- Brooklyn-based Sarah and Teddy bought their Bushwick home for $1.04 million
- They say three years later the mortgage repayments would be unaffordable
- The couple said their payments would have doubled if purchased today
Timing really is everything – especially for one couple who say monthly mortgage repayments have doubled in just three years – making it unaffordable if they were to buy their home today.
Brooklyn-based couple Sarah and Teddy bought their 1870s house in Bushwick for $1,040,000 in 2021, putting down a 15 per cent down payment and leaving them with a $880,000 mortgage.
‘We knew we got a killer deal,’ Sarah explained in a TikTok. ‘We definitely could not afford to buy our house now, less than three years later.’
The homeowner admitted she and her husband could not afford the monthly payments on their fixer upper if they were to purchase it today – with the monthly mortgage repayments having doubled.
‘We got a 30-year mortgage rate,’ Sarah said in the clip. ‘And this is the luckiest part – at 2.125 per cent, that means that our monthly payment is about $3,131 a month.’
Sarah acknowledged that she and her husband were ‘super lucky,’ with their fixed mortgage rate, not realizing how fortunate they really were, never having purchased a home before
‘I actually didn’t understand how lucky it was,’ she admitted.
‘You know that having an entire house for $3,100 a month is absolutely crazy – that’s basically a studio apartment in Manhattan or like a one bedroom on our street in Brooklyn,’ she added.
Sarah said if they were to buy their house today, it would be over $1.3 million – but that’s not the shocking part.
‘You’d probably be putting 20 per cent down, you would end up with a mortgage that’s the same as what our entire house cost,’ she said incredulously.
‘The worst part is, if you got a 30-year fixed mortgage rate at approximately 6.655 per cent – which is what happened when I Googled, which is the mortgage rate right now – you would end up with a monthly payment of $6,680,’ she said.
‘That’s more than twice what we’re paying right now, and it will be well over $7,000 once you put in all of your insurance, taxes, all that kind of stuff,’ she continued.
‘And this is the same house in a very short period of time,’ she pointed out. ‘Not even taking into consideration any of the improvements we’ve made.’
‘We’ll be staying here forever,’ she finished the clip. ‘Not only do we love it, but we definitely can’t afford to buy something else.’
Sarah and Teddy’s comments section were filled with people amazed over the low mortgage rate they managed to get.
‘That’s wild! My house is worth $330k and I am paying almost the same mortgage as you! Timing really is every thing!’ one user exclaimed.
‘People who purchased during low interest rates hit the lottery,’ agreed another.
‘This is truly wild and I can’t believe I’m paying the same as you monthly for a house in Southern Maine that was about half the price of your house,’ commented another.
Sarah and Teddy are documenting the transformation of their Bushwick home on their TikTok, @homeonwoodbine, as they renovate it themselves – jokingly admitting they thought they’d be done in a year.
So far, the couple have renovated the basement, guest and primary bedroom, primary bathroom, the backyard, replaced the windows, fixed the staircase, and painted the interior trim ands some walls.