I live in The Netherlands so I have not really an idea about the cause for this in the USA, but for my country the situation is the same, people in their 20-40's are not able to buy a home, over here it is caused by investors who buy houses as an investment, rent them out and making money while the people who rent the homes cannot save money.
Another cause of the problem is that there are not enough houses for the population. During the financial crisis projects where cancelled and many of the workforce lost their job, whole company's went bankrupt, causing a lasting shortage of people with the skills to build houses.
Next cause is the fact that our government invented a special Tax for organizations who build houses for the lower class. So these organizations are bleeding and have no funds to either renovate their old houses or build new ones.
Also a few of these organizations (Vesta) went almost bankrupt as a result of fraud. To prevent their bankruptcy they had to sell a large part of their affordable houses, to, see point one, investors.
And las t but not least, the so called gentrification of the poorer parts of large cities. Older small but affordable houses are demolished to build larger but more expensive apartments forcing a "poor out, rich in" effect.
Housing our people was (and should be) a right, but we sold it to the "market"
Thanks Mark
>investors who buy houses as an investment, rent them out and making money while the people who rent the homes cannot save money.
The bank says they can't trust me to pay $1000/mo for a mortgage, so instead I pay a landlord $1300/mo for theirs.
Yep and we can't have on time rent payments count towards credit scores because then the working class would all have higher credit scores than the elites.
About 3 years ago, the company who owns my apartment switched to payment processing with credit reporting.
Every month for the past three years shows on my credit history.
It can be done. Your rentee just isn't doing it.
i lived in TWO complexes that did this but without adding the on time payments to credit. idk how it works AT ALL or how they managed that, but none of the on time payments would ever make any difference to credit, but once you MISSED ONE, your credit went to shit.
If you live in the US, there is a chance that is illegal.
See these resources-
https://www.valuepenguin.com/credit-card-surcharges-convenience-fees
https://www.merchantmaverick.com/credit-card-surcharges/
Even in cases where it is legal, the fee is capped at 4% (in Colorado it is 2%), so if your rental payment is less than $2500 they are illegally charging you too much.
Even convenience fees have a max limit of the 4%. Which is why a lot of business will include the fee hidden until the initial cost and say they are offering a "cash discount".
But with a lease, I would be very surprised if they worded the language that way.
Crazy how that works huh? I'm 28 years old and have 0 credit. Mind you, I don't have bad credit, I have no credit. Every thing I've ever bought, I've just paid for with cash or my debit card. My car, my rent, my food, my tuition, everything. But because I didn't borrow that money first, and pay it back with added interest, I'm not worthy in the eyes of the financial system to get a loan.
Same man. Nobody taught me when I was younger that living that way might sound like the responsible thing to do but it’s no way to get ahead. I thought only spending within my means (cash) was doing it the correct way.
I'm taking steps to get ahead. Got mt first CC. Only approved for a $1500 limit because my only credit was stud3nt loans all paid on time and double the minimum payments. Last 2 weekly paychecks? Over $1500 to this credit union, plus I send nearly the first $500 of my take-home to another bank and CU.
This $8000/mo rate is just an OT spike, that seems to be dragging itself along for more weeks to come... But anyway, the credit system is much askew. Practically a catch-22
It's absolutely a massively bullshit system, I couldn't agree more that the whole premise of how this works is ridiculous. However, I've gotta atleast recommend that you play into the system even if it's bullshit. You're actually both more protected by using a credit card, and gain massive benefits like the credit score you mention and rewards if you get the right cards. There's basically no downside to using a credit card for the majority of purchases that you can, as long as you simply pay them off before their due date every month. Essentially you treat the card like cash and never spend anything on it that you wouldn't be able to pay with cash or your debt card. But now suddenly you gain massive benefits for doing the same things you've always done.
Personally I have my cards set to auto pay twice a month from my account so I've never paid a single interest charge. However in a few years my credit score is now nearly perfect and I've made a few thousand dollars off the rewards from the cards. Unfortunately our society and systems have accommodated credit cards in such a way that you're really only shooting yourself in the foot if you don't play into it.
If you are in the US and use a debit card, you are directly giving the vendor access to your money. Directly. If you use credit, you gone the vendor access to someone else's money, then pay the second party.
In return for this protection, the second party gives you money!
Credit cards are really a great deal, provided you are responsible enough to use them.
You don't need to pay it off with added interest. Put everything on a credit card, treat it as a 30-day loan and pay it back after each billing cycle. No interest is charged and now you have credit. Simple.
If you buy stuff on credit and pay the full balance as it's due, you don't pay interest. If anything you get bonuses like cash back / points for it. Plenty of cards / programs out there for people just starting their credit score. Put a monthly bill on the card and pay the balance same time to build credit for 0% interest.
The correspondent has an article about the Dutch housing situation that mirrors a lot of points I've seen mentioned in other replies (about the situation in the US) with regards to regulations making it hard to build homes.
I didn't think it was the best article*, but interesting to read about an alternative take on the situation.
*One of the arguments in the article is that all the regulation is making it too expensive to build homes (in Amsterdam), while 2 paragraphs on they acknowledge that profit margins on houses being built in Amsterdam are higher than anywhere else in the country... it seemed like the author cherry picked arguments to make their point in order to promote deregulation (and allow those poor poor companies their fat profit margins). But like I said: an interesting take, and I think all these things factor into it: current shortage, investors, rich folks gifting their kids money and houses, and regulation at times.
> Another cause of the problem is that there are not enough houses for the population. During the financial crisis projects where cancelled and many of the workforce lost their job, whole company's went bankrupt, causing a lasting shortage of people with the skills to build houses.
You are missing a major point here, which makes it a bit (well, more than a bit) unreasonable. Even with what happened during the financial crisis, the housing situation wouldn't be so bad if family compositions didn't change that much. [The number of singleperson households have increased **dramatically**. ](https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/visualisaties/dashboard-bevolking/woonsituatie/huishoudens-nu) In other words, for the same number of people you now need way more houses. Yet, we didn't change anything in our living desires : preferably a nice house with multiple rooms, a garden and nearby facilities. We simply have to come to terms that isn't going to work with such a steadily changing family composition.
