How To Buy A House In California

The median home price in California is over half a million dollars for a single-family home. In the high desert, where The Wife and I are going, prices are still below the median, but not by much. How I could ever afford to buy a home under such circumstances has long baffled me. Clearly, The Wife has to work, too, and we won't be able to afford luxuries like food or gasoline.

Or, maybe we could get a fifty-year mortgage. Also known as "a surefire way to never accumulate equity," this product would offer substantially lower payments. Presumably, we could refinance once our earnings power increased or when the rate shifts to variability, and at that point perhaps we could get iunto a situation in which more than a miniscule portion of the payment actually went to principal rather than interest. The good news, though, is that the high percentage of interest woud look very favorable on taxes, and hopefully some equity would accumulate because of market pressures.