Selling a kidney to buy a home

It’s been insanely busy lately!

For starters – our place is under contract! It only took 2 weeks for an offer to come in. I countered and they accepted. Although I am not making any money on my place (I was never expecting too) I am happy with what I’m getting for it and am getting what I put into it. So now that that is done, Barb and I are frantically looking for a new place. If we can’t find a place before we close on our old place, we have a couple of friends that generously offered to let us stay at their places until we find a new place. I would rather not do that, but it’s a nice offer.

This leads me to my rant for the week…..
How do people afford homes in Denver? The market is so out of whack. I think that with Barb and my combined incomes, we make enough to afford a decent house. Apparently I am wrong. Every place we look at has something wrong with it…like a 1970’s kitchen, a toilet in the middle of the basement or a famly of squirrels living in the fireplace…………. and the sellers are asking an absurd amount of money for it…..squirrels and all. It’s perplexing. We have looked in a handful of different neighborhoods and, on average, the prices of homes has gone up by double-digit percentages per year for the last 5 years. That’s funny because I don’t think inflation, the GDP or my salary has gone up by that much each year. Am I missing something? Is there some secret to buying a home that I don’t know about? Do I have to sell a vital organ in order to afford a decent home?

Ok I’m done now. Thanks for reading