Life after college is very different from what Sharon Kim, then 24 years old, thought it would be like.
For one thing, she changed her mind about wanting to work in fashion and now wants to be a UX designer in the tech business. Two, she bought a $750,000 house with her oldest brother and his wife in the suburbs of New York City instead of sharing an apartment with roommates in Manhattan.
She tells CNBC Make It, “I never thought I would be living with my brother and his wife and buying a house after college.” “With all of my student loans and still trying to figure out my career, I did not think it was possible.”
Kim and her brother were not close as kids because they were seven years apart in age. He was getting close to thirty years old when she was finishing college.
He did want to take care of his little sister, though, she says, and he asked Kim to save money by moving into the Queens apartment he shared with his wife after she finished from Parsons School of Design in May 2023.
It took some time to get used to.
She says that even though Kim was glad to sleep on his couch, the three of them would argue about small things like whom should dust and clean the kitchen after dinner.
Plus, the roughly 700-square-foot apartment did not have much room for them to move around because her brother and his wife turned their den into a makeshift bedroom for Kim.
She says, “It was only meant for one or two people.” “It was really squished.”
There was no way that all three of them could live in the one-bedroom apartment for a long time, even though they got better at talking to each other and made a chore plan that worked for everyone.
One of their long-term goals was to own their own home, so they started looking into what kinds of houses they could afford if they pooled their money.
Kim’s YouTube page brought in a little more than $111,000 in 2022 and about $51,000 in 2023.
On it, she posts lifestyle videos like how she got into Parsons and how she switched careers to work in tech. As a more stable source of income, she also got a job in UX design in 2023 that pays about $94,000 a year.
They looked at 20 open houses and three offers that were turned down before they finally found their dream home: a three-bedroom, two-bathroom fixer-upper in the suburbs of New York City. Kim asked that the name of the town not be shared for safety reasons.
Kim says, “Even though we disagree on some things, we know that in the end, family is family and that putting our differences aside to work together has been best for us.”
Challenges of searching for a dream home
They were able to buy a house in the end, but the search was not easy at first.
At first, Kim, her brother, and his wife thought that with a 3.5% down payment, they could get a house in their dream price range. Also, they did not care where it was; they wanted “anything that was not more than an hour outside of Manhattan.”
But there was a lot of competition from people who also wanted to buy a house. “One of the homes we looked at had over 100 people come through in two hours for an open house,” Kim says.
They also knew that a 3.5% down payment would not be enough when other buyers outbid them or made all-cash offers on the homes they were looking at, she says.
The three people knew they had to make stronger bids, so they took extra money from their savings and trading earnings to raise their 10% down payment offer to just over $77,000. Kim gave $23,000, which is about a third of the whole.
According to her, they knew that things would cost more than they thought, but they did not expect to have to pay so much more. “I sure did feel a lot more stressed.”
The bigger down payment gave them the power they needed.
They looked at over 200 homes online, went to 20 open houses, and put in bids on three of them over the course of several months before they found the right one.
The house is very large, has a lot of natural light, and the floors are all open to each other. Kim says that the safety of the neighborhood was the main reason why they bought it.
Three months later, they bought the house for about $750,000 with a 6.9% interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.
Kim owns 30% of the business, and her brother and sister-in-law own 70%. Plus, they paid less than 20% down, so some of their mortgage payments go to PA mortgage insurance.
She says, “It did not seem real to me; I was living in a dream.” “It does not seem real to me yet.”
Transforming a house into a home
The first thing Kim and her brother did was buy a house. The house, which was almost 70 years old, was then fixed up.
“We did not really look at fully renovated homes because some of the changes might not have been made to suit our tastes,” she says. “We would rather pick everything out by hand and do all the work ourselves.”
Since their apartment lease was up in two months, they got to work right away putting in new flooring throughout the house, adding crown molding for style, and replacing kitchen items like the sink and fridge.
Kim says, “Every weekend, we would go to the house from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.” “My brother and sister-in-law, my brother, and I did about 80% of the work ourselves.”
They used YouTube tutorials to do a lot of the work themselves, but for bigger jobs, like putting in the kitchen countertops, they called professionals.
Kim thinks that the improvements have cost them about $40,000 so far. She chose to get a credit card with a 0% introductory APR for 12 months in order to pay for her share of the repair costs, which came to about $7,755.
“We thought it was well worth it because of what we would gain from having some credit card debt in the short term,” she says.
The amount of money Kim still owes on that card is about $6,995, but she is working to pay it off by spending less on clothes and eating out.
How Kim manages her money
Every month, Kim puts $2,500 toward the mortgage, which is equal to her 30% stake in the house.
Kim, her brother, and his wife plan to split the costs equally if that does not happen. “To keep things simple, we do everything three times for our own sake,” she says.
In July 2024, Kim did these things with her money.
- Housing and utilities: $2,876 for her portion of the mortgage, water, oil, electricity and Wi-Fi
- Discretionary: $636 for new bedding, bedroom fixtures and tithe to her church
- Home upgrades: $533 for paint, baseboards and a new showerhead
- Food: $404 on groceries and dining out
- Student loan repayment: $285
- Retirement savings: $216
- Subscriptions: $116 on her gym membership, Spotify, Amazon Prime and Apple Cloud storage
- Phone: $64
- Insurance: $41 for medical, dental and vision
Kim also has a high-yield savings account with almost $600 in it.
She knows that she could probably find a roommate in Manhattan or Queens for the same amount of money as her mortgage payment, but she likes that her money is going toward a house she owns. She says it “feels more worth it.”
But since she lives in the suburbs, she is farther away from her friends in New York City and New Jersey. “Making changes to my social life so that it is more in the suburbs has been harder,” Kim says.
Because planning get-togethers takes more work, she likes to spend more on trips like her $100 birthday dinner this year.
She says, “I got to see all of my best friends at this Italian restaurant in New York City. After that, we went to a few different bars.” “It was well worth the money to spend the whole night with the people I love and care about the most.”
Plans for the future
Kim says that she hopes to be able to buy another house with her other brother when he gets back from living abroad.
While she waits, she plans to keep improving and fixing up her present home with her oldest brother and his wife. She says that they plan to give the house to their parents when they retire.
Kim says, “We do care a lot about our parents; they gave up a lot to move from South Korea to here.” They want to give them the house as a “thank you.”
While she knows she’ll move out eventually, for now she’s happy living with her family — even if it means dealing with occasional squabbles over chores.
“I’m aware a lot of people my age would probably get a studio apartment or would like to live on their own, but personally, I love living with other people,” she says.
“I love just having someone around in the same living situation, so I’m just thankful that I happen to be living with family and people that I trust.”
To anyone who dreams of owning a home one day: Don’t be afraid to take an unconventional approach, Kim says.
“I definitely can’t say I’ve done this on my own, but I think it’s ultimately trying to do what you can within your capacity,” she says. “If you have the capacity to work with your family, I think it’s definitely an option worth considering.”
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