Buying a House on a Nurse's Income: How Do Nurses Afford $450,000+ Houses?

[SilverBells]

One of my goals is to eventually be able to purchase a house.  Many of my nursing colleagues are purchasing homes that are worth $450,000, $500,000 or even more.  Sadly, my budget is about half of that or even less, which means the houses I have to choose from are not appealing.  Most of them are small, old, or both. 

I am just curious how other nurses manage to purchase decent houses? I've been looking through my income, and I just can't find a way to make it possible to incorporate such a house into my budget.  I am salary, so there are no opportunities for overtime.

What are other nurses' experience with buying houses? How did you make it work? Did it require switching jobs? Inquiring minds want to know!

Thanks ? 

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

On 5/15/2022 at 4:41 PM, SilverBells said:

Of note: It appears that the $500k didn't work out for one of my nursing colleagues after all.  She just moved into a much more modest house. 

Considering the employer where you work doesn't believe in giving yearly raises, I guess I'm not all that surprised.  Moreso that nurses are choosing to stay at a place that doesn't give them a raise especially when jobs are everywhere and they can get a much deserved raise just by job hopping!

But as another OP mentioned, it doesn't make sense to be house poor and to live on the edge.  Better to buy a more modest house so you have a cushion for emergencies, retirement and fun like vacations.

[londonflo]

On 1/17/2022 at 4:31 AM, ReordonaSRN said:

Well I make well over 500k/year and there many other nurses that do the same…. I have a 1.3 mil home…

You live near San Francisco and work 2 jobs. I really do applaud your initiative, as well as the initiative of "many other nurses you know"  but I am not thinking this is the norm for an RN.  

[rzyzzy]

I don’t pretend to have the answers for this, but the headline kinda tweaks me the wrong way, and I’d like to provide a little context to the “value” of at least some of these “$450,000” homes.  
 

In 2009-2011, my ex and I were living in Phoenix, and looking for an “affordable” house.  Rent on our 2400 sq foot, nearly new North Scottsdale home was $1,150.  We were looking for a purchase with a monthly nut under $1k, hopefully including property taxes and insurance.  We paid $169k for a 1600 sq/ft home in north Phoenix in a “meh” neighborhood.  You can hear the gunshots at night there, but we never found any brass, so - pretty safe but not a super pretty neighborhood..  no community pool or fancy parks..  

Prices kept falling, so I got my real-estate license and scored a couple 1100 sq/ft rentals at around $70k each..  got my little bro a place, and a Winter place for the parents as well..  I think the parent’s place might have been $80k..  they were all three-bedrooms, two baths, garage and a decent yard..  They rented at the time for about $1k a month.  
 

we cashed out and sold everything a few years ago, at the insane price of around $200k-ish (each) for all the rentals, the parent’s place and little bro’s place.  
 

It was a crazy and historic time, but it wasn’t that long ago.  Wages there haven’t ballooned accordingly, and I truly don’t know how anyone there can manage the payments at the current levels.  

 

Now those same ~$70k-ish properties are on Zillow and Redfin for around $440-$470k.  My former “expensive” primary home Zillows for nearly $600k.  
 

My old homes were definitely “working class” homes, the kitchen cabinets were basically thin cardboard & when I had to make repairs that involved pulling drywall, I often found slurpee-cups and taco-bell wrappers inside the walls.  The water-supply pipes from the road to the house blew up on almost all of those homes because the plastic pipes aged-out, and I even had copper pipes break under the concrete slabs a couple times..  so these were low-quality houses at the ends of their useful life.  Six inches of insulation in the attic, single-pane windows that barely opened..  sliding doors with worn-out rollers, too old to get parts for..  

 

Any one of those repairs could easily send a buyer who was tapped-out from the down-payment into a serious financial crisis.  
 

Im not bragging here, just hoping to provide a little “reality check” for anyone considering stretching themselves hard to buy something that expensive.  
 

The closest nursing example might be if you’re giving an unfamiliar drug, and the dose on the order requires two syringes to give..  maybe the decimal point is in in the wrong place?  A good time to pump the brakes and double check the order, the usual dosage, etc.  

 

Id suggest checking the “order” (or in this case, the historical value of property in your area), because the current prices are not in line with anything anyone else has ever had to deal with before.  If there’s anything you can do to wait, I’d try that.  I don’t know the future, but I know history, and unsustainable growth has always led to crashes.  Even if a “crash” isn’t possible..  it’s possible, simply because what we have now isn’t sustainable.