In August 2024, TikToker Alitzah (@alitzahs), who is 28 years old, bought a house for $500,000. She grew up middle-class with four siblings in a very normal house in Ohio, with three bedrooms and two bathrooms.
She now has a 6.25% fixed interest rate and a 30-year mortgage on her house. The mortgage for her home in Columbus, Ohio, is $4,845 a month.
It includes $1,600 a month in her escrow account, which goes toward her property taxes and home insurance. Her mortgage was recently increased by $500 due to a shortage in her escrow account.
Before she and her husband bought the house, it was listed at $300,000 a few years ago. It should still be worth the same because no updates have been made to the home at all, but prices have skyrocketed since then.
She feels that people who bought their homes more than a decade ago have no idea how unaffordable housing has become in recent years.
Her annual income is over $300,000, but having to pay nearly $5,000 every month for her mortgage is still costly.
Owning a home is part of the American dream, but that is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Soon enough, she believes that the average American family will be stuck renting for the remainder of their lives.
“I don’t know how people my age, this generation, is going to be able to save because childcare and food and gas and electricity and everything is so expensive right now,” said Alitzah.
“Something has to change, and it’s one of the things that I think about constantly, and it really stresses me out.”
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Her sister, Abby, who is also her live-in nanny, moved into the house when they bought it. Alitzah has two girls, who are six and eight years old. Abby is paid a salary for the hours that she helps with the kids.
Alitzah and her husband want their next property to have more space and a bigger yard because their current house is too close to the neighbors.
They want a minimum of four bedrooms so they can have a playroom, an extra office, and a room for their live-in nanny. Right now, this is just their “starter home.”
People in the comments section agreed with her point about housing being unaffordable, but they took issue with her calling her $500,000 house a starter home when it was clearly an expensive place.
“You didn’t buy a starter home. You could’ve gotten a starter home for $300,000 in Ohio. While I completely agree with everything else, you bought a higher-priced home,” commented one user.
“I make $40k a year. My husband makes around $65k a year. We have a $1,200 mortgage. The house itself is $143k. This is so out of touch. Me and my husband don’t make enough to have a house, but we do, and we’re humble about it,” wrote another.
“No. We understand housing is unaffordable. A nearly $5,000 mortgage is not starter home territory,” added a third.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
