By What Age Should Someone Own/Have Bought a House?

Should be at least 7%....minimum annual return on investment. Whether EBITA or not is a matter of market forces. But expenses are usually the thing that gets most people.

Half of the properties usually sit empty at any given time because of turnover and repairs after the renter moves out.
Usually trim work and water heaters and leaky sinks....sometimes electrical work or windows need fixing. New closet doors and of course painting every time. Carpets also....some states have regulations concerning carpets.

I used to do some side work for a real estate agent who also rented some houses. I've seen some nightmare scenarios. Fixed them right up too. He wasn't upset with any of the repairs....they were always figured into the rent. (Easy enough to get in the Nashville area)

Rent is all inclusive of taxes. Renter pays for everything else...including things they damage. If they plug up the drain and can't get it fixed....they pay the plumber. (Especially when it's a mix of grease and brillo pad)

Water heaters....ok....landlord pays. Same thing with air conditioning/heat. Tenants pay the gas and electric bills and water, sewer, and trash. Not keeping heat, water, sewer, and trash current and on are grounds for eviction. And the tenants have to keep the lawn mowed. Any fines for the yard are on the tenants.

Renting is not all it's cracked up to be. Vetting the renters is NOT cut and dried.

Right. And hedging with some lamebrain RE scheme at the beginning of potentially the biggest market crash in history is not.

This is something I wonder about myself. I am 33 and still live at home. I am okay with that for now but I do want my own place someday. I know a lot of families are living in 3 generational homes. Where the grandparents are in one bedroom, the parents in another and then the kids (sometimes even with their spouse and kids) in the third or fourth bedrooms. People just can't afford to move out right now. It is common to see four to six cars parked in the same house because of this.

I wish single people had more affordable options. I don't mind a 1 or 2 bedroom house for myself. I prefer a smaller space anyways. Bigger houses cost more to cool down esp here in Texas.

I remember being a kid and wanting a two story house with a pool in the backyard. I imagined I would be married by now with three kids maybe even four! I imagined I would be able to take them to Disney World and we would have fun pool parties with their friends from school.
LOL How times have changed! I don't think I could afford any children now.

It makes me wonder how this is affecting society and our personal psyche. To imagine a bright future only for it to be unattainable, it's hard. The future looks dark, scary, and lonely.

Does being 45 with a 30-year mortgage (stretching out until age 75) really sound ideal?

Real estate is a great way to build wealth. Most people take out a 30 year mortgage, but if you got a 15 year mortgage, it would only cost a few hundred more per month. Once you pay off the first home, buy another using the first as collateral. Rent the first home out and double up on payments on the second. It will be paid off in 7 years or less. Do it a third time and triple payments and in 3 years you will own another home. In less than 30 years you can own 3 homes in the time most get one.
I know this isn't feasible for everyone. But generational wealth can be grown in relatively few generations.

Rent has soared as high as house prices. I moved to Colorado in 1982, made $10 an hour and $15 for each overtime hour. It was good money in those days. With overtime I was making $30,000 a year. I got a nice/furnished two bedroom apartment for $300 a month, $3,600 a year.

My annual rent came out to be 12% of my annual salary. Today, the same apartment rents for $2,000 a month or $24,000 a year. In order for that to be 12% of my annual salary, I'd have to be making $200,000 per year. Think about that!!!!!!!!!!

That just shows how rents have soared and why renters can't afford to buy houses.

PS Personally, I have no solution to this problem nor do I know what has caused this problem. I have family members, with both spouses working and no kids, and they can't afford to save anything at all.

I've seen a strategy like this work, with a coworker starting with a one-bedroom condo in a shady/bad downtown neighborhood, a couple of other homes in between, to a standalone house in a somewhat decent neighborhood which will no doubt gentrify in the coming decades. She basically started from nothing and now she has one standalone home plus renting out a condo. However, a lot of people are not willing to follow this route including me of living in a bad neighborhood just to own a home.

You don't have to start in a bad neighborhood for this to work.

I appreciate everyone's input regarding both the pros and cons of owning rentals.

After watching my relatives run rentals and deal with a lot of cons, I know that it wouldn't be for me. For example, I wrote in a previous post about a family member who recently came home from vacation to a tenant's phone call about a fence that was blown over during a storm. It turns out that the fence was never originally set right when it was built, so he had to remove all the remnants of the old fence, buy all the supplies, pour the concrete, set the posts, and rebuild a new fence at his own cost and labor.

As a single woman with no such handyman skills, I would have had to worry about finding a licensed, trustworthy professional to handle the repairs and then shell out for the expense.

I have no interest in owning physical real estate or anything to rent out, but I do invest in REIT's (real estate investment trusts) as an alternative. These companies own and/or finance real estate, sell shares of their companies on common stock exchanges, and are required by law to pay a dividend (payment) of at least 90% of their taxable income to its shareholders.

For example, Arbor Realty Trust (ticker symbol ABR) is currently $12.99 per share and will pay out an estimated $1.60 per share per year, which is currently over a 12% annual return on your money (divided and paid out in quarterly increments.) Another great thing is that ABR has also been slowly increasing its dividend over time.

Now $1.60 doesn't sound like much, but if you took some of the money that you might have otherwise used on a rental and, over time, built up to 1000 shares (the share price will fluctuate like shares of a regular stock -- let's just say your total average cost was $15,000, which is likely a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of buying your own rental property,) and you would now be paid approximately $1,600 a year (about $133 per month) in passive income, just for owning those shares. If you didn't need the income right away, you could reinvest your dividends, along with the money you would have paid out on rental property taxes and maintenance, buying more and more shares, which increase your payout over time. And all without having to worry about finding tenants or dealing with clogged toilets, damage to your property, or the stress of having to pay off an extra mortgage when you can't find tenants or the need to evict ones who refuse to pay.

It certainly isn't full-proof, as every investment has to be chosen carefully (several REIT's are being hit hard with the skyrocketing housing costs,) is never guaranteed (the share prices could drop drastically; the REIT could go out of business and you could lose your money; the dividend could be cut,) but for me, the problems with a REIT dwarf all the issues I would have with an actual property (and there aren't any places around here that I could buy by myself.) I also never know how long I'll be in any given area (due to family member's health,) so committing to properties isn't realistic for my current situation.

As someone who knows she could never handle the stress of actually being a landlord, I personally like REIT's as a way to benefit from real estate, but without having to manage all the most challenging aspects of it by myself.

CV5, you say, "Venezuela here we come." I think you've got it backwards, they are coming here!!!!!!!!!!!!!:

In Record Numbers, Venezuelans Risk a Deadly Trek to Reach the U.S. Border

In Record Numbers, Venezuelans Risk a Deadly Trek to the U.S. Border - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

There is one home owner's trap that I've seen many fall into. And that's the 'Refinancing Trap', refinancing your residence/home over and over instead of paying it off. I've seen it happen so many times. Here is a real life example of one of my neighbors:

This man refinances his residence every two or three years. He bought his residence, a 2 bedroom condo, in 1983. The price was $38,000. Today, this home lists for $350,000. He has lived in this residence for the last 36 years. And, because of his continual refinancing, he now owes $42,000. And he's retired now and needs money so he plans to continue refinancing in to the future. I see this happen so many times.

It would have been so much better if he'd never refinanced and paid off the mortgage. Instead, he's become an 'eternal renter'. Too many home owners fall in to this trap.