‘I feel trapped’: how home ownership has become a nightmare for many Americans | US news

“I bought my home in a hurry in 2020,” said Meg, 60, an office manager from Maryland. “It was less expensive to take on a mortgage than to keep paying ever-increasing rents for my college-student daughter and me.”

Now housing costs consume 50% of her income.

Although Meg said she felt “grateful to have our little house”, the purchase has lost its luster. Her aging row home needs various repairs, while other costs associated with home ownership rose continually too.

“I had to take out an additional mortgage to replace the heat and AC system,” she said. “I keep increasing the deductibles on the home insurance to try to keep the premiums down. They ratchet up every year, while my income does not. I won’t be able to do more repairs unless our circumstances change significantly. Our necessities consume 75% of my income, with 50% of that housing costs.”

Meg was among scores of home owners from across the US who shared with the Guardian how much they have been struggling with the rising cost of home ownership.

Elevated mortgage and loan interest rates, exploding home insurance premiums and rising property taxes in many parts of the country, as well as higher costs for energy and eye-watering costs for home maintenance works have flipped the dream of owning a home into a nightmare for many Americans.

Homeowners who had assumed their properties would become valuable assets and provide security described their homes as “money pits” and “financial burdens”, and said they felt stuck in homes they could barely or no longer afford, with insurance, taxes, utilities and maintenance now often costing more than people’s mortgages.

“I’ve come to view home ownership and healthcare as destabilizing forces in my life,” said Bernie, a 45-year-old network engineer from Minneapolis. To finance owning his and his wife’s $300,000 home and saving for the future, the couple was foregoing medical and dental treatment of any kind and cutting back on expenses everywhere, he said, despite a pre-tax household income of more than $250,000.

“In four years we plan to sell our home and move full-time into an RV,” Bernie said. “Our house provides no security.”

Amie, 44, a self-employed writer from rural Maine, purchased her $260,000 home in 2020, securing a 30-year fixed mortgage at an attractive 3.5% interest rate.

“Although my mortgage is reasonable, the price for anything else is causing considerable financial stress for my partner and me,” she said.

“Home oil costs are astronomical. The cost to make energy efficient repairs such as new windows, improved insulation, or heat pump installation are beyond our financial reach.

“Quotes to redo our roof range between $65,000 and $140,000, more than I make in a year. Home equity loan interest rates are at 11% now around here, and I’m scared to commit to such a big loan at the risk of losing my house if I can’t pay the monthly fee.”

Property taxes of about $4,000 annually are another worry. “They just went up again,” Amie said. “I recently had to create a payment plan for the electricity bills. If we could build a small holding on this land and get rid of this house I absolutely would. It’s completely overwhelming. I feel trapped.”

Amie’s concerns were echoed by many who said they now wanted to rid themselves of homes that had become too expensive to own and maintain, but felt mostly unable to do so: selling and moving somewhere cheaper, various people said, would force them onto higher interest mortgages; others said they had considered going back to renting, but had concluded this was not feasible either due to exponentially rising rents in many parts of the US.

Stephanie, a 49-year-old psychotherapist, sold her Massachusetts home and moved to Colorado, where she, her sister and her fiance purchased a manufactured home for $130,000.

“It’s all we could afford given our student loans and my temporary disability due to multiple surgeries in seven months,” she said. “I don’t believe it’s feasible for me to own a non-manufactured home again. After I sold my last home, I walked away with only $200k, after 17 years of mortgage payments and large expenditures on upkeep.“

While the resale value of manufactured homes can be very low, Stephanie hopes to evade costly repairs because of her new home’s simplicity, as well as the risk of falling into mortgage arrears in times of illness.

Various older people who had either paid their homes off already or were expecting to be mortgage-free soon said they would likely have to sell and relocate to areas with lower taxes for homeowners, among them 60-year-old Angela, a product manager from a southern Chicago suburb.

“I bought this house 19 years ago for $220,000,” she said. “If I’m lucky, I can sell it for $300,000.” Local house prices, she said, had not gone up by very much in all this time, in part because local property taxes were prohibitively expensive.

“We have this huge tax burden here, it has really gotten out of control. Property taxes increased by $3,100 last year. I now pay $8,800 per year on a home I can perhaps only sell for $280,000. I’m in a better position than most people and make a decent salary today, $170,000.

“But I’m thinking – how do I afford these taxes in retirement? I’m cutting back on everything.”

Anxious about her property taxes eating up funds she will need for her retirement, Angela has been exploring a move to a rural area with a lower tax burden.

“But those very rural areas tend to be more conservative. This nation is so divided, I might be totally isolated in some of these places,” she said.

