738
submitted 10 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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.

Archive link

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] pixxelkick@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Missing the other big factor:

There's a large quantity of influencers profiting off of doomsaying and convincing millennial they can't afford homes with bad math and bogus statistics. They churn out clickbait content with unfounded claims, purposefully designed to rile up viewers and drive engagement.

This of course applies to many topics, housing affordability just being one, that turns out drive big engagement by spreading disinformation.

It's actively profitable to lie on the internet nowadays, so lots of my fellow millennials have an extremely soured and warped perspective of reality, because if you keep getting told lies by enough different random strangers on the internet on a topic you aren't familiar with, you'll start to believe it.

Spreading disinformation, especially about serious topics like economics, medicine, politics, religion, etc, needs to be cracked down on more. Posing as a professional online and spreading damaging info on purpose should result in jail time imo.

[-] Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 115 points 10 months ago

I'm not seeing any lies there. I worked my ass off my entire career and still have to go back to school to get a little piece of paper that lets me do what I do in a clinical setting. I've got 2 degrees already, almost a decade of experience and I'm even decently-paid, but thanks to the cost of being alive I was forced into even more schooling to open up a few more doors in the long run. I'm feeling exactly like this article, I've given life everything I've got and the bar keeps getting higher and higher, its soul-crushing, I'm just so tired.

[-] capital@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago

Something I’ve noticed about lemmy is that people here love their anecdotes. Something I miss about Reddit is that data seemed to be held in higher regard.

I don’t mean to single out your comment but this is also a reply to the one above yours.

According to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, homeownership rates for millennials sat at 51.5% in 2022, compared to 56.5% for baby boomers in 1990 and 58.2% for Gen X in 2006.

https://www.investopedia.com/millennial-homeownership-still-lagging-behind-previous-generations-7510642

So maybe lots of articles get written about this because it’s a growing problem but also our personal experiences might not be indicative of a larger trend (although yours seems to be).

[-] MicroWave@lemmy.world 80 points 10 months ago

Huh? If you want to talk data, this is directly from your article:

Substantially fewer of those born between 1981 and 1996 are homeowners today than Gen X and baby boomers were at the same age. Housing affordability is taking a toll on all generations, but the lack of entry-level homes and the dearth of new builds are particularly impacting millennials.

According to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, homeownership rates for millennials sat at 51.5% in 2022, compared to 56.5% for baby boomers in 1990 and 58.2% for Gen X in 2006.

From the end of 2019 to the end of 2022, the median sales price of new houses sold in the U.S. has ballooned over 42% to $457,800. Concurrently, 30-year fixed mortgage interest rates rose from 3.74% to 6.42% largely in response to the Federal Reserve hiking the federal funds rate to fight inflation.

This jump in both the price of new homes and cost of taking out a mortgage have made the last six months one of the most unaffordable times to buy a home since 2006, according to the Atlanta Fed’s Home Ownership Affordability Monitor.

load more comments (33 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (10 replies)
[-] NatakuNox@lemmy.world 67 points 10 months ago

Lol warped perspective? Millennials are the poorest working generation since the great depression. Millennials, the largest working generation ever in America only hold ~3% of the wealth. Our parents at the same age owned ~30%. So Ya shut up

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world 49 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Don't need a professional expert to acertain whether the market is sour. Where I am the cost of renting a one bedroom apartment is around $1800 a month plus utilities on the low end. Mind you I am in a city but is you drive an hour and a half away to the farthest "commutable" burbs you are still looking at rents that are $1400 for essentially a one bedroom basement suite.

There are a lot of people my age I know who are working proper professional jobs double income no kids situations who are never able to save up enough for the initial down payment for a house. Why would they when they face so much precarity? Whatever money they are able to sock aside for a rainy day might only cover a car repair or some time off work if they have a life altering event like a parent dying and paying down chunks of student loan.

They wouldn't be able to handle paying for repairs and maintenance for an actual property while still paying high mortgage. Practically every early millenial I know who didn't start making their nest egg through a job in trades right out of high school and instead spent time in the post secondary system getting a degree got bit.

load more comments (7 replies)
[-] echutaa@programming.dev 22 points 10 months ago

I don’t think this is as important as your making it out to be because it’s not far off from the truth for many. The reality is that a condemned or empty lot in my area starts at 6 times my annual salary. To get something that can be lived in starts around 9 times. That means I need at about a year’s salary to afford the land alone. To be able to live on that lot is closer to 2 years salary. Realistically this won’t happen because the rent in the area is 60% of my income and after required expenses like fuel, insurance, food, etc I can usually save about 5% of my income. Any unforeseen expenses like car repairs eat that away, so I’m left with an annual savings rate of about 3%. At this rate homes will inflate faster than my income will accrue. The math doesn’t work and I suspect it doesn’t for many others.

load more comments (35 replies)
[-] cabron_offsets@lemmy.world 21 points 10 months ago

Yeah bruh a 1500 sf house in my hood sold for $1.3 million.

[-] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 19 points 10 months ago

They aren't lying. The housing market has become incredibly prohibitive due to how property prices have gone up with speculation and demand.

Maybe the older millennials can afford a home eventually, but they'll be 10-15 years behind their parents into achieving that goal.

Even in Canada, in the cheapest city to live in, Montreal, 1 and 2 bedrooms go for about 400k. Houses are over half a million. You can't afford these with our average wages unless you're in a couple and have a very solid down payment.

load more comments (10 replies)
[-] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 18 points 10 months ago

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.

load more comments (13 replies)
[-] Misconduct@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago

Oh shut up and enjoy retiring in your home that you worked half as hard for as the rest of us you privileged turd.

load more comments (8 replies)
load more comments (42 replies)
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
738 points (100.0% liked)

News

23655 readers
2154 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS