We Are Still Looking for a Home”

Published in Anchorage Daily News on 7.24.24

By Connie Yoshimura

Let’s pretend for the next 600 words that we are a first time home buyer family wanting to purchase a single family home in Anchorage. We’ve outgrown our two bedroom apartment whose rent has increased to $1,600 per month plus utilities. We have a two year old girl and a three year old rescue dog. We’ve saved for this time and both our grandparents are helping us with part of the downpayment. We stopped buying $7 mocha lattes and our dining out has been limited to once per month and is usually a weekend brunch which costs less than a dinner. Our F150 truck is ten years old and is paid for. We do regular maintenance. We are prequalified for $500,000 and our credit score is 740. We are excited to take that first step on the housing ladder. We’ve been on Zillow and talked to our church friends and colleagues at work. We’ve selected a realtor that was recommended to us and has experience in our price range.

We’ve read online that there is low inventory, particularly in our price range, so we were excited to find out that there are 17 homes for sale! We need a fourth bedroom for a home office and we hope to have another child. But of the 17 homes for sale there are only 5 that have four bedrooms.

We know we can’t afford new; not only is new construction more expensive on a price per foot basis but we can’t afford a washer/dryer/refrigerator/window coverings and landscaping that new homes require as an additional investment. But we also don’t want an older home that will require unplanned for maintenance and replacements for roof, furnace, appliances, even the hot water heater. The five homes that met our criteria averaged 48 years old! All were built before the MOA initiated energy ratings in 1992. The home we liked the best was only 36 years old but it was $25,000 above our price point and received multiple offers. Ours was not even considered. We barely qualified for a $500,000 mortgage which is the average MLS price for sold homes since April 2024. The payment at 7% (Annual Percentage Rate at 7.586) in the MOA is $4,042.95, according to Madonna Rhine-Stack, NMLS #204026, Senior Mortgage Loan Originator at Global Credit Union Home Loans. In order to qualify we needed an income of $11,000 per month which means both of us need to keep working. People say we are part of the ‘Missing Middle’. We just want a backyard for the our family BBQ and Charlie, our rescue dog. Tenants that live in an apartment don’t usually become friends as we are all more transient. There is no easy answer to this dilemma except lower interest rates and lower taxes. The cost of construction is out of our control, especially since every nail, every piece of sheetrock and ceiling fan comes up on a barge, semi- truck with two trailers or a new Alaska Airlines cargo plane. If the interest rate was 6 percent and the monthly property tax was $370, the mortgage payment could be reduced to $3,324. That’s still a lot but more manageable.

“ We want everyone to know how hard it is to buy a home in Anchorage. But after many offers and attempts at negotiation, we’re still looking. “