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.

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  • @pixxelkick
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    -274 months ago

    Nah it’s easier to blame everything else in the world instead of take responsibility for one’s own issues.

    Not a new problem, an issue as old as time.

    The amount of people I’ve met that frivilously waste money daily and constantly indulge in retail therapy, ordering out, etc, then complain they can’t afford anything is astronomical.

    If I had a nickel for everytime I heard someone wistfully go “once I get my shit sorted out…”

    Mate, go fuckin do it then, sort your shit out. Stop going to the bar after work, stop ordering mcdonalds, stop smoking weed, and do something constructive with your time.

    Depression sucks, I get it, I’ve been there. But at a certain point you gotta just accept the only person to blame is the self, but that also means the only person who can fix it is the self.