Why owning a home is so pricey ...

Teachers overall may be underpaid and a bit of that could be rectified by cutting the extreme overpayment of administration positions and overstaffing.

Elementary school secretaries here that have been in 20+years make $110k+. They also file grievances when the faculty want to switch to electronic payroll instead of by hand. Meanwhile new-ish k-8 teachers struggle to pay their bills and most have second jobs.
 
A nice starter home in the Buffalo NY area 25yrs ago was about $80K. I paid that for my first home. IIRC, interest rates at the time were around 6-8%. A starter home now is $240K. I'm not talking about a new starter home. I'm referring to an older home that needs things. Salaries and earning potential has definitely not tripled to match the home price increase. I believe the same thing can be said for most areas of the country.

I know we all have stories on how awesome our children are, how they've made every right decision, dug in, worked hard and now earn $300k/year with zero debt. This just isn't the case for the vast majority of young people today. Maybe every generation has said the same thing?
 
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A nice starter home in the Buffalo NY area 25yrs ago was about $80K. I paid that for my first home. IIRC, interest rates at the time were around 6-8%. A starter home now is $240K. I'm not talking about a new starter home. I'm referring to an older home that needs things. Salaries and earning potential has definitely not tripled to match the home price increase. I believe the same thing can be said for most areas of the country.

I know we all have stories on how awesome our children are, how they've made every right decision, dug in, worked hard and now earn $300k/year with zero debt. This just isn't the case for the vast majority of young people today. Maybe every generation has said the same thing?

Maybe you and your wife help the kids (future adults) buy starter home ?

It’s very difficult for them to buy something….
 
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Maybe you and your wife help the kids (future adults) buy starter home ?

It’s very difficult for them to buy something….
If I had the finances and they had the need, I would. Unfortunately, with 4 kids and my wife being a stay at home mom for many years, it isn't possible.

We just came back from moving my oldest down to South Carolina. My 23yr/old daughter. Her long term boyfriend took a job transfer down there back in October. He's a maintenance mechanic. They're are very driven and goal oriented. I'm not thrilled on the shacking up thing, but that's their decision.
 
Sounds like a decent guy. Younger adults getting married later in life.

I would worry if he was a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang and had criminal background.
 
Sounds like a decent guy. Younger adults getting married later in life.

I would worry if he was a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang and had criminal background.
LOL! Luckily he's a good hard working kid. I liked it where they're at. Hopefully they make a good go of it. I signed my 2022 Frontier over to her, so that's a pretty decent gift I'd say.
 
@JHZR2 @SC Maintenance
Huh?
Where did all this gibberish come from?
I simply posted many teachers make more than police officers. I posted 100 teachers or staff in one school district and one school district only that make over $150,000 a year.

I don’t get the pushback
Average Nassau county police officer makes $90,000
Average Massapequa school district employee makes over $100,000
Average great neck school district employee makes over $100,000

The fact is, this is all about taxes people and this is why your taxes are high. I don’t get all this other “baloney”
No sense in me commenting further in a discussion about the high cost of living/ taxes of owning a home because it’s not hard to figure out.

“Why owning a home is so pricey”
https://www.empirecenter.org/public...ve-counties-two-boroughs-1-4-of-ny-districts/
I guess this is more baloney?
Median teacher pay Nassau County, New York, York from the above link

  • “Nassau ($120,484)”
The bottom line is Nassau County homeowners are strapped with high county taxes because 2/3 of the county budget pays for police

The bottom line is Nassau County homeowners are strapped with high school district taxes is because the median pay is over $100,000 for teachers

I mean, this is simple stuff and let’s not forget to add in town taxes which is garbage collection and other services including parks

Your tax bill can run $1000 a month on a 1200 square-foot home
Not sure if this link will work, but here is a 1079 square-foot home property taxes just shy of $14,000 a year. The school taxes loan are almost $9000 a year.
https://lrv.nassaucountyny.gov/info/51305++00180/
This is not an aberration in this area. All the homes are similar size ranch or Cape style homes over the years extensions have been put on and raises the tax bill even higher
 
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I simply posted many teachers make more than police officers. I posted 100 teachers or staff in one school district and one school district only that make over $150,000 a year.
Because your wrong. And its offensive to teachers. I didn't even have to look it up to know you were wrong, but for your benefit I did.