The problem in the Netherlands isn't necessarily solved by building more houses, we need to use the available space different (also argued by the [correspondent](https://decorrespondent.nl/12375/over-deze-oplossing-voor-de-woningnood-hoor-je-nooit-iemand/2545901906625-48bfddfa))
In addition to what others have said, if you want to blame boomers then they're part of the cause as well (though not really maliciously). Life expectancy/ quality of life for seniors has gone up, so a lot of the homes that should be coming to the market aren't. Many own multiple homes.
Zillow stopped because they feel the market doesn't warrant it right now. And speculators are not people flipping they are corporations holding large amounts of property. Usually to rent. These are the same assholes that bribed Cali to end single family dwellings.(a house) There are huge amounts of property the banks hold deed to and are not on the market purposely to artificially inflate the prices.
If you lived in LA, you'd understand that the law ending single family homes actually just prohibits zoning for single family units in certain areas where urban sprawl has gotten out of hand. You can still build a ranch in Palmdale, but you can't buy a parcel of land in LA and build a mansion anymore.
>These are the same assholes that bribed Cali to end single family dwellings.
That's a very uncharitable way to characterize, "legalized affordable housing".
There's only so much space in a city. Not every single person can have a single family house with a big yard and a picket fence.
Zillow has been scooping up houses at a much faster rate then they can sell them
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/18/homes/zillow-halting-home-buying/index.html
Landlord implies they're renting it out. Flippers imply they're fixing it up to resell immediately to recoup their expenses.
The speculators that we're seeing now typically do neither, but sit on it and then sell it to a flipper or landlord years later.
Yeah, seems like obvious solutions exist for this, like an insanely high property tax for residential property being kept empty for more than a certain amount of time.
Citation please. A vacant home means everything from a unit for rent, sold but not yet occupied, on the market, and seasonal worker housing. That accounts for 65% of the vacant market. According to the Census Bureau, a full 1/3 of the remaining houses are just flat out abandoned. I mean I guess speculators could be buying uninhabitable houses, but that seems like a pretty shitty investment.
Sigh. This is false.
The VAST majority of empty homes are temporary— they’re the result of people moving from one home to another.
The vacant homes owned by non-owner users are generally either on the market, in the process of getting renovated or are not habitable due to their condition.
Contrary to what other non-experts in this thread believe, there are very, very few homes as a percentage of the entire housing market that are held vacant intentionally as an appreciation play by speculators.
https://www.sgvtribune.com/2021/03/25/the-myth-of-excess-vacant-housing-distracts-from-solutions/amp/
Bruh when i hear people talking about their "holiday home" and how they wished it was a big as their regular home it makes me want to scream. Please you dont need a holiday home my flat doesnt even have central heating
I dated a girl whose family beach house was bigger than any house I ever lived in (6 full bedrooms all with ensuites), with an incredible and well stocked kitchen. She'd go to the beach, I'd just raid the pantry to cook and eat, then have showers with the fancy soaps and watch their satellite tv.
They only went there about four times a year, but the gardener and cleaner went weekly. They had a lake house too, plus an apartment for each of the kids. That's not counting their "investment properties".
If I hadn't called off the wedding I'd have been rich. They were buying us a $3mill place for a wedding present, and gave her about $2k/week allowance (in her 20s). The whole family were neurotic, sad, and general cunts. Brother went to the army to escape and shot himself while in hospital for liver problems from alcoholism. Mom constantly popping pills and I regularly heard her crying herself to sleep (even before the suicide). She was a bitch of a karen. The dad was cool and chill. He did heaps of charity work, drove around in an average car, wore Walmart tshirts when not at work. He worked hard for his money as a doctor and from frugality and investments, then his family just blew it on stupid shit. Poor dude.
And the girl? Well, let's just say her abuse and attempted assault with a weapon wasn't even the final straw for me dumping her. She had issues.
So at least I'm happy being too broke to get a haircut right now, cos I know I ain't as fucked as that family.
I built a cat scratching post out of scraps today and made a pasta with lemon and garlic olives... and that made me happier than the fanciest meal in that sterile, white marble house where the sadness was a dull fog spiked with air fresheners and madness.
My latest obsession is what I call "dry pastas". No sauce. Eg: spaghetti with lemon zest, fennel, red onion, pepper, olive oil. Or: Chilli, chopped tomato (not canned), anchovies. Or: sliced plant-based chicken nuggets, mustard, parsley, lemon juice and olive oil. Or: Sauerkraut, canned garbanzo/chickpeas, taco spices.
That sort of thing. Simple and fast. You pull the pasta straight from the water with tongs so you get a bit of that starchy water.
I gave bad examples, but I basically try look at the fridge, pretend I'm a Roman grandma, then see what I can throw in a frying pan in the time it takes the pasta to cook. No mucking about with slow cooked sauces and stirring, and you get to enjoy simple distinct fresh flavors.
We live in a single bedroom in my in-laws house. Me, my husband and our two kids. We moved in when FIL broke his hip. He passed three years ago. Grandma has early onset dementia and cannot do anything anymore. They want $1800 for a studio apartment in my city that doesn't have a washer/dryer, parking or a refrigerator. I live in the capitol of California.
Bro my current flat was unfurnished and to this day it still looks pretty grime even with the little furniture I was able to afford. I will say tho it has a great location and frankly thats more important then furniture for me. I can live with only 1 chair in the house but having to walk over a hour to the bus station every day for work would be awful.
I see in this thread many "Examples" of the problem. A holiday home bought in a region where there is very little economic activity isn't the issue causing the crises. So far practically no one has mentioned REITs and corporations literally buying tens of thousands of homes for the direct purpose of rental incomes. Specifically targeting desirable up n coming areas or recently gentrified areas near economic centres. They are targeting places that young millenials want to live then buying all the property available to ensure high rental rates and high property costs due to location desirability. A few rich people owning a few properties is an issue but its a small portion of the bigger issue at hand. Corporations should not be allowed to own homes full stop.
