Very Interesting Survey: 40% of American homeowners have taken second jobs to afford their mortgage – December 15, 2021,

A very interesting survey by Consumer Affairs states the following

40% of homeowners with mortgages said they work second, full-time jobs to afford housing expenses. A majority of the 1,002 people surveyed by Consumer Affairs feel like they can’t afford their housing expenses, and did not anticipate the extra costs of upkeep when they bought their homes.
Most American homeowners are ‘house poor’ — and 40% of them have taken second jobs to afford a mortgage, survey says | yahoo.com

a member in my family, not really a close relative, has been working all through the pandemic because the cash flow coming from her investment properties wasn’t enough to pay for her mortgages. She had to sell one of her investment properties and the money made from the sale wasn’t enough to pay off her mortgages. Now, I don’t know all the details, most people aren’t going to tell you their finances, that there right as people, but this family member she’s approaching retirement age and what a lot of people don’t understand about buying a house is that even if you pay off your mortgage, you still have a property and other taxes to pay.

Plus maybe your roof needs fixing, the basement floods, the house, in general, might start falling apart. All sorts of things can happen AFTER you pay off the mortgage. A lot of people who grew up with their parents in the 70s and 80s know that a house is a money pit, you wouldn’t know that if you rented and potentially enjoyed the benefits of silly laws like rental controls, which from an economics point of view shelters a person from the economic realities of maintaining a property.

When you’re a homeowner and the plumbing or electrical goes bad, that’s not the landlords’ responsibility, that’s your responsibility, now all of a sudden all of those “social justice causes” and unionized jobs that force the cost of living up become an additional expense that you as a homeowner have to pay for. Most people don’t understand why some of us fight for a market economy until after the government fees and taxes start adding up.

Such is life anyway, you don’t know what you don’t know, with that said 40% is a big number of people who could potentially default on their mortgages if this economy goes sour. It will be a domino effect of defaults if the cost of living continues to rise and the wages can’t keep up with the cost of inflation.

Interesting times ahead!