Homeownership has long been a cornerstone of the American Dream, a way for families to achieve stability, and one of the most effective tools for building wealth and joining the middle class.
But is this dream something young people still strive for? And is it something that is attainable, or is it slipping out of reach of most people?
A poll released on The Item‘s Facebook and Twitter pages showed the importance that homeownership still plays in people’s lives.
When asked the question, “Is homeownership an important goal for you?” 85 percent of Facebook respondents, answered “yes,” and 15 percent answered “no.”
On Twitter, whose users tend to skew younger, the interest in homeownership was less extreme but still notable, with 66 percent of respondents saying homeownership was an important goal.
According to data from house listing site Zillow, Lynn homes more than doubled in price over the past eight years, from $216,000 to $437,000.
Neighboring communities have seen less dramatic but still significant increases: Peabody home values went from $312,000 to $534,000 over the past eight years; Swampscott from $374,000 to $626,000; Saugus from $319,000 to $523,000.
While wages have increased in recent years from $44,888 nationwide in 2013 to $54,099 in 2019 (when the latest data from the Social Security Administration is available), this growth has been outpaced by the increase in housing prices.
Realtors See Homeownership As An Important Goal, But Becoming More Difficult
“I would say that home ownership is still very much a part of the American Dream for most people,” said Eileen Jonah, a Realtor at C-21 Tradition.
“Even at the height of COVID we had record numbers of interested parties in any particular property, multiple over asking offers on homes. In fact, many people left densely populated areas where they were renting and came to the North Shore to purchase a home for more space and functional work at home options.”
Jonah estimated that homeownership is still a goal for about 70 to 75 percent of people.
This is largely influenced by the rising costs of rent, Jonah said, which has increased substantially both nationwide and on the North Shore in recent years.
Austin Sholds, a Salem resident and newly-minted real estate agent, sees homeownership as a goal that is very difficult to achieve “without help or a stable job, which is hard to find these days.
“The problem is, too many people live as tenants,” said Sholds, who recently closed on his first real estate sale. “That’s not their fault either, because they’re kind of pinned in there by paying rent every month. (They) basically take the money that (they) would be spending on a mortgage and give it to somebody else.
“It’s really the only people with money who can make any kind of move. Everybody else is kind of cemented in place.”
He told the story of his great aunt who worked as a lightbulb manufacturer at Sylvania in Salem.
With the money she saved over 10 years, she was able to buy a house that is now worth more than $1 million, Sholds said. That sort of saving seems extremely difficult in the modern real estate market without “military discipline,” he said.
“But who wants to live like that?” said Sholds.
His family owns properties in Salem, so purchasing a home is not a major priority for him, he said, explaining that he is more focused on maintaining what his family already has.
Despite his concerns about homeownership slipping away, he is optimistic that some day the market will become more affordable.
“In the future, if the area gets overdeveloped too much,” Sholds said, “there will be a crash that will make (real estate) more available for people with less money.”
Lynn woman sees homeownership as a means of staving off displacement
For Celinet Sanchez who was born in the Dominican Republic, grew up in Washington Heights in New York City, and has been renting an apartment in Lynn since 2015, achieving homeownership has been a lifelong goal.
Her parents don’t own a home in America and, after renting for 27 years, they feel like they have nothing to show for it.
While she was growing up in Washington Heights, she said New York Presbyterian Hospital kept buying buildings in her neighborhood.
“I remember once growing up, my mom was so nervous when the landlord knocked on the door and said that they were going to buy this building — probably your rent is going to go up,” she recalled. “I vividly remember my parents trying to understand what was happening.”
The building was sold after she went to college, she said, and her parents had to move out of their neighborhood in Manhattan to the Bronx.
“I know displacement, because I’ve seen displacement,” she said.
Now Sanchez, who works as the operations manager at a mental-health nonprofit, has taken the first step to achieving housing stability here in Lynn that her parents couldn’t achieve in Manhattan.
Sanchez and her husband have enrolled in the Lynn Housing Authority & Neighborhood Development (LHAND) first-time homebuyers program and the couple is talking to a lender about purchasing their first home.
First-time home buyers found becoming homeowners is easier than renting
By the time Edwin and Ruth Acevedo closed on their first home last September they had already moved their furniture into their new Maple Street house.
“We were too excited,” said Edwin, a General Electric employee. “It’s something we’ve been talking about for years. It was always a dream to have something that’s yours, something you can pass down to your kids.”
The path to homeownership was a long and arduous one for the Lynn couple, who took two years to build up the credit necessary to make the purchase.
“With rents being as high as they were, we had to manage how to save and have enough to maintain our four kids,” said Ruth Acevedo who works at Neptune Towers.
The couple used LHAND’s first-time homebuyers’ program, along with numerous other supports from the organization to facilitate their purchase.
The Housing Authority staff answered their questions throughout the process, found them a realtor, and funded the deleading of their house.
With loans and LHAND’s assistance, the couple was able to put a $13,000 down payment on their new home.
Living in cramped quarters during the COVID-19 pandemic pushed them to really pursue homeownership this year, the couple explained.
Before moving, the couple had been living in a three-bedroom apartment with their four young children, with one of those bedrooms having been converted from an office space.
“For six people, it was very tiny,” said Edwin.
“With us having such a small space, our kids were limited to be inside. They couldn’t go out because we didn’t even have a backyard,” said Ruth. “Our living room and dining room now has more space than we had in there.”
Those interested in the LHAND first-time homebuyer’s program can learn more on their website and can sign up through this link for a two-part first-time homebuyer’s class on April 23 and 24.
Guthrie Scrimgeour can be reached at [email protected]. Allysha Dunnigan can be reached at [email protected].