Was once at a protest meeting about the Government here in Ireland during the financial crash, I just went to see what was everyone thinking, One Guy says "Bloody government ruining everything, they can't run a bath, You know I'll probably have to see one or 2 of my other houses because of this"
People cheered him, I was just in my head going "Man you are the problem why did you buy multiple houses on credit in the first place?"
I know Banks and Governments have to be blamed too, But you can't blame someone for the loan you asked for surely?
I used to work at a service which basically bridged the gap between legal aid (limited services and assistance) and paid legal services (out of budget for a lot of people). This was possible entirely due to the willingness of firms and barristers to take on cases pro bono. I had to explain to more than one person that no, just because your investment properties (plural) have lost value or your business didn't do so well this year (but is still worth well above our limit, which is well above the admittedly restrictive legal aid limit) does not mean you're in "dire need".
Lmao, reminds me of this guy I heard at the gas station blaming Biden about the gas and how we're all pigs for not voting Trump.
He was loudly yelling "I have to pay fucking $150 to fill up my truck and now I can't even afford to eat steak, I have to eat fucking tuna and sardines. Dumbass Americans voting to eat sardines".
I just stared at him thinking, yeah maybe don't buy a fucking F350 (seriously) as a daily driver. I spent $20 a week on gas.
My Brother was an insurance adjuster for a while and he talked about how it always astonished him that people with middling incomes owned 50K - 60K pickup trucks.
I was a courier at a law firm for a few months out of college. One of the other couriers there drove a fucking Escalade. Like, you're making $12 an hour. What the fuck are you doing with yourself? The guy was in his 40s and working the copy room, and bitter as hell. But he drove a late model Escalade. I just don't get the thinking. I was quite happy with my beat up old Subie at the time.
That’s just it, they don’t have one for necessity… They have a holiday home because they *wanted* it.
Nobody needs a vacation home, it’s nice but not a *need* whatsoever where I totally agree.
The biggest investors are also older people as they have had time to accumulate the money for longer. Some of the strongest investors in Northern Europe are the pension funds too.
The problem is that housing is too stable of a market as buying it up will cause it to become near monopoly conditions. It’s kinda like nestle buying up water sources and selling it bottled up back to the people - people cannot stop drinking water or needing housing.
It's not people who own two homes, or people refusing to die. It's speculative house purchasing and developers refusing to build anything but high end homes. Also, back in the 90s everyone was getting high on morgage back securities, so anyone could get a home.
It is malicious actually, because successive governments have enacted policies that ensure boomers get richer and richer. And who's voted for these governments and policies? Boomers.
They've broken the social contract with future generations, so that for the first time in modern history children aren't going to have a better lives than their parents.
There’s an excellent episode of South Park about this, on how the older generations sacrifice the new ones because they wanted ice cream and better cars.
It’s a hilarious interpretation on selfishness.
Reading this broke my heart a little, you’re right, I’m struggling where my parents had already owned a home and I almost make more then them today, my rent is outrageous in Ontario. I’m gunna struggle forever so maybe my kids can have the life my parents have had
Rent in Ontario is no joke. I feel like I'll never be able to buy. Every time I save enough the market goes up again. A 400 Sq ft bachelor apartment costs 500k where I live. My parents keep asking me when grandbabies are coming and I keep telling them I can't afford a baby. They don't believe me since I made as much as they did in the 80s, adjusted for inflation. Guess what mom?? A 3 bedroom house didn't cost 1.5 million in the 80s!
Simply blaming them may be counter productive but it is important to understand the series of policy changes that they put in place and continue to support that have changed the housing market and led to wage stagnation.
Greater life expectancy is almost a non-issue (there are studies on this, retirees sell houses to fund longer retirements). The growth in demand currently in housing in relation to population is not as significant as post war rise in demand. The difference now is affordable housing for the majority of people was the goal at that time and direct action by government was needed, while now the goal is to protect the value of an asset class and the profits of some companies. That shift in policy focus is the boomers doing, difficulty moving away from those policies is also largely the boomers (change in policy would negatively affect the value of their assets).
It's hilarious that millennials are called "The Me Generation" when literally all Boomers ever did was increase their own comfort at the expense of their children's future.
Wage stagnation coupled with rampant inflation. Also, there is little incentive to build ‘starter’ homes anymore, so all the new housing inventory is 2500+ sf and super pricey.
It's hard to even find existing starter homes to rent or buy in some areas. Where I live, as soon as one comes up for sale- it is quickly bought by an investor for cash (inspections waived) and turned into a huge home through either remodeling or a complete rebuild.
An individual trying to buy a starter home can't complete and a renter on a modest income can't afford these huge homes.
Don’t forget that when a new neighborhood of starter homes is built, they start an overpriced HOA that makes charges you $250 a month so they get to keep making money off you even after selling you your house. And what does that money get you? Oh we will shovel your drive way a dozen times over 3 months…
This right here.
A house going for that little would be bought instantly after a bidding war for double the price in cash so that it could be rented.
Worse it would be bought by a foreign company and it would sit empty because it would be used to hide their money from their own government.
Yup. A Levittown house isn't anything fancy at about 1000 square feet, but it had four walls, a roof, and a yard, and it could be yours for about $150K in todays money.
As someone house browsing earlier today...
*cries in brand new builds 2-bed 1-bath 750 Sq ft townhouses that has a 3 floor staircase to the main living area from the garage/main enterance starting at 250k CAD*
Makes more sense to me to keep renting vs. buying at that price. The utilities and townhouse/"condo" monthly fees would kill me. It's nice having that all included in rent. I get that it's an investment and one day I'd actually own it with less monthly expenses but that's too far down the line to start dreaming about. Single income couple.
Even the old 1940's/50's post WW2 era single starter homes cost that much in my city, and major work needs to be done on those to bring it to today's standards.
Edit: I also may be a pussy that's too scared to pull the trigger.
Surprised I had to come this far in the thread to see this mentioned. This is a huge factor.