In Massapequa school district ALL of the people making over $100K are not teachers. See the list.

In fact, the average teacher pay is $69,269, and half of those people have a masters or higher.

And while they might get 8 or 9 weeks of time off in the summer, they are required to do continuing ed (why do you think all those teachers have masters degrees), they have to do lesson planning and grading on their own time and are required to come for parent nights and several other extra curricular events. Unlike police they don't get overtime (I in no way am inferring police shouldn't, I am inferring teachers should). To add insult to injury, a lot of teachers would be well below the minimum federal salary required to be an exempt employee - $58,656 - but our benevolent federal government wrote an exclusion so they did not have to be paid that and can still be exempt.

Why anyone would be a teacher in this country alludes me, including why my wife does it.

Anyone in Massapequa county complaining there taxes are too high because teachers get paid too much, should go apply for the job. If the last more than 1 day they will have done better than I ever would.

I will say however there average class size seems very small. Maybe they have too many? That, again, would be a management problem, not a teacher problem.

https://www.longislandschools.com/districts/massapequa-school-district.html

1736121290752.webp
 
Because your wrong. And its offensive to teachers. I didn't even have to look it up to know you were wrong, but for your benefit I did.

In Massapequa school district ALL of the people making over $100K are not teachers. See the list.

In fact, the average teacher pay is $69,269, and half of those people have a masters or higher.

And while they might get 8 or 9 weeks of time off in the summer, they are required to do continuing ed (why do you think all those teachers have masters degrees), they have to do lesson planning and grading on their own time and are required to come for parent nights and several other extra curricular events. Unlike police they don't get overtime (I in no way am inferring police shouldn't, I am inferring teachers should). To add insult to injury, a lot of teachers would be well below the minimum federal salary required to be an exempt employee - $58,656 - but our benevolent federal government wrote an exclusion so they did not have to be paid that and can still be exempt.

Why anyone would be a teacher in this country alludes me, including why my wife does it.

Anyone in Massapequa county complaining there taxes are too high because teachers get paid too much, should go apply for the job. If the last more than 1 day they will have done better than I ever would.

I will say however there average class size seems very small. Maybe they have too many? That, again, would be a management problem, not a teacher problem.

https://www.longislandschools.com/districts/massapequa-school-district.html

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I’m not wrong I’m repeating what is in the links I provided just as you are providing another set of stats from another link.

Whether or not any of this is presented properly is questionable maybe. Maybe one set of stats is including part time teachers.
I don’t really care except to say police and teacher salaries in a high cost area such as Long Island drive the tax rates much higher than other areas of the same state. It’s just fact and it’s in the tax documents.
 
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If I had the finances and they had the need, I would. Unfortunately, with 4 kids and my wife being a stay at home mom for many years, it isn't possible.

We just came back from moving my oldest down to South Carolina. My 23yr/old daughter. Her long term boyfriend took a job transfer down there back in October. He's a maintenance mechanic. They're are very driven and goal oriented. I'm not thrilled on the shacking up thing, but that's their decision.

Shacking up has its economic advantages. The critical thing is no tying up of finances all will go well. Just roommates with a relationship.
 
Being a public school teacher or a police officer are much different professions today then they were a few decades ago.

It takes a very special person to be a public school teacher or a police officer today. My hats off to both professions in today's trying environment.
 
Your own link says "employees". You were the one who inserted "teachers" which is factually incorrect. When myself and another person pointed this out you took offense and still seem to. 🤷‍♂️
Your interpretation is I took offense. I have not. Good point on “employees” if so I’m wrong.
So lll correct myself, on Long Island the insane cost of police protection and school district expenditures creates some of the highest homeowner tax burdens in the USA
This directly impacts housing affordabilty
 
Being a public school teacher or a police officer are much different professions today then they were a few decades ago.

It takes a very special person to be a public school teacher or a police officer today. My hats off to both professions in today's trying environment.
Also not remotely comparable professions. Really sad people are limited in bucketing them. The only commonality is source of funding is local government, that’s it.
 
