Sharon Kim partnered with her oldest brother and his wife to purchase a home in the suburbs of New York City for around $750,000.
This story is part of CNBC Make It's Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.
Post-grad life looks a lot different than 24-year-old Sharon Kim previously pictured.
For one, she decided to pivot from pursuing a career in fashion to working in the tech industry as a UX designer. And two, she bought a $750,000 home in the suburbs of New York City with her oldest brother and his wife, rather than renting an apartment in Manhattan with roommates.
"I did not ever imagine that I would be living with my brother, with his wife, purchasing a home post-college," she tells CNBC Make It. "I didn't really think it was possible with all the student loans I had and still figuring out my career."
Kim and her brother weren't very close growing up, thanks to a seven-year age gap. By the time she was finishing college, he was about to enter his thirties. However, he still wanted to look after his baby sister, she says, and invited Kim to move into the Queens apartment he shared with his wife after she graduated from Parsons School of Design in May 2023 as a way to save money.
It took some getting used to.
While Kim was grateful to crash on his couch, the trio would have small disagreements about household chores, such as vacuuming and cleaning the kitchen after dinner, she says. Plus, since her brother and his wife converted their den into a makeshift bedroom for Kim, they didn't have a lot of space to spread out in the roughly 700-square-foot apartment.
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It "was only meant for one or two people," she says. "It felt very cramped."
Although they improved their communication and figured out a chore schedule that worked for everyone, they knew that it wasn't sustainable for all three of them to live together in the one-bedroom unit for an extended period of time.
Since homeownership was a shared long-term goal, they began researching what types of homes they would be able to afford by combining their finances.
Kim earned a little over $111,000 in 2022 and around $51,000 in 2023 from her YouTube channel, where she shares lifestyle content, like tips on getting into Parsons and how she made the switch to a career in tech. She also landed a job in UX design in 2023, which pays around $94,000 a year, as a more stable form of income.
Nearly one year, 20 open houses and three rejected offers later, they found their dream home: a three-bedroom, two-bathroom fixer-upper with a finished basement in the suburbs of New York City. Kim asked to keep the name of the town private for security reasons.
"Although we have our differences...knowing that at the end family is family and trying to really set aside our differences to work together has worked out for the best between us," Kim says.
Challenges of searching for a dream home
Although their homebuying journey ended happily, the search started off rocky.
Initially, Kim, her brother and his wife thought they would be to secure a home within their ideal price range with a 3.5% down payment. They weren't picky about location either, looking for "any place that wasn't more than an hour outside of Manhattan."
However, they faced stiff competition from other eager homebuyers. "There was one home we were looking at that had over 100 visitors in the span of two hours for an open house," Kim says.
They also realized a 3.5% down payment wouldn't cut it against other buyers who outbid them or made all-cash offers on the homes they were considering, she says.
The trio knew they needed to make more compelling bids, so they pulled additional money from their savings and investment earnings to bump their down payment offer up to 10%, which came to a little over $77,000. Kim contributed $23,000, about a third of the total.
"We anticipated that things could always be more expensive than we thought, but we didn't realize just how much more we'd have to give," she says. "I definitely felt a lot more stressed."
The increased down payment gave them the leverage they needed.
After several months spent viewing over 200 dwellings online, attending 20 open houses and bidding on three of them, they found the one. In addition to offering plenty of space, the home has an abundance of natural light and an open floor plan. But the main selling point was the safety of the neighborhood, Kim says.
Three months later, they closed on the property for around $750,000 with a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage and an interest rate of around 6.9%. Kim owns 30%, while her brother and sister-in-law own the other 70%. And since they put less than 20% down, a portion of their mortgage payments go toward private mortgage insurance.
"It felt unreal to me, and I felt like I was living in a dream," she says. "It still doesn't feel real to me."
Transforming a house into a home
Ownership was just the beginning for Kim and her brother. Next came renovations on the nearly 70-year-old home.
"We didn't really go for homes that were fully renovated because some of the renovations may not be personalized to our tastes," she says. "We'd rather handpick everything ourselves and do the labor ourselves."
With their apartment lease up in two months, they quickly got to work installing new flooring throughout the home, adding decorative crown molding and replacing kitchen appliances, including the sink and refrigerator.
"Every weekend, we would go to the house...from 7 a.m. all the way to 9 p.m. at night," Kim says. "Between me, my brother and sister-in-law, we did about 80% of the renovations on our own."
While YouTube tutorials allowed them to do much of the work themselves, they hired contractors for more complicated projects, like installing the kitchen countertops.
Kim estimates they've spent around $40,000 on renovations so far. She decided to open a credit card with a 0% introductory annual percentage rate for 12 months to cover her portion of the renovation costs, which came out to about $7,755.
"Considering what we would gain from having a bit of credit card debt for the short term, we still thought it was very much worth it," she says.
Kim has a remaining balance of around $6,995 on that card, but is working to pay if off by cutting back on dining out and purchasing clothes, she says.
How Kim manages her money
Kim contributes $2,500 toward the mortgage each month, which is proportional to her 30% stake in the property.
Otherwise, Kim, her brother and his wife aim to split costs evenly. "For the sake of sanity, we do everything three ways to keep things easy," she says.
Here's how Kim spent her money in July 2024.
- 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 nearly $600 in a high-yield savings account.
She acknowledges that she could probably live with a roommate in Manhattan or Queens for the same amount as her mortgage payment, but enjoys knowing her money is going toward a home she owns. It "feels more worth it," she says.
However, living in the suburbs means being further away from her friends in New York City and New Jersey. "Adjusting my social life to be more in the suburbs has definitely been a bit more of a challenge," Kim says.
Since it takes more effort to coordinate meetups, she likes to splurge on outings such as her birthday dinner, which cost her $100 this year, she says.
"I was able to see all of my closest friends at this Italian restaurant in New York City, and from there we went to a different couple of bars," she says. "Spending the whole night with the people that are closest to me and that I love was definitely money worth spending."
Plans for the future
Looking ahead, Kim hopes to be able to purchase another home with her other brother when he returns from living overseas, she says.
In the meantime, she plans to continue making renovations and upgrades to her current home with her oldest brother and his wife. Eventually, they hope to give the home to their parents when they retire, she says.
"We're really looking out for our parents, who gave up a lot to move from South Korea to here," Kim says. They want to gift the house to them "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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