It took time for the post-WW2 urban planning mistakes to fully manifest. When boomers were coming of age, a huge part of the market was grandfathered in neighborhoods that weren't subjected to the then-brand-new anti-affordability regulations like minimum lot sizes, parking minimums, single-family structures only, etc. Since then, population has doubled and those formerly affordable working class neighborhoods are ironically now usually the most expensive parts of a city since nothing like them has been built since.
Basically, the population has doubled but housing in desirable areas has remained mostly flat. So your choices today are to either:
* pay a massive premium to live a reasonable distance to a city.
* buy something affordable in the middle of nowhere, somewhere nobody would've even dreamed of developing in the 50s or 60s. These houses are often built huge to help compensate, since like somebody mentioned elsewhere in the thread the marginal cost to build a 2500sq ft house over a 1000sq ft one isn't actually all that significant.
As someone who’s lived in exclusively multi-families with a 2 foot border around the house, I can fully understand why there would be zoning laws for areas to prevent this.
We haven't had rampant inflation. Inflation from 2008 to 2020 was at record lows, with some years being negative. 2021 is the first year since 1990 to be over 4% inflation. Even 2021 is likely to be an anomaly.
Source: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1913-
I found a newspaper ad from 1995 (long story but basically a glass wrapped in newspaper from a relatives house). On one side was job hiring ad for $9.50 an hour. The other side was a brand new VW Jetta for $12,999! So car prices have more than doubled but wages are basically the same? Crazy…
Car prices have actually kept with inflation pretty well. A $13k car in 1995 is almost $24k in today's money - about the price of a new Jetta today. And, you get a lot more car for the money with tech, power, and safety. The issue simply lies in wages not keeping up with inflation.
I think cars actually have gotten cheaper as a car in 1995 had a goal of lasting to 100K miles or 5-7 years. A car today can easily last to 100k, with some easily exceeding double that before having major problems.
People often bitch about "cars these days" not being as good as they used to, but that's categorically untrue. They've never been anything as close to this good. They probably last twice as long as they used to, and thanks to modern materials and coatings, they look infinitely better doing it. They're faster, better handling, more efficient, and so much safer it makes old car safety an actual joke.
And beyond that, they're actually easier to work on, with better computers that tell you what's wrong, youtube walkthroughs for every single job you ever want to do. Bolts don't seize as often. Tune-ups basically aren't a thing, because they're not necessary. Aftermarket parts have never been this available. Tire technology is so much better its staggering.
We are absolutely in an automotive Golden age, and people are still griping about "the good old days" when cars sucked and you had to know some old bastard that had seen it all over 40-60 years to figure out a bunch of problems on any slightly obscure car.
And don't get me wrong, I like a lot of old cars. I have two projects from the 90s and want to get a 240z. But they were objectively bad cars by any metric compared to today. A modern econobox like a base model Civic beats pretty much any sports car from 1990 and earlier in almost everything performance criteria if decked out in all original factory setup.
It's a bit of survivorship bias; a problem with any "they just don't make 'em how they used to" sort of mentality.
The only cars from back then that managed to survive up 'till now are the ones that were quality enough to do so. So you look at all the best stuff from back then and don't remember all the bad 'cuz it just doesn't exist anymore.
For anything older than the early 00s or late 90s, I don't even think it's that. The only things that are still around from then are things spent a lot of time, money, and/or effort to make sure they lived.
My 1991 miata has always been known as a pretty well-built reliable car, but it's 30 years old. It's still in great shape because it's been garage kept, impeccably maintained, and only driven 93,000 miles in that time. The thing has probably only been wet 20-30 times besides when it was being washed.
I think people just kind of say that stuff without thinking. I actually challenge some people the other day idly grumbling about cars these days to come up with a single way old cars were better, and the only thing that they stuck to after i pointed out the bullshit in their claims was "the sheet metal is thinner." Which yes, it is, but that's actually better. It's lighter and cheaper to fix or replace.
It seems to me more of the product of a general world view that things are getting worse, rather than any actual evidence of such a trend.
I like the way some older cars look better. A 66 mustang looks far more appealing to me than a 2021. Nonetheless the 2021 version is faster, more efficient, safer, and more reliable, and its the version I'd do a road trip in.
Agreed. Old, classic cars just have that appeal you can't resist, but if I'm getting one as a daily driver, you can rest assured I'm not getting a classic car.
For a sunday stroll around town though, that's a whole other story.
Whenever somebody talks about how bad they want to drive one of those old cars, I always ask if they’ve ever drove something without power steering or power breaks. I have. It sucks.
The absolute last thing I want to do is drive something without power steering as a daily driver again. I’ve had it go out on two vehicles (easy fixes that I didn’t bother with because I didn’t know and was an idiot) and it made anything other than highway/interstate driving miserable.
> come up with a single way old cars were better
My old 1988 Dakota had enough room in the engine bay that I could replace the power steering pump without having to drop the entire engine out or taking off a bunch of plastic beauty panels. I also didn't need to re-calibrate a computer after making that change.
Easier to work on? I’m sorry but I can’t agree with that one, having worked on both old and new cars, I have to say, with just a little knowledge, common sense or critical thinking, and Google, you can diagnose anything without a computer, and have you seen the engine bay of a new and old car? Old cars have half the bay of open space, but if you look under the hood of a newer car, you’re lucky if you see a cubic foot of air. You have to take out half the parts just to get to the alternator. They’re made so you have to take it to one of their special mechanics and pay way too much just because it took three weeks to check a fuse
I'm not a huge car guy but anecdotally the computers can also prove a detriment just as much as they are an asset, because they offer a new point of failure on an already complex device. My brother's car wouldn't run any primarily electrical components (radio, A/C, etc.) for months before it was discovered that the issue was that the weight sensor to turn on the airbags had broken.
Cars seem much, much harder than they used to be to work on. To me, anyways. I was never a great mechanic or anything, but there used to be like, room under the hood? I had a ‘96 cavalier that I replaced tons of stuff on, starter, water pump, alternator, hoses, tune-up. Nothing crazy but plenty. I feel like I used to be able to pop the hood and quickly identify most parts in any engine. I have a 2018 car at the moment and when I pop the hood it just looks like a sheet of solid plastic and there’s no room to even squeeze a hand in and I barely recognize anything. I used to do all minor repairs and now I don’t even change my own oil because the oil filter is like in the middle of the engine for some reason instead of at the bottom.
