The Dream of Home Ownership
Zack and I have been talking for some time now about our desire to someday own a house. He’s always told me about how cheap houses are in Montana, and when we visited his hometown this summer for his brother’s wedding, I really liked it there and the idea of living there someday started to really appeal to me (of course, we went during the summer when the weather there is actually nice, and if we visited in the winter, I might have second thoughts!) 
Even so, it may be worth living through the bitter cold winters to achieve the dream of home ownership. While we were there, I heard several stories from women several years younger than me who had bought houses when they were fresh out of high school, for as little as $40,000! That blew my mind, because we live in Southern California, where the houses are not cheap and the dream seems unattainable.
Even here in the Antelope Valley, houses are upwards of a quarter million dollars. With every new subdivision built, the prices get higher. We drove by a sign today for homes “starting in the low $300,000’s.” That’s just…wow. Even when we both finish our degrees and get good jobs, how could we ever afford something like that? And the thing is, more and more people have been moving here from L.A. because this is actually one of the cheaper areas to own a house in Southern California. But these people end up with interest-only mortgages and adjustable rates that they ultimately can’t afford. There have been several houses that have foreclosed recently in our neighborhood alone. My parents seem to receive and endless barrage of mail about mortgages, and they obviously aren’t the only ones around here that somehow ended up on a direct marketing mailing list. It’s just a shame that some companies try to push people into buying homes that they can’t really afford. If there were more companies like Red Clay Media using intelligent mortgage marketing tactics that target people that can actually afford to buy homes, maybe less people would end up with their dreams shattered.
