need to borrow from the future and the past to afford the present. edit: formatting edit2: all amounts are in GBP.
kbart 9y ago
And the house wasn't even in particularly bad condition as the new owners try to imply. Sure, it was neglected, but taking out trash, hiring a cleaning company, getting new paintjob and furniture would make a place livable, and as a bonus, you'd save ~$1m. My kitchen and bedroom in a rented flat during university years looked way worse than these "horrible conditions".
- NoGravitas 9y ago
  I mean, some additional stuff needed to be done (stripping carpet, re-finishing floors, replacing bathroom and kitchen fixtures). But there was no call to "gut it to the studs".
  - ende 9y ago
    But but.. granite countertops.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
CPLX 9y ago
Privilege matters a lot. In this case something as simple as "having a family member with $150k" creates a remarkable difference in consequences. They did something stupid, which is embark on a renovation without sufficient funds and having no idea what they were doing. The consequence for them is owing a family friend money and being even higher on the wealth and assets ladder with growing equity. For the person that doesn't have that, the consequences would be losing all of their savings, foreclosure, ruined credit, and a near zero chance of getting another shot at doing it again. Having access to resources compounds and grows over time, and and changes everything about ultimate outcomes.
NoGravitas 9y ago
Oh, my gods. > a young family without a lot of money. ... > Our budget was $560,000, but nothing came on the market at that price wat. > We sold our two-bedroom rat trap for $635,000 wat. > Luckily, we still owned the two-bedroom condo at King and Bathurst. Well, that's okay then. Seriously, these people live in a completely different universe from me.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

by sqldba 9y ago

"Cash-strapped", looking for a $560k house, and burning up to $1.1m over the next few years - which friends and relatives lent them. The level of privilege fucking burns.

eeZah7Ux 9y ago

And "desperate"...

Para2016 9y ago

Yea, they can't spend 200k a year over 5 years as mature working adults. That's just preposterous right? You two in this thread sound like children. Grow up.

Trundle 9y ago
They can do what they want. What they can't do authentically however is to try to claim hardship status. Which "cash strapped" does. These people had a backup condo to live in after selling their first house. You don't get to use 'cash strapped' when you have a backup condo.
- Para2016 9y ago
  Perhaps I missed it, I can't find in the article where they claim a hardship status. Could you point be to it? He's an education PhD and she's an online editor, they have two kids. They borrowed heavily and sold their old house to finance their new one. I suppose because it's written by a middle class woman and not a desperately poor person then her story is abhorrent to HN.
  - bshimmin 9y ago
    The strapline: "We were cash-strapped, desperate to move and hemmed in by a hot market." I read the article in full (nothing like a bit of procrastination on a Monday morning) and I think probably the two most abhorrent aspects are: 1) the utter and seemingly limitless stupidity of their decisions; 2) the way their back-up condo is casually introduced about halfway through - "Luckily, we still owned..." (An honourable mention goes to the wealthy English godfather making a sudden, ridiculous appearance. This bit sounded totally fictitious, to be honest.)
vacri 9y ago
The average wage in Canada is $50k. The median family income is $76k. That's before taxes and living expenses. If you can drop nearly three times the entire median family income per year for half a decade on renovations alone, you're not 'cash-strapped'.
- Para2016 9y ago
  They borrowed heavily. Are you really getting upset over "cash-strapped"? How about you just look up the definition of this phrase?
  - epmaybe 9y ago
    I think that colloquially we consider "cash-strapped" to mean significantly lower on funds than the authors were. You're not cash strapped if you have borrowed; by definition you are no longer low on funds. A minor point in the article, regardless. On the actual content of the article: Is the housing market really this bad in Canada? My SO has been pushing for us to consider moving there (Toronto, Vancouver) after school but the more I learn the more I am content living somewhere with a low cost of living. Another thing that does bother me: This seems like classic gentrification. Is there some fund in Toronto that goes towards the lower income/homeless folk who get displaced by these sorts of situations?
    - cdegroot 9y ago
      I moved from Europe, so I probably have a mildly more communist view ;-), but I'm appalled by Toronto's city government inability to do what I'd call table stakes beyond picking up the garbage - public transport and public housing. Neither seems to be going anywhere, and I have no clue whether it's finance ("we will not raise property taxes" is often heard), unions that frustrate everything, incompetent leadership or just outright lack of experience in running a metropolis. I love Toronto, but it sure has its share of big city problems. Housing market wise: expect to be in the CA$750k-1m range for something that doesn't suck bad. Given the weak dollar, that's not a huge amount of money for a major city but it's rapidly rising. Myself, I'm moving to a chalet with some acres of forest shortly, 2hrs from the city, but then I can work from home almost 100%. Toronto is a great place to live, but yeah - check your housing budget before moving here.
sctb 9y ago
Please take care not to inject inflammation like this—the threads never improve as a result. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

zkms 9y ago

I frankly wouldn't mind this sort of piece about people with so much wealth that this sort of profligate spending is no big deal for them -- if these weren't the same people who are NIMBYs and have succeeded at preventing the construction of cheap, high-density housing in US by ending public/social housing and with land use regulation / zoning laws that prevent any sort of private equivalents.

