Few milestones in life mean as much to the American Dream as owning a home. And millennials have encountered the kind of trouble totally befitting their generation, which largely graduated into the teeth of the disastrous post-2008 job market. Just as they entered peak homebuying and household formation age, housing affordability is at 40-year lows, and mortgage rates are near 40-year highs.
The anxiety this generation feels about the prospect of never owning their own home affects their entire perception of their finances and the economy, says Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi.
“If they feel like they’re locked out of owning a home it colors their perceptions about everything else going on in their financial lives,” Zandi says.
Millennials have long been dogged by a brutal housing market. They faced not one, but two, cataclysmic economic events—the Great Financial Crisis in 2008 and the pandemic in 2020. Both of which left them reeling financially and struggling to afford a home. The Great Recession decimated the real estate market as the economy nearly collapsed under the weight of tenuous mortgage backed securities. While the pandemic brought with it a remote work boom that caused millions of citydwellers to flee to the suburbs, sending housing prices soaring.
Ten years ago? Sure. I remember basically everyone insisting there wasn’t any point in even looking for a house until you could break the PMI threshold and how houses were so much more expensive than rent and you would never break even. And I have a few friends who, regardless of what the rest of us said, may have lost their “window” to ever own a home.
These days? It is just the truth that you are fucked. Because unless you can afford to pay considerably over asking price and waive inspections, you are basically fucked outside of unicorn scenarios. And… basically the only way to amass enough wealth to reach that point is to come from money or have a high paying remote job and actively choose to live in the middle of nowhere next to two trailers with confederate flags painted on the walls.
This is the sorta shit the aforementioned disinformation has been spreading.
As someone who recently bought a home in a major city, we had no issues like that.
Everything was by the book, we got an inspection, paid under asking price by a small margin, and now live in it. We did the min 5% down payment, and our household income was only about 70k total between the two of us combined.
Took us about a year and a half to save up the down payment, but we got there.
Right now there’s dozens of homes I’ve seen up for sake for weeks and weeks, this month.
Mayne your specific city just sucks and you need to move somewhere affordable and sane.
Based on the rest of your ranting in this thread reeking of “just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make better life decisions”:
That aside: Some people get genuinely lucky. Others will learn the hard way about WHY that house was cheap (see: Texas and Florida). That doesn’t change the reality. Unless you are going to say the entire housing crisis is “fake news” which, again, wouldn’t overly surprise me based on your other comments.
I own a house, in a major city, in Canada, that I purchased fairly recently.
There are houses in my area that are just as affordable right now.
Are you saying all these for sale signs are fake, it’s some kind of psyop or some shit?
Dunno what to tell you but half decent homes go for about 300k here, closer to mid 200ks if it’s a fixer upper.
Edmonton, Alberta, population of ~1mil.
Pretty much everytime this comes up, any city discussed, in about 5 minutes I’ve been able to find affordable homes for 250k to 300k or so that are decent looking and not too far out in the burbs.
But I guess the home I literally live in and bought isn’t real.
And no, I didn’t get any help from my parents, I didn’t get lucky, and my partner and I aren’t rich, between the two of us our income was about 70k total combined, took us about a year and a half to save up the down payment on our home, while living in the city.
Turns out your experiences don’t equate to everyone else’s.
I’ve yet to see anyone post actual contrary examples.
It’s always built on top of bullshit. Either they dip out, or they post clickbait articles that kick things off with the average or median house prices as their foundation.
That or they give an example city and within minutes I can find decent looking affordable homes and suddenly they have a million excuses for why those affordable homes dont count. You can audibly hear the sound of the goal post dragging across the grass.
1 million is not a particularly high population. Not going to do a deep dive on infrastructure or culture because all of that is incredibly subjective and I am not going to really pretend that my opinion is that of the average Canadian
But I think I see the key. You still think that when Pewdiepie looked into the camera, he was looking into your eyes and speaking to you. He wasn’t. He, like most Personalities, was looking at a spot just above the camera lens to make it look like he was looking into your eyes. And he was saying general stuff to make you feel special.
Not everyone has your life experience. You appear to have gotten incredibly lucky. Good on you. That doesn’t mean everyone else did or that everyone else’s cost of living is low enough that they can save up in just two years on a 70k salary. And, ignoring the reasons people might not want to move out of a region, they likely also don’t have the savings or job skills to be able to pull off that move.
So maybe learn empathy? Or keep screaming about bootstraps and accusing the entire world of lying because people can’t possibly have a different life experience than you.
Math is a universal truth, not an experience.
I’ve yet to see a SINGLE person on this thread provide any concrete examples of locations that truly are as bad as people claim.
And as always, if it starts with using the “average” or “median” household price, reminder that that’s the price of a small mansion, not a starter home, starter home and median home are mutually exclusive.
Median home is the 50% mark, starter homes are closer to the 20% or lower mark. So you’re starting things off about doubled of actual home prices you’d be looking at.
Median vehicle price is a brand new sports car off the lot, remember that. You wouldn’t look at brand new sports cars as the price for your first car, would you? That’s what happens when you use the “median” or “average” price.l as your baseline.
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Opposite.
The examples literally count as supporting exactly what I said.
It’s not complicated.
A sterling example of how anything is possible when you lie.
Everytime this topic comes up, the absolute inundation of people willing to proudly demonstrate their vital lack of reading comprehension and math skills is fantastic.
People are just way more interested in being mad and blaming their problems on everything else, to the degree they will proudly post examples supporting exactly what I have said and proceed to act like they just proved me wrong and really got one over on me.
After many years of this, it’s such a common occurrence I’m shocked when anything otherwise happens.
Feels b4 reals, as always.
People just wanna be mad about shit, but they direct their anger at the wrong shit (I assume this is intentional redirection at times though, better to get all the idiots malding at ghosts so they don’t notice the actual causes of their issues)
The thing that’s funny is the only person your comment really applies to here is you. You’re wholly unable to substantiate a single thing you say yet you keep projecting your inadequacy on others. When someone is able to show that you’re full of shit, you just lie and pretend they said something else.
You saying feels b4 reals has to be the funniest thing I’ve read all day, given all you’ve given us is feels and not a single reals. You’re so far up your own ass yet you still manage to fail to see how full of shit you are.
I lied, this is the funniest thing you’ve said. I originally thought you had zero self awareness but you’ve somehow managed to go negative.