Man, I just don't get it. All we hear is that people are hurting these days. Many can't make ends meet.
But real estate has skyrocketed. People are getting/paying CRAZY prices for houses. My house is up $135K in two years. The price of a full-sized SUV is creeping up toward a HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS in the US. But dealerships can't keep them in stock. (I know one lady who drives a Caddy SUV that was almost ninety grand! And that's STICKER...before taxes and fees! I bet it was in the mid nineties out the door.) Electronics are going crazy with prices. Used Dingwall basses are listed for slightly MORE than NEW on Reverb, and even a couple here recently. And they're selling in some cases! I know a family that just booked a trip to Disney for next October for ELEVEN THOUSAND BUCKS! And that's before flights! We've been booking rooms in Charlotte and Raleigh and Richmond VA for my kid's volleyball tournaments coming up. Rooms in average hotels are upwards of a couple hundred bucks or more. The only hotel we could get for Atlanta for an Easter weekend tournament was $249 a night before fees. And it's not exactly a five-star joint.
People can't buy big-ticket items fast enough.
Everything is jumping in price, but the increases are met with mostly shrugs.
A few of us here will shake our heads at the second Fender jump in a matter of months. But I'll bet it will slow down sales exactly zero. I hope people are investing in their futures as much as they're investing in "stuff".
Really think it comes down to who you're talking about. If anything I think these past two years has really jacked up the wealth disparity we're seeing. Most of the people I know have been struggling, at least my age. Two of my housemates have been laid off and despite frequent applications to numerous companies, are having trouble finding stable employment. I've been trying to find a new job as well, and I've applied to some 20-odd businesses the last two months, and I've received three replies. I've been working on selling gear since things are tight. My main concern right now is my car. It's upwards of 230,000 miles, has developed a tick in the engine, and if it fails, I don't have the savings to get it repaired, let alone look at buying a new car. I'd be able to if I took out a loan, but I've still got $20,000 plus in student loan debts, and since the federal gov't sold mine off to private holding companies, the stay on payments is no longer applicable. This isn't to sound like a woe-is-me, I can still do most things that I want, I'm not starving. There are many, many people far worse off. But things are real tight these days. And these people that are buying big ticket items and homes? Well, I guess they just landed on the right side of that wealth gap.
Yeah - it's looking like the CPI index is yielding an inflation rate of about 6.2% for American consumers and 4.7% for Canadians over 2021. This means that if your salary hasn't increased by this same percentage, you're effectively taking a pay cut. To put this in perspective, an American worker walking home with a 6.2% pay raise this year would only be breaking even in terms of their purchasing power.
My company, I've been with them for...7 years now I guess, and they gave me less than a 2% last year. I ended up having words with them and threatening to leave as it was the second year in a row I had been promised a large raise to make up for years of underwhelming ones, and they did finally make up for it and raise me to the low-end of the salary average for my job. Last month, they told us there was an immediate price increase in effect for our services, citing inflation as a key issue. I'm await my year-end review and raise, and it'll be interesting to see if they also believe that inflation should be taken into account for our raises.
One of my daughters just bought a 900 square foot home (vintage 1900, brick exterior) for $430K. She makes well under 100K and had help from us and had been saving for about 10 years. It's really, really tough for anyone who's not well paid to afford housing.
I actually think we need municipally owned mobile home parks for affordable housing. Mobile homes live very well, and if there's no rapacious owner trying to wring every $ out of the tenants a well-kept mobile home park can offer a way to get into housing in the $100-$200K range.
Agreed, I honestly don't see owning a home as a viable option in my future until I am able to inherit my father's house. I grew up in a mobile home park. One of the places in the park I grew up in just sold for $500k.
The town I grew up in also had a program where low-income earners who qualified would be able to participate in building their home and neighbors homes while working with a supervising crew. They were meant to provide a continued option for low-income house, and they are now selling at $600-700k.
here in los angeles, real estate prices were skyrocking before the pandemic. condos in our complex are selling for over double what we paid in september, 2013, to over half a mil, and these are 900 square feet with 1 car garages. 1+1 condos in my son's complex are selling for over half a mil now, and the scary part is in the west side of los angeles, that's pretty reasonable.
our neighbor bought a new porsche SUV last year. i didn't ask what it cost, but i definitely see people buying big ticket items. lots of people i know bought fitness equipment, cars, TVs, video game systems, etc. we're seeing more units here being remodeled than we've seen before by people who aren't planning to move. i bought 4 basses during the pandemic, but that's my normal bass acquisition speed. i sold more than that, and got decent money for them with almost no low ball offers or bargaining.
Hell, I can't even afford to get drinks west of Los Feliz it seems. I tend not to go over that side to frequently, in part cause it can be a hassle getting over there, and because it's so expensive. I'm lucky enough to have a decent room in a house in NELA, but I'd hate to be looking for housing right now, anywhere in the city.
Same thing happened where I am. My town is a pleasant spot in the coast about 47 mikes outside Manhattan.
When Covid ramped up big time in pre-vaccine 2019 we suddenly got a large influx of NYers fleeing the city buying homes and snapping up any rentals they could find. And price was no object.
Right now a 1500 sq foot home on a small lot can’t be had for less than $650K. That’s up from about $425-50K right before that. It even hit a point where realtors were directly contacting homeowners to see if they’d be interested in selling. Because the realtors had zero listed properties to show would be buyers. Nothing in the entire town was available at any price for awhile.
I grew up on an island in the Puget Sound, and still work for a company up there, and my family still lives there as well. It has been absolutely inundated by both Seattlites and Californians since the start of the pandemic. The real estate market has gone absolutely nuts, with off-islanders gobbling up as much property as they can to have their retreats. And sadly, a lot of people that did own homes on the island and were renting them to islanders? Well they're selling them now so they can make money while the market is hot, but it's pretty devastating to the locals having to find new accommodations. Compound that with businesses shuttering due to the pandemic, most of which rely on profits made during the tourist season to stay open. Lot of people had to move off-island. My family is trying to find places to rent now as the owner is selling the house, and there's only about three rental options. One was a 900 sq ft apartment, which as a family of 4 people they wouldn't really be able to fit in, and another was 1000 sq ft. The third was $15,000 a month. It's a bit bleak.
This will likely be the last one for us (Fingers girls will be 10 and 13).
