How else can I buy the newest Ford “own the libs” truck with the lift kit and coal-rolling accessories?
I’ve only ever bought like 20 year old used cars. I can’t even comprehend how anyone has enough money to afford a new car. It’s not even the price of the car itself, which is always absurd anyways, but the cost of insurance on a car that new and registration is also just insane. A friend of mine recently bought a car that was only 5 years old and their payments including insurance and everything are still almost as much as the mortgage on my house. It’s no wonder everyone is under water with their car loans.
Where did you find that cheap-ass house?
The 90s
Nope. 2021. It just looks like a place where people turn into missing persons and it’s in a fairly low COL city. I am also just barely scraping by on the payments until the PMI drops off.
Fair enough. Was being cheeky. Hopefully things loosen up for you soon 🤞
Picked myself up a crack den (not literally but might as well be) like 8 years ago. My dad built houses and taught me how to do most of the work so I bought a cheap place I knew I could eventually fix. Also in a fairly low COL area. So a shit house in a fairly cheap city in a cheaper housing market. It was either that or just accept never owning a house so I jumped on it and just barely scrape by.
My mortgage payments cost me just as much as renting a slightly nicer house in my area so the point still stands that my friend is paying nearly as much for their vehicle per month as most people here pay in rent.
Well, it’s not exactly fair to compare a crack house in crackville - which I’m picturing as Mantua, OH - to the average house, let alone any place in an urban area. But congratulations all the same.
Alternatively: “Car prices higher than ever, wages not keeping up with inflation.”
The explanation is pretty mundane.
The last 2 years have seen really, really fast depreciation, because the car shortage of 2020-2022 drove up cars way beyond their normal prices. Some cars actually appreciated in value in 2021.
So when the shortage untangled eventually, used car prices plummeted. Here’s a chart of the most robust used car price index.
At the same time, several EVs saw huge price drops as Tesla tried to preserve market share against increased competition. When the new car drops in price by $20k, then the used market for that car similarly drops suddenly.
So when the value of vehicles drops unexpectedly across multiple markets, you’ll have a lot more people whose car values failed to keep up with their loan balances.
Yet another reason why car-focused transportation is a hilariously dumb idea.
Build some transit already
I bought mine cash, used Peugeot 308, 10k€. I feel like every car in US needs a real-estate-size loan to afford it
It feels like in the US way more often than ever before people are buying in the luxury/premium car space. I stay exclusively on the cheap end because it’s all I need. The options for new economy cars shrink every year, but there’s a million pickup and SUV options. It seems normalized to spend way more on a car than you really need, partially because financing is offered on ridiculously long terms (5+ years) for a depreciating asset.