Elementary school secretaries here that have been in 20+years make $110k+. They also file grievances when the faculty want to switch to electronic payroll instead of by hand. Meanwhile new-ish k-8 teachers struggle to pay their bills and most have second jobs.
I don't know what a secretary would make, but I don't think it's $110k where I live. I do know that elementary principals are in the $140-$160 range, and teachers $72k after 3 years. That seems like a big disparity to me. then you have what was reported as $600k for the police chief, and patrolmen easily the same as the principals. I think what I'm saying is that in 2024, it really doesn't matter what anyone's salary is, that what we traditionally think they should be, they may not be, and they can't at this point be brought to what we believe they should be.

Should a lifeguard make $500k? Should a cop on overtime make $400k, then lose the overtime when her boss is no longer pleased with her? I don't know the answer and frankly am powerless to do anything anyway.

I am glad though, to see that our varsity HS ice hockey team is 7-0 in their division, and 8-1 overall. That's amazing given there are no less than 4 cake eater schools in the division (got that term from The Mighty Ducks, hope I'm not banned for using it). There's so much more to life than money. The high school with the 5-10 mil. mansions in our area, has the worst record. Shouldn't they have the best program?

btw in the Phila suburbs, 4 mil. still buys a brand spanking new mcmansion. Where I live it only takes 1.6. Just realized not apples-apples, 4 gets you 5/6.5 and 7400 sq ft., 1.6 gets you 4/5 and 3500, 1.5 acre vs. 1/5 acre. Not the greatest comparison.

For real, the things in life that take me away from these discussions are truly refreshing. On Dec. 26, I did stick and puck with my now 11 y.o. son. All the money and real estate in this thread, couldn't have made me any happier, for that one hour slice in time. It's a rare event to be on the ice in gear, together.
 
From Chuck Cowan earlier today:

US housing affordability is a crisis:

The median annual house payment as % of median income has hit 39.4%, the most since the 1980s.

The rate has skyrocketed by 14 percentage points since 2020 and has surpassed the 2006 Housing Bubble peak of 38.1%.

It is now only below the 47.5% record set in 1981 when mortgage rates were as high as 18%.

Meanwhile, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage has risen by 100 basis points since September, to 7.1%, near the highest since July.

Buying a house has rarely ever been so expensive.
472690161_10226241755819421_7397769805776788810_n.webp
 
Shacking up has its economic advantages. The critical thing is no tying up of finances all will go well. Just roommates with a relationship.
From a practical standpoint, it's good for couples to see if they're financially compatible as well as cohabitationally compatibile... does one person leave the sink full of dishes, and does it make things a deal breaker?
 
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Being a public school teacher or a police officer are much different professions today then they were a few decades ago.

It takes a very special person to be a public school teacher or a police officer today. My hats off to both professions in today's trying environment.
It does and they're getting "crowded" like the other noble professions. You can lump in mailmen and probably most other civil servants. They used to be solidly middle class, able to live in the towns they worked in. But "worse" jobs are paying better and there's more competition for the same resources.
 
From a practical standpoint, it's good for couples to see if they're financially compatible as well as cohabitationally compatibile... does one person leave the sink full of dishes, and does it make things a deal breaker?
Sometimes, I think that Billy Joel video "Uptown Girl" is just that, an entertaining video. I got me one, and we don't see eye to eye financially, at all. I could go on and on, but one can't just unlearn the uptown routine. Food waste is a big one. Charitable contributions exceeding one's income is another.

But imho the housing problem is like many other things--the fact that resources are finite, and folks wanting/needing them are not. There was a Sopranos episode where Tony was taking his daughter to Maine to visit colleges. It today has a 7% acceptance rate. I never considered it but it had to have been 40%+ when I applied for college. What does a kid do? What does an adult do about housing? buying a car....

edit it's been 20 years, but if I recall, Meadow asks her dad if he's in the mob, and Tony had to eliminate a guy he saw while up there

https://sopranos.fandom.com/wiki/Colby_College
 
I was a cop in NJ years ago. Nassau County PD was then and still is one of, if not the highest paying departments in the USA. Comparing police work, especially in an urban area with teaching, is just silly.
All of those superintendents and highly paid administrators...in almost every case, started out as teachers. The cost per student for public education in Asbury Park, NJ is $32,000+/ year and the governor there just signed into law legislation that prohibits testing teachers for competency in basic literacy.
Public education is far more broken than law enforcement, that much is certain.
 
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