Man Discovers That His Parents' Mortgage Is $287 — His Is 27 Times More
Soaring home prices and expenses have made homeownership unattainable for many.
Halfpoint / Shutterstock A man named Adam Lucas recently went viral after he revealed how much his parents pay for their mortgage compared to how much he pays.
If you don’t live under a rock and consume some form of social media, you’re probably aware of terms like the “housing bubble” or “housing crisis” and how impossible it is to afford or purchase a home. Lucas’s point of view really helps put things into perspective — a dystopian one.
It clues us into an idea of just how bad the housing crisis has gotten.
Lucas’s parents have a $287 mortgage payment, while he pays upwards of 10 grand a month.
“I just found out that my parents' mortgage is $287 and I'm going to throw up. Okay. My mortgage is 27 times my parents' mortgage. My house is valued at a third of my parents' house,” he explained in his TikTok. “I would like to puke. I would like to throw up. I'm gonna go puke.”
Just before the COVID lockdown in March 2020, monthly mortgage payments were exponentially lower than they are now. According to CBRE Research, a real estate and investment insight firm, monthly mortgage payments for a new home purchase were an average of $1,786.61.
Today, that number has nearly doubled to $3,322.41. Monthly mortgage payments are now 50% more expensive than the average apartment’s rent — which, make no mistake, is also on the rise.
Simply living in the United States is becoming harder and harder as time goes on. No one should be paying nearly $10,000 a month on housing unless they’re living in a mansion, which Lucas claims he is not.
In an update, Lucas clarified some things to those who were confused about his video.
Many people were understandably shocked by the numbers Lucas provided, and commented with their math, asking, “I’m sorry, your mortgage is $7,749? Is that real???” Lucas never provided the actual number for his monthly mortgage payments, but he did in the update.
“Both my parents’ house and [I] live in Southern California. Okay? The housing market in Southern California — it's not real life, okay?” he began, and he’s very on the money. A recent report on the cost of living crisis (in which housing certainly plays a massive role) revealed that making $100,000 in LA is now considered low-income.
“Average home prices in Southern California are a million to a million and a half plus right now,” Lucas said. “I am extremely fortunate to have been able to have afforded that. A million and a half dollars at 6.4999%, I hate to break it to you all, over 30 years is over $7,000 a month.”
But wait, there’s more! When he factors home insurance and property taxes into the equation, he’s paying nearly $10,000 a month just to own his home.
His parents built their home off of land they bought for thousands of dollars. After it burned down one year, they used the insurance money to rebuild it and maintained their original mortgage of $287, despite it now being worth multiple millions of dollars.
“I wanna be so explicitly clear about the fact that I do not live in some, like, mansion. It's just extremely crazy. Where I live,” he explained toward the end of the video. “And I understand when you hear $7,000 — I mean, that should be a mansion, right?! It's not. It’s really not.”
Regardless of where you live, the sheer contrast in access to affordable housing and lending over a 50 year span is disheartening. Without serious change, the housing crisis will become an epidemic, and only a small percent of the population will be able to claim homeownership.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.