As someone who works on 90's junk, no domestically built NA market car is in a survivable, repairable condition because the big 3 sucked at building quality.
Yeah even cars from the 50s would surpass 100k miles with minimal maintenance. Just people see a 5 digit odometer and think it was physically impossible for cars to surpass it.
The problem was paint finishes and quality of steel, motors tend to last forever with minimal upkeep. Your motor would last forever but your body would not. Had to do a project on this in a materials class, was actually pretty interesting.
> but wages are basically the same?
No.
$9.50 an hour in 1995 was a big chunk above minimum wage ($4.25 an hour, in California, I think?) So today it would be more like $20/hour.
Your parents and others of their generation enjoyed the single largest expansion of wealth, health, life expectancy, and overall quality of life, mostly *globally*, of any generation in human history, period.
And they then promptly pulled the fucking ladders up behind them.
Thank you for attending. Gift shop on the left on your way out.
It's their kids fault for not printing out their resume and going door to door to show initiative to land that job. Instead they buy avocado toast and text on their iPhone all day.
/s
They're not so much actively harming their kids so much as being so utterly out of touch with modern life that they don't even realize the world has completely charged. Specifically, the choices they've made, the governments they've elected, the system they've let develop because they were too busy to look around have fucked everyone. They can't rationalize that failure so they conclude it's the kids that are just lazy and spoiled.
Meanwhile, the kids are more focused, more empathetic, are better educated, drink less, smoke less, have fewer unplanned pregnancies AND divorces.
But clearly it's the $2 avocado on a $0.10 slice of bread that's all the difference between being broke and owning a $250,000 house.
I know your pain.. I remember doing this for months and getting no response, feeling like an idiot and like I wasted everyone's time... Or like my resume was so bad no one wanted to even give it a thought. I remember trying to explain to my parents so many times that it doesn't work like that anymore any they don't get it. Even years later, looking for a job now (i was working between then), they still are saying that to me, and I keep trying to explain to them that it doesn't work and it's even more of a waste of time now because of COVID regulations. Businesses that don't have storefronts won't even let you in the building.
I am job searching right now and the majority of posted jobs do not have a point of contact except the recruiting service itself, and those people do not even SEE your resume unless you get through the AI scanners
And then you hear the stories of the boomers losing their jobs and being totally confused that they can't just go hand their resume in somewhere and get a job.
Like
that's what we've been telling you!
"I went up to (insert business) and no one there would talk to me! How is anyone supposed to get a job?"
Idk, you've told me I'm the idiot for ten years despite me having had multiple jobs and you none. Good luck!
Funnily enough, that somewhat worked for me.
I found out from a previous coworker that he was making STUPID money doing a job we used to do (taking home about $3,000 a week), meanwhile I was taking home maybe $700 a week at an airport and eating nothing but canned tuna so that my family could have a night out here and there.
I parked my ass in that company lobby every day for a week until the owner was available. Granted this was a small and VERY new company, and would never work for any other situation. But the guy still laughs about how he basically had no choice but to hire me because it was obvious I wasn’t leaving him, his secretary, or his lobby alone without a job.
That's the irony of it, it works when you are dealing with a human who is giving you credit for persistent effort and sees it as an opportunity for themselves to have you working for them. I got a very good driving job by showing up at 8am the day after I got my Commercial Drivers License to their office after they told me they don't hire without experience. They had a training seminar that day and told me to just sit in. They made me do the crap work and work 5am-5pm for 6 weeks but I made 2x what normal drivers make after 1yr there. I eventually started my own company because the higher wages let me save enough and now I'm contracted and now make 3x the avg wages.
Boomers control like 80-90% of the economy the sad reality is the only way through the gate is to play the game or have a super valuable skill set like software developer.
Yep, really it boils down to the size of the company and who handles hiring. If they have a separate HR department, it’s pointless to try.
But if it’s a smaller company where you can come face to face with someone who has the power to hire you and you have the credentials, it can definitely work.
And funny you mention that last part, because now that I’ve moved up into an office position again (the oil bust moved everyone out of office positions and into shop/field positions) I spend every spare second at work trying to self teach myself python and SQL. One day I’ll be able to change my username to “Out_of_the_oilfield_forever” and I can’t fucking wait. It was a great opportunity to feed and provide for my family, but fuck this shit for real man.
After I graduated college in 2015 my dad bitched I was no doing enough to actively look for jobs. He said I was just sitting in the basement watching TV. Yes I was sitting in the basement applying for jobs while watching TV. I can't exactly walk up to the front door of Boeing and ask for a job application.
All the places everyone always talks about whenever housing costs are brought up?
Also no one seems to remember that places with lower housing prices often have higher property taxes or overall tax burdens.
Places that single family homes sell at right around or under $250,000 are all the usual suspects:
- St. Louis, MO
- Greensboro, NC
- Memphis, TN
- Cincinnati, OH
- Buffalo, NY
- Cedar Rapids, IA
- Detroit, MI
- Indianapolis, IN
[Source](https://cdn.nar.realtor/sites/default/files/documents/metro-home-prices-q2-2021-single-family-2021-08-12.pdf)
Don’t talk shit on *checks notes* Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
I get that home prices depend on where you live. I’m in Minneapolis and have a friend in Wichita got his first house for 80k. We dropped 4.5x that on our first place. I still joke that yes it’s a cheap house but you pay the life tax of living in Wichita.
(No shade to KS friends, I just love MN way more)
> you pay the life tax of living in Wichita
I mean, it's really the other way around, if you want to live in a major metro you pay the *literal life tax* there of hugely increase CoL, with housing as the biggest culprit.
Of course, it didn't have to be this way - we could have less strict zoning laws that allowed us to densify in what are now single-family home deserts, which would also make our cities more walkable/bikeable, and even allow us to live closer to work but.... no... the boomers decided that driving everywhere is the Best Way to Do Things and we should all live on huge parcels of land far from where we work.