Older homeowners said they had not anticipated having to meet such rapidly increasing home ownership costs when they had begun planning their retirement finances decades prior.

Jane, 69, a pensioner from rural California, was among people who said their homes had become unaffordable primarily because of soaring insurance rates in their natural disaster-prone areas.

With approximately $100,000 of her mortgage still outstanding on a home that is in a high-risk fire area, her savings are being eaten up by fire insurance costs and she has taken on more credit card debt.

“We bought the house in 2008 for $190,000,” Jane said. “The cost for fire insurance is skyrocketing, my rates jumped from $3,200 a year to $7,886 in October. Maybe I should have planned better, but fire insurance wasn’t a thing when I bought this property. I just did not expect costs to go up like that in my retirement.”

Her fixed social security income of $2,000 also makes it tough to keep up with more expensive propane and electricity. “I had savings, but I only have enough for one more year, $10,000. I don’t know what to do. I’m very scared.”

Jody, a mental health professional from Florida in her 50s, said she was among the many Americans who have given up on insuring their homes, as rates are increasingly unaffordable and coverage is too poor.

Homeowners insurance on her mortgage-free manufactured home would cost $5,000, she said, with an annual deductible of $8,000 and coverage of maximally $60,000 – a lot less than it would cost to replace the home if it was destroyed.

“As a result, I have no homeowners insurance, like many, many of my neighbors,” she said. “No average person, even in a dual income [household], can afford to own a home here anymore. I’m selling and moving back to Michigan.”

When a tornado last year tore through the mortgage-free home of Connie Jones, a 63-year-old graphic artist from Wisconsin, her insurer of nearly 20 years declined to pay for most of the damage in the neighbourhood, forcing the family to take out loans of $19,500 for roof and fence repairs.

“We will have to put off retirement to make the payments,” Jones said. “Owning our home is too expensive and we are considering other options.

“We’re debating whether to sell and move to a more affordable area or keep our property for an inheritance for our daughter. Property taxes are almost $4,000 a year and keep increasing. We really don’t know if it’s all worth it and definitely feel like we can’t balance all the costs of owning a home. We have enough equity [to buy again], however we are leaning more to renting our home in future.”

Patricia, a pensioner in her 70s from rural Massachusetts, was one of several people who said they had been forced to take on significant debt in old age to keep being able to meet their home ownership costs.

Having built her three-bedroom house in 1985 for about $250,000, the property is now valued at between $450,000 and $525,000, an appreciation which, Patricia said, was being largely cancelled out by the ongoing, rising costs of owning the home.

“I was mortgage free from 1985 until 2025, but recently I’ve had to take out a mortgage, as a senior citizen, at around 10% interest to pay off nearly $100,000 of high interest credit card loans I had to pay for the upkeep of the house,” she said.

Patricia now fears she will not be able to downsize eventually, as the proceeds of her home sale, after her property loan is deducted, will be too small to buy again in a small town in the area.

Bill Howard, 67, was among various pensioners who said they had realised that staying in the US was financially no longer possible for them, as their fixed retirement incomes had no chance of keeping up with rising housing costs.

He had tried to hold on to his late mother’s home in Reno, Nevada, which was increasing in value.

“I had considered using a service to find senior roommates, but Reno is in a wildfire zone, my home insurance was rising. I knew I was not going to be able to sustain this,” Howard said. He maxed out several credit cards to fund home repairs in preparation for the sale, and moved to Medellín, Colombia, the day after the house went on the market.

“I took two suitcases with me and started life over at 66 in July 2024,” he said. “It was incredibly painful to leave everything behind. There were many reasons why I wanted to stay; it felt like being forced out.”

Fortunately, Howard now feels happy about the move, and is about to buy an affordable apartment in Medellín. “You go from being scared to death living in the United States to thinking: ‘OK, things will work out, because the cost of living here is lower’ – a few hundred a month instead of thousands.”

Morgan, a 36-year-old associate director of brand partnerships at a fashion company from Philadelphia, only recently got onto the property ladder, but now worries his house purchase may become a permanent financial drain.

“My insurance just increased by $150 per month, and with higher utilities my total monthly home expenses have risen by about $300 to $400. I’ve depleted some of my savings,” he said.

“I’ve had to prioritize discretionary expenses and have cut down the number of times per month I’m seeing a therapist. I have considered selling my house to cut down on expenses, but I only bought a year and a half ago and I’d prefer not to sell yet so I don’t lose money on closing costs.”

The political and economic uncertainty is further adding to Morgan’s concerns.

“I worry,” he said, “that owning a home gives me less flexibility if there’s an emergency, or a financial crisis.”