My Colleagues ‘Cannot Afford To Buy Houses’: How One New Jersey Teacher Bought His Home

In summer 2026, Rob Goldstein finally closed on a new home in Blackwood, NJ.

As a teacher in Camden, NJ, Goldstein had sought a place within commutable distance to work without breaking his budget. 

Deals on other houses he loved fell through. Competition, he said, was fierce. And he landed his new home only after using an escalation clause—a tactic that worked, but at a major cost. 

Goldstein has no illusions about his situation and how special financial circumstances got him in the door in the first place.

“People that I work with cannot afford to buy houses,” he says. “I make OK money, but the cost of living is just crazy.”

A home search that reshaped his life

Goldstein grew up in the Sheepshead Bay, a relaxed neighborhood along the water in southern Brooklyn, NY, and was well. accustomed to life there.

“That’s a vibe that’s very hard to re-create,” he says.

But upon getting married and wanting to buy a home, Goldstein and his then-wife couldn’t find anything in their budget. Their home search took them outside of New York—far outside.

They ended up settling in Cherry Hill, NJ, using money his then-mother-in-law gifted them after a malpractice settlement for the down payment. The couple moved once more just before COVID-19, and the second home they bought quickly rose in value over the years that followed.

Goldstein says the house only got worse the longer he lived in it, and the idea that it had doubled in value still doesn't add up to him.

"How is anything 'doubled'?" he asks. "It just feels like they're out-pricing normal people so that they can sell it to companies who will make it even fancier and sell it for even more."

The next time Goldstein started house hunting, it was after his divorce. He and his ex-wife split the proceeds from the sale of their home, and he used that as the down payment for his next chapter—as Goldstein notes that his life as a teacher could not fund that next chapter alone. 

“I'm only in the position that I'm in because my ex-wife's mom left her a bunch of money,” Goldstein says. 

The challenge of affordability

Homebuyers across the country no doubt feel Goldstein’s pain, but the greater Philadelphia area and other nearby metros are particularly tough for those seeking a new home. 

The U.S. is facing a serious shortfall of home supply, which drives down affordability and amps up competition for what is available. Some metro areas do better than others at building new homes, and some do a better job of ensuring the supply that’s available is also affordable to the median homebuyer. 

As a middle-school teacher in Camden, Goldstein was constrained by both economics and logistics. He wanted to be close enough to work that his commute would be reasonable, while maintaining the lifestyle he had grown accustomed to. 

“l like small-town vibes. I like record stores and comic book stores and nonchain restaurants,” he says. “This area has a lot of that. It just feels a little less chaotic than the city, but I'm also very close to [Philadelphia].”

With Goldstein’s budget, however, he was always going to have a difficult time.

According to the recent Realtor.com® Metro Report Cards—which measure a given area’s affordability, permit-to-population score, and new construction, among other factors—the Philadelphia area (which includes parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland) received a C. This metro area is building homes at less than half the rate you’d expect for its population, and new homes there cost markedly more than existing ones. 

That was probably his best-case scenario: Just to the north, the Bethlehem, PA, area received a D+ for its current affordability and homebuilding pace. A little to the west, it gets much worse: New York-Newark and its surrounding areas received an F, ranking 98th out of 100 metro areas. 

“On a teacher's average income, a mortgage payment on the median-priced listing—assuming a 7.0% 30-year fixed mortgage with 10% down—would eat up 34.3% of a teacher's monthly check in Philadelphia, 38.0% in the Lehigh Valley, and 55.3% in New York City,” says Realtor.com senior economist Joel Berner.

“Teacher income goes the furthest in Philadelphia, but Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton is not too far from the recommended 30% benchmark either.”

The brutal competition is getting worse

Goldstein looked for about a year before finally closing on his new home, hoping to spend no more than $300,000. He ended up buying one for $350,000.

First, he put down an offer on a home that he was “basically committed to,” but found during an inspection that there was structural damage and the home was sinking, forcing him to walk away despite the money he’d spent on the inspection and other fees. Another home was right in his budget, but had a solar contract with decades still on it that would cost $40,000 to buy out of. 

Meanwhile, every showing and open house he attended felt packed and stressful. Some viewings he'd scheduled were canceled the morning of, after the home went under contract the night before.

“I was seeing so many more people at these houses,” he says. “In the bidding war for the first house, it was between me and four other people. And if you find a house you love, but other people are not interested in it, there’s a reason. It’s just not a surface-area red flag, but there is one.” 

Goldstein finally found a home he loved in a great location and decided he didn't want to lose it. He offered $350,000 and added an escalation clause, which would automatically beat any competing bid by $2,000, up to a ceiling of $375,000.

No competing offers came in. But because the clause is written into the contract, the seller and their agent could see how high he was willing to go, and Goldstein says that knowledge caused them to negotiate harder on other terms of the deal.

Balancing present life against an uncertain future

Unfortunately, for those seeking a home in Goldstein’s preferred metro areas and price range, things are as good as they’re likely going to get. 

“Affordability in these three metros is not likely to make lasting improvements in the long term because there simply is not enough new-construction activity to grow the supply of homes fast enough,” says Berner.

“Each of them permits new homes at a rate one-half or less of what would be expected for their population based on national per capita construction levels, so new households being formed will likely continue to outpace the number of new homes being delivered.”

The supply side of the equation is already bad enough without taking into account the other costs of homebuying.

Goldstein notes that he spent thousands of dollars on inspections and other fees that were a necessary part of the process. 

“You’re going to need more money than you think you’re going to need before the actual sale date, if you want to be taken seriously,” he says. 

Having cash on hand is tough on a teacher’s salary, Goldstein says. 

“It’s really, really hard to build and replenish savings,” he says. “I got a raise this year—everyone else that I worked with did. But our school is low on money, so they gave everyone a 2% raise. But then the cost of our healthcare went up, so we all got a raise and we all make less money this year than last year.”

And if you have a financial emergency during your homebuying journey, you’re going to need to find creative solutions beyond spending money to fix it. 

“In May, my car died. I told my Realtor® that I’m going to have to figure out a way to get a new car, and she said, ‘You absolutely cannot get a new car until you buy a house,’” Goldstein says. “Her advice was to just wait and then buy the car in cash. So that’s what I did. I had co-workers driving me to work, I relied on others to take me to open houses and do all the things I needed to do.” 

He did what he needed to do, and now he has his home. But the process left him feeling skeptical about what it means for most homebuyers, especially those who are working class, in America today. 

“If you have a bad credit score, no one will even talk to you. You might as well just be dead,” he says. “The system is designed to help the people who have money, and keep the people who are struggling to earn it struggling.”