Is the sky falling?

Real estate has slowed to a crawl in some sectors and many people are hesitant to buy or sell in this weird market. I have beaten to death the idea of stubborn homeowners holding on to their 3% loans, I am among them actually. But buyers continue with trepidation. Rates seem high, they are not, but it sure feels like it and buyers are faced with very high prices all over the nation relative to what they were ten years ago and relative to current wages. There is also a lot of negative commentary and videos about how difficult it is for young people to buy a home. I feel that that is way overplayed in politics and on YouTube. 

I just sold a home to a young man who qualified with his own income. He saved up substantial cash to put down by avoiding the trap many young people fall into. The buy a new car, buy cool stuff you can't really afford, and then complain about houses costing too much. He does not have a college degree nor does he have an exotic job. He works in a local factory. He saved some cash drove an older inexpensive car and bought a house in one of America's most expensive housing markets.  

Let's be clear this young man SAVED the money. He did not inherit the money nor get cash from his parents. He did it the way his parents and grandparents did it, by not wasting all their money on stuff they can't afford. He did it the Dave Ramsey way for the most part.

So the sky only seems like it is falling because talking heads on the internet say it is so. The sky my friends is just fine, houses were really easy to buy for about 8-10 years after the Great Recession and now they are back to the way they have always been, hard to get but easily attainable, even in Washington State which has the fourth highest home prices in the USA.

Save your money, keep your credit scores up, and avoid spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on an education that will not net you a deep six figure job. If you are not smart enough or dedicated enough to get a STEM degree, take up a trade, they pay better in the trades these days than most undergrads make anyway. Over the coming decades wages in the trades will continue to outpace salaries in the white collar world, this has been the trend for over a decade.

Our country needs electricians, plumbers, framers, iron workers, welders, and many other tradespeople. The best part is, most of the time you can apprentice these jobs. This is being paid to learn rather than paying to learn. 

Homes have always been difficult to own with a few exceptions throughout the last 100 years. They are however very attainable.