Remember when your parents told you you if you didn’t work hard and stay in school you’d be living in a cardboard box under a bridge? Well…

By: Sophia Green-Heutzenoeder

Selling your house right now is sounding pretty good right now, right? Finding another home though? Forget about it. Nowadays if you want to look at buying a house, the cheapest you’re going to find is a dollhouse for around $299,000. A house worth maybe around $25,000 will be listed for $50,000 and then sold for $100,000. It sounds like I’m joking, but I’m not. You could make cardboard boxes into a home and list it for around $15,000 and have it sold within a week.

Now I’m going to let you in on a little secret on how to actually afford a cheap house. How you find a cheap house is by building your own house! That’s right and only 2 easy steps for YOU to be a new homeowner. First, you get a couple of rolls of plastic wrap. The second step is to go out into the forest and find four trees relatively close to each other and start wrapping the plastic wrap around them. Then you’ll have to find some long thin sticks to make a triangle roof or a flat roof, and then you’re all set!

If those options don’t sound good, that’s totally fine! Renting an apartment is another way to go, although it’s a bit pricey as well. The rent of an apartment is going to cost you around $2,100 a month, and for you to live there you can’t do any of the following: smoke, have pets, have visitors, eat, talk, or blink.

“When I was your age, I already owned a house.” Yeah, because it cost $6. Your down payment couldn’t buy a Frosty at an airport Wendy’s today. The last time houses were actually affordable was when college degrees were actually useful. Have you scrolled through Zillow lately? I don’t know if that’s the price of a house or if the realtor’s cat walked across the computer and sat on the zero key. The only way to own a house now is to patiently wait for Mr. Beast to give you one. “By the time I was your age . . .” By the time I’m your age the sun will have exploded.