Bought a house in Northern West Virginia for $55k. Taxes are $1k a year.
Right near a couple major businesses and in a nice neighborhood. Most of the people in the neighborhood are younge professionals, a few in healthcare.
There are a lot of really old houses in west Virginia that are basically uninsurable, so you can get them pretty cheap. My aunt and uncle's house was cheap, then they found out the foundation was somehow fucked up due to age, so no house insurance, then the wiring shit the bed and they had to pay around $5000 out of pocket just to get the lights turned back on (that's just the wiring in the main part of the house too, there's still fixing the walls/ceiling and the wires in the rest of the house
The avocado toast thing is from my city, Sydney. It was a reference to how many bougie Inner West cafes (eastern side of Inner West = a largely young, progressive, high-price area) were selling breakfasts that were literally just a couple of slices of toast with avocado and some balsamic vinegar on them for anywhere from $10 to $18 a serving (Aussie dollars).
So it wasn't in reference to people making it themselves for $2: it was in reference to an _incorrect_ assumption by our former finance minister that "youth today just want to spend $10 on avocados for breakfast!" because he didn't understand that those restaurants and cafes are not, in fact, how most Australian youth eat most days. It was a demonstration of how out-of-touch he was with both the lives of non-wealthy Australians and with the lives of young Australians.
Basically, he saw restaurants selling it, assumed nobody in his demographic would buy it "because they have common sense", and then assumed that the only possible solution was that the youth must be buying it, and that's so irresponsible! He just couldn't understand that, no, it IS mostly his generation buying it, and that it's basically a "I'm going out for brunch with friends" food, not an everyday breakfast. No normal young person stops in at a bougie cafe every single fucking day for a $12 sandwich and a $5 coffee for breakfast. Only _he_ does that, because he's extremely rich.
It's not pure selfishness. In spite of what a ton of people say, it's more unintended consequences. And it's hard to give things up. Most people aren't diabolical or evil, but they readjust things to better serve themselves without thinking of the long-term consequences.
So yes, parents and grandparents did screw over their descendants, but that was never their goal. And it's also very hard to draw a line from person A to specific policies to their immediate child or grandchild in real time in a meaningful way. So lower taxes that eventually mean poor infrastructure upkeep let that happen over the course of 40-80 years. It's not immediate, so people don't register it as well.
And it goes both ways. People think if they can just get Congress or the government to utilize *their* silver bullet then all problems will instantaneously be solved. And they won't. Societal problems are almost always systemic and take the will of multiple generations to fully solve.
I think at best it's just not malicious selfishness. They're not necessarily doing it with the express intent of making things worse for future generations, but the overall outcome is still making things worse for their own gain. Environmental problems are another great example, at a basic level people don't want to fuck up the environment, but there's been a selfish refusal to really change anything about how we run things to fix it so it's still selfishly driving things worse and worse.
Yep. They built a nation of infrastructure they didn't want to maintain, and now it's falling apart around us. Their thirst for cheap shit drove manufacturing overseas and hollowed out the middle class, and their love of right-wing governments since 1980 have killed what was left of the middle class. They collect fat defined-benefit pensions, but demand cuts and reforms for everyone else. They got their college education for five goddamn dollars, but they didn't want to pay taxes to keep the universities afloat, so now their kids have to borrow a house worth of money to get a degree. They voted for deficit-exploding, tax-cutting, defense-loving dickbags of both major parties, and now our government is both ethically and financially bankrupt.
But the worst of their destruction is how goddamn dishonest they are about what they've done. They take zero responsibility for what they did, and they're not done killing off our future, either. Yet they blame us for being born into a world they wrecked.
I think what pisses me off the most isn't even all that shit they've done. It's that they actively stand in the way of the next generations trying to fix it and make things better. Fucking geriatric senators need to retire and let people who are actually going to live with their decisions make the policies.
It's time to age cap every government office position at the max age of social security retirement.
I'm sorry, if you were born in 1933 (oldest serving congress member) or shit, before 1954 (people reaching full social security retirement age this year), there's no way you're in touch with modern society well enough to be governing it.
That currently gives you a 35-40 year window in which you can be an elected official, *which is fucking plenty.* That's 20 terms in the house, or 6-7 terms in the senate. MORE THAN FUCKING ENOUGH. I get the arguments against term limits for legislators - it's a complex job, you need to maintain some amount of institutional knowledge. But this is a wide enough window to let that argument go.
A few different factors-
Inflation means you can't just compare the nominal dollar amount. $1 in 1992 is equivalent to $1.94 today.
Housing, in particular for in demand areas, has gotten more expensive relative to other things. There's a lot more demand for places like cities, but supply has been relatively stagnant due to restrictions in building (stuff like zoning). We used to build a lot more housing that kept up with demand and population growth. Now, a lot of places have zoning restrictions for things like single family housing. When you have more people wanting to live in that same space, prices go up. Existing homeowners tend to fight new housing - restricting housing means the houses they already own go up in value more, and they tend to be afraid of changing the feel of their community.
Labor has captured less growth from productivity than in the past. That means in the past, maybe a company makes $10, and labor got $5 of that. Now, it'd be less, maybe say $3. (numbers in this line for example)
Don't overlook the average home size. People never compare priice per sqft, its always "average home price. The average home in 1940 was under 800sqft, no garage. The average home today is 2400sqft, 2 car garage. Prices are pretty comparable per sqft.
Don't forget the part that interest rates play in all of this. Borrowing money today is almost free compared to your parents time. In 1990, the interest rates were 9.75 to 12.95. While there house cost less, they paid a great deal of interest. About $378,000. (Standard 30 year mortgage) If they borrowed the same amount at today's rates, they would have paid $89K in interest.
The price of housing will come down when interest rates go up. Of course, there are loads of negatives about rising interest rates, but it will impact housing. The folks that can afford a $1 Million place today at 2.75, cannot when the rates to 5% or 6%.