morganvachon 9y ago

Indeed. I get that certain areas of certain cities are simply more expensive to live in, but they make it sound like they are practically living in the slums and one missed mortgage payment from the streets in their million dollar house. Cry me a river.

retube 9y ago

That's a pretty churlish take on their story considering the time, effort, stress and money expended in turning a neighbourhood eyesore and liability into an attractive family home and neighbourhood asset. Without efforts like this neighbourhoods would remain forever total dumps.

jjoonathan 9y ago
You make them sound so heroic, as if they solved the problems they found instead of offloading, displacing, and exacerbating them. It's probably not fair to expect them to, but it's definitely fair to question their attitude of being put-upon when some of the primary counterparties of this offloading are part of the same damn story.
eeZah7Ux 9y ago
They didn't do the work themselves. Construction workers did. Also the "neighbourhood asset" was not donated to the neighborhood.

ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago

The level of privilege fucking burns. This is not an understatement for anyone who has just finished reading the entire article. It's in every paragraph. You have to read it just to get a sense of the level of selfishness on display at every level. That said, I don't think these people are evil, it's easy to loose sight of the fact how lucky you are for all of us. We need to guard against it at all times and it's not easy. I'm guilty of having got somewhat irritated by a homeless person in the past and now I think I was an idiot for being like that and having children has made me so much more understanding and loving of everyone. Going up is also easier than going down, if these people had as much money as me (and owned no properties) they might be suicidal, however I'm quite happy with my life :-) Although of course I do aspire to own one home at least for my family.

Mo3 9y ago
Yeah. This paragraph Luckily, we still owned the two-bedroom condo at King and Bathurst. I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of the soon-to-be four of us sharing 900 square feet, but I figured it would only be for a few months. almost made my blood boil. Oh dear, how could life treat you that badly. My god. This is nothing but two privileged naive idiots stupidly buying a half million dollar house without even having looked inside and then trying to backwards rationalize and talk themselves deeper into neurosis.. publicly even, so they can farm consolation and attention so their mental abstractions never have to fall apart.
- mrpopo 9y ago
  That paragraph was when I closed the tab. Nothing to learn from them.
gutnor 9y ago
I keep the (UK) National Statistic report of salaries. * 22K is the median salary. The people under 22K get propped up by social security up to around that amount (theoretically, practically not) * top-20% percentil starts at 38K * top-13% is 45K (relevant in the UK as it is the limit for high tax bracket) * top-10% is 50K * top-5% is 70K * top-2% is 110K * top-1% is 160K The average cost of a house is 250K, 400K in London. Only the smallest fraction of the population will be able to get that amount of money from just working. You need to be propped up by something, your parent, luck, post-code lottery on your first ring of the property ladder, ... You need to borrow from the future and the past to afford the present. edit: formatting edit2: all amounts are in GBP.

kbart 9y ago

And the house wasn't even in particularly bad condition as the new owners try to imply. Sure, it was neglected, but taking out trash, hiring a cleaning company, getting new paintjob and furniture would make a place livable, and as a bonus, you'd save ~$1m. My kitchen and bedroom in a rented flat during university years looked way worse than these "horrible conditions".

NoGravitas 9y ago
I mean, some additional stuff needed to be done (stripping carpet, re-finishing floors, replacing bathroom and kitchen fixtures). But there was no call to "gut it to the studs".
- ende 9y ago
  But but.. granite countertops.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

CPLX 9y ago

Privilege matters a lot. In this case something as simple as "having a family member with $150k" creates a remarkable difference in consequences. They did something stupid, which is embark on a renovation without sufficient funds and having no idea what they were doing. The consequence for them is owing a family friend money and being even higher on the wealth and assets ladder with growing equity. For the person that doesn't have that, the consequences would be losing all of their savings, foreclosure, ruined credit, and a near zero chance of getting another shot at doing it again. Having access to resources compounds and grows over time, and and changes everything about ultimate outcomes.

NoGravitas 9y ago

Oh, my gods. > a young family without a lot of money. ... > Our budget was $560,000, but nothing came on the market at that price wat. > We sold our two-bedroom rat trap for $635,000 wat. > Luckily, we still owned the two-bedroom condo at King and Bathurst. Well, that's okay then. Seriously, these people live in a completely different universe from me.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]