Young couple stops writing rent checks, buys own home

PHOTOGRAPHER: Ryan Zidek

Julia Ingersoll and Jesse Marco, of Saratoga Springs, pose on the back deck of their new house, on Thursday June 30, 2016.

Saratoga County — with a list of superlatives that include highest median rent, highest home cost, and highest income in the Capital Region — can be a daunting place for anyone trying to buy a house.

Young adults just starting their lives together have a particularly hard time finding something they can afford . . . but it can be done.

In 2015, Julia Ingersoll, 26, and Jesse Marco, 28, were like a lot of people in their age group, holding recent college degrees and working good jobs but also paying down student debt, planning their wedding and shelling out $1,200 a month for an apartment. They were aware as they signed each rent check what that $1,200 was equal to.

“In any Capital Region county you can easily get a mortgage for that, or less,” Ingersoll said.

But lacking the money for a down payment, the couple could not buy a house even though they would be able to cover the monthly mortgage payments.

Around Thanksgiving last year, having paid off their student debt and accrued some money, they reached out to Roohan Realty and started the process, with what Ingersoll said were unrealistic hopes — a house in Saratoga Springs at a price they could afford.

“There was no immediate urgency to move,” she said. “We thought we’d sit and wait.”

Roohan agent Palma Pedrick got back to them fairly quickly about a house on the outermost edges of the city.

“We ended up in a ’70s ranch, which wasn’t the sexiest choice, but everything was up to code,” Ingersoll said. Having grown up in a 19th century house in Saratoga Springs, she knew the effort that went into updating and maintaining older structures and is happy they don’t have to do it.

They bought their Patricia Lane house for $265,000 and moved in in February. A pipe sprang a leak in their first week, but there was no lead paint, asbestos or antiquated wiring to deal with.

Ingersoll said many of their contemporaries are not able to make the choices she and Marco did.

“I think we were probably better off than a lot of people,” Ingersoll said. I’m 26 and my fiancé’s 28. People in that age group are all sitting on student loans. No one is sitting on that kind of cash [for a down payment]. We felt we were beyond that. Luckily, we were able to buy a house.”

She works in marketing and public relations and he is a landscape designer; they will be married this autumn.

Part of their motive to buy was to make a long-term commitment to being part of the community.

“We love this town,” Ingersoll said simply.

That sense of place is another obstacle beyond money for many people in the young couple’s age group — if they expect to move once or repeatedly to develop their careers, they’ll be reluctant to buy that first home.

But the money is a problem, too, even for renters who don’t plan to buy.

“Affordable housing is the number one issue after transportation in the county of Saratoga,” said Anita Paley, executive director of the Saratoga County Economic Opportunity Council, an anti-poverty agency.

She noted the shortage of affordable quality rental housing was pointed out by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development in a 2015 Comprehensive Market Analysis: If the five-county area was viewed as a single market, 50 percent of the rental demand would be within Saratoga County, she said.

U.S. Census Bureau estimates for 2010-2014 show Saratoga County with the highest median household income in the Capital Region ($70,581), highest median gross rent ($978 per month) and highest median home value ($230,900). It had the second-highest homeownership rate (71.3 percent, compared with 76.3 percent in Schoharie County).

One comparatively bright spot: Because of that higher median income, Saratoga County had the lowest number of “cost-burdened” renters — those spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing, a traditional measuring stick for financial stress — in the Capital Region at 43.9 percent. Schenectady County was highest, at 53.6 percent.

Reach Gazette business editor John Cropley at 395-3104, [email protected] or @cropjohn on Twitter.