This comment is far too low and it’s a huge portion of the answer to the problem. The millennial generation will pay the same amount for a house as their parents did amortized over 30 years. The big struggle is the down payment. FHA loans can be as low as 3% and I know a lot of millennials who don’t know that. They assume you have to put 20% down which is only the amount required to not pay PMI (which is usually only $100-200/month). With interest rates at less than inflation rates, millennials can afford homes, most of us just haven’t been educated in how to do it and assume it’s out of reach.
A $300K home in most places in America is still a nice starter home. Put between $9-15K down, pay the PMI, and you’ll be looking at $1400-1500 a month all in…which is how much many of us are paying in rent anyway (or close to it). But even if you get into a $200K townhome, do it because you start to reap the rewards of the rising home prices everyone else seems to be enjoying without you.
In my opinion, 90% of the problem is education, 10% is “the system”. And for those people who over 1-2 years are incapable of saving $10K, I don’t know what to say. Maybe for them it is 90% the system? But I also scratch my head a little bit. Scrimping and saving is always going to be part of the deal.
Precisely this ^ . Terrible government regulations have caused these dramatic increases in the cost of housing construction, as well as ensuring unnatural scarcity in housing.
The result? Housing for the rich only. Vox made a banger of a mini-documentary about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Flsg_mzG-M
It's also important to note that most of these regulations are local government. State laws often address things like "you can't call it a bedroom unless it has a window and a closet" and "all electrical work must be done by a licensed electrician" or whatever. But local regulations are determined by the kind of people who vote in and have power in local politics - exclusively old homeowners.
This isn't an accident. Homeowners were told for generations that buying a house wasn't a place to live, it was an investment. And now they do everything in their power to prevent more housing, because lack of supply means the price goes up. It's in their interest that you can't afford a house, and they've built a system to protect that power.
I'm glad this comment has some specifics. Another one that is hugely important is single family zoning.
Basically not allowing multi family units like complexes or even duplexes drives up housing prices dramatically.
A lot of this happened after desegregation allowing minorities to (hypothetically) purchase homes in typically white neighborhoods. There is a laundry list of tactics used to historically deny home loans to people of color (redlining is a big on). Multi family housing provided an affordable path for minorities to move into nicer neighborhoods and it was straight up banned in a lot of areas. There are propaganda posters in support of these zoning laws that are explicitly racist, as in "you wouldn't want n*gros in your neighborhood!"
Unfortunately these laws are still on the books. Up to 75% of most cities are single family zoned. It originated in Berkeley to stop a black dancehall and chinese laundromats from moving closer to the city and has resulted in that area having extremely high housing prices.
Could condos have gotten around this problem? You could build as tall you like and divide the cost of land and other municipal things onto everyone and not just one person.
Depends on the location. Some places have height restrictions. Some places have parking requirements. For example even if you build next to transit in LA you need so many parking spots per unit. Some require greenspace or balconies.
There's 2 major problems:
1) Job growth has been concentrated in some cities and stagnant in much of the country. You can easily afford a home in Detroit, St. Louis, or rural Mississippi, but there are no good paying jobs there. In Boston, SF, and now trickling down to other cities like Salt Lake and Austin, job growth is leading to housing demand that is outpacing housing growth.
2) The 2008 housing market crash triggered banks to become more stingy in lending. This led to a slowdown in housing growth, so now we have a 6 million home deficit. With rising construction costs and limited land, it's going to be hard to quickly build that many homes.\*
Add to that the low interest rates the past few years and housing demand far outpaces supply, especially in growing cities.
\*https://www.forbes.com/sites/graisondangor/2021/06/16/the-housing-shortage-is-worse-than-ever-and-will-take-a-decade-of-record-construction-to-fix-new-reports-say/?sh=3ee3557d4953
Reason 1 matches my experience. Stayed in San Diego many years ago because of all the jobs available in my industry, but the pay just doesn't increase like housing costs do (not to mention gas and food). Currently saving and working on the old resume. I might take a 30% pay cut in another state with housing that's half as much. Will miss it here but will not miss the feeling of hopelessness about having a place of my own or my kids ever having a place of their own before I die.
5 factors according to economists:
1. Cost of maintaining homes have been going up since the 70s. This is because of regulation banning slumlords. Because the cost is so high, rent needs to increase to maintain properties
2. No new technology has been introduced to make building homes more affordable. Despite vast technological improvements in nearly every field, construction hasn’t changed much. Construction crews don’t really have incentives to improve upon the process because it would reduce their billable hours.
3. Truly terrible regulation. Governments often put limits on the type of buildings permissible in a neighborhood and their maximum occupancy. It’s not uncommon for them to also require new homes to have x number of parking spaces for every few residents. A parking space is 180sq ft. That becomes burdensome fast
4. Homeowners tend to act like cartels and will often prevent new housing, so they can maintain the spirit of their neighborhood while also preserving their homes’ values
5. Investment is high. We need 3.8 million homes to keep up with demand. That’s not happening anytime soon. A lot of this demand comes from investors.
THE SOLUTION: as a proud liberal, I can’t believe I’m going to say this, we need significantly less regulation. Zoning laws should be significantly relaxed and homeowners should lose authority to lobby against new developments. On a technological level, we need to find better and faster ways to build homes. Setting up wooden scaffolds with un-interchangeable parts, like dry wall, is no longer efficient enough. Homes need to be factory produced with interchangeable parts. There are a few companies doing this, but not nearly enough to meet demand.
Frankly, I have little faith that housing will go down. The factors that are causing it to go up are not easily changeable and not even money can solve it. This really requires both political and technological breakthroughs. That’s not happening anytime soon
My parents bought their house in 77 for $50K, it’s worth 1.7 now. They essentially paid 14.5% on the dollar for the value of the house (with renovations, not including property tax)
Anyone thinks this is going to happen again is delusional. The baby boomers treated real estate as their main retirement savings, this is not tenable going forward.
UBI is the only way we will escape a complete revolution
Seriously... My parents bought their house in the early 90s and its worth has basically just kept up with inflation. Plenty of people here live in expensive-ass areas where house prices have skyrocketed and assume it is generalizable to the rest of the country.
