"How to buy a home when you can't afford it" - brought to you by CNN Money

[dividendman]

http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/20/real_estate/vermont-housing-trust/index.html?iid=HP_LN

First two paragraphs:

Ian Boyd started to think about buying a home in his late 20s, as he and his friends completed graduate school, coupled up, and started to think about children.

During that time in 2009, Boyd knew that purchasing a home would pose a financial challenge. He had about $35,000 in student debt and another $5,000 on credit cards. Plus, he made only about $34,000 a year as an academic adviser at a community college in Vermont. In other words, his debts exceeded his income.

Regardless of the any merit of the idea suggested in the article... perhaps Ian shouldn't consider buying a home his first priority.

[Zamboni]

Around here there are some very attractive community land trust programs for a person in his situation.  Nonprofit groups buy properties that are condemned, knock them down, and rebuild something nice.  Then they sell it in a program with an income cap with the agreement that a calculated income cap will still apply upon resale but that the seller will get to keep some of the profit if the value increases; otherwise, the price of even the most modest homes here would quickly outpace the ability of an average person to buy. 

Basically it's a way to keep some neighborhoods from being overrun with absentee slumlords, vacant houses, and unmaintained blight while other neighborhoods become gentrified by the wealthy.  Although it sometimes irks me to see a nice home in this program that I'd like to live in but can't buy because I make too much money, I still think it's a great program.