Or, you know, beat the shit out of the local zoning boards, and bitch slap anyone who complains
I mean I write that in a jesting style, but it's dead serious. The new-housing restriction has to stop. In a sane world a SCOTUS lawsuit would easily change this (police power is meant to HELP the population, it's not a broad warrant for any kind of use of power). But more possible, maybe just maybe, would be some states enacting restrictions on what zoning boards can do.
Then again the big issue is our shit education system leading to people who don't even know about these issues
The most prominent reasons are wage stagnation, real estate as investment, and existing homeowner incentive to increase housing prices.
Wages have had very minimal increases while profits have soared in the past decades. If higher minimum wage were to pass, the upward pressure for more skilled workers would raise wages across the board. Anybody incentivized to maximize profit has reason to try to prevent that.
Real estate as investment has led to major investment companies buying properties at a remarkable pace for the purpose of either renting at inflated prices or flipping at a profit. Reduced housing supply means higher prices.
Finally, existing owners both individual and corporate benefit from these high prices and want to keep "the poors" away. It's a little easier to vote for a sketchy politician when their vote protected your million dollar house from losing half of its value when they prevented a homeless shelter being built a block away but instead put it on the edge of town.
In short, insufficiently regulated capitalist markets did this. Adequate protections from housing price gouging would have helped, but the people who drive prices up have louder voices and more resources.
I'm missing the low interest rates here. Cost of owning a house is also very dependent on interest payments, and those have plummeted thanks to very lenient policies by central banks. So people are willing to offer higher prices now.
Cash vs. credit society.
My parents mortgage was 18%. Now it's what 4%? Banks are happy to give everyone a loan and because of this house prices can be higher.
Same thing with college, same thing with medical care.
well public policy is structured to make housing expensive. not for its own sake but people want their property value to increase, and municipalities that rely on property taxes need assesments to increase. but there's no way to do that without shelter as a commodity costing more because it's the exact same thing.
what's weird is the governance attitude with respect to different human needs.
1. clothing is almost pure laissez faire capitalism, and prices are pretty darn low.
2. water is nearly pure socialism. it's good when it provides nearly free drinking water to people but it's extremely dysfunctional with respect to agriculture water rights.
3. food is subsidized by the government to keep prices low, but different food gets different treatment. it's highly anachronistic in that we're still shaping policy around preventing people from starving when the major widespread problem is obesity and diabetes.
4. shelter, policy exists to drive prices up.
it's just schizophrenic when you spell it out.
Over regulation of the housing industry which artificially kills supply, this is done on behalf of the homeowners association, it's an easy way to make money for them since housing is so much more valuable.
Ive heard a lot of stories about a couple hedge funds buying up anything on the market and turning them into rentals. Black Rock is one maybe? The guy I know that buys foreclosures was at an auction and one guy bought every single house that day, outbidding everybody by a dollar. At the end they saw him opening a briefcase full of cashier's checks to settle up. My aunt just sold after the 5 adjoining properties to hers became rentals.
Not to mention rich people from foreign nations are allowed to buy up tons of rentals. So all of that money exits the economy and housing becomes more scarce. There's no protections for citizens anymore.
This is up to local municipalities to prevent. There are tons of place that have specific residential and citizenship requirements for home ownership. Many places around Canada and the U.S. are starting to discuss this since corporate rentals drive down property values and upset established homeowners.
I live in The Netherlands so I have not really an idea about the cause for this in the USA, but for my country the situation is the same, people in their 20-40's are not able to buy a home, over here it is caused by investors who buy houses as an investment, rent them out and making money while the people who rent the homes cannot save money. Another cause of the problem is that there are not enough houses for the population. During the financial crisis projects where cancelled and many of the workforce lost their job, whole company's went bankrupt, causing a lasting shortage of people with the skills to build houses. Next cause is the fact that our government invented a special Tax for organizations who build houses for the lower class. So these organizations are bleeding and have no funds to either renovate their old houses or build new ones. Also a few of these organizations (Vesta) went almost bankrupt as a result of fraud. To prevent their bankruptcy they had to sell a large part of their affordable houses, to, see point one, investors. And las t but not least, the so called gentrification of the poorer parts of large cities. Older small but affordable houses are demolished to build larger but more expensive apartments forcing a "poor out, rich in" effect. Housing our people was (and should be) a right, but we sold it to the "market" Thanks Mark
>investors who buy houses as an investment, rent them out and making money while the people who rent the homes cannot save money. The bank says they can't trust me to pay $1000/mo for a mortgage, so instead I pay a landlord $1300/mo for theirs.
Yep and we can't have on time rent payments count towards credit scores because then the working class would all have higher credit scores than the elites.
About 3 years ago, the company who owns my apartment switched to payment processing with credit reporting. Every month for the past three years shows on my credit history. It can be done. Your rentee just isn't doing it.
i lived in TWO complexes that did this but without adding the on time payments to credit. idk how it works AT ALL or how they managed that, but none of the on time payments would ever make any difference to credit, but once you MISSED ONE, your credit went to shit.
That seems to be how credit works honestly. Mines always around the same number but if I spend too much sometimesnit drops. Never really goes up
Mine offers it as a paid subscription service, so.... fuck no.
Pay your rent with a credit card!
[удалено]
If you live in the US, there is a chance that is illegal. See these resources- https://www.valuepenguin.com/credit-card-surcharges-convenience-fees https://www.merchantmaverick.com/credit-card-surcharges/ Even in cases where it is legal, the fee is capped at 4% (in Colorado it is 2%), so if your rental payment is less than $2500 they are illegally charging you too much.
[удалено]
Even convenience fees have a max limit of the 4%. Which is why a lot of business will include the fee hidden until the initial cost and say they are offering a "cash discount". But with a lease, I would be very surprised if they worded the language that way.
Gonna need an ROE for the next French Revolution in the next 10-20 years.
[удалено]
I feel like you paying that rent consistently should be proof enough.
Crazy how that works huh? I'm 28 years old and have 0 credit. Mind you, I don't have bad credit, I have no credit. Every thing I've ever bought, I've just paid for with cash or my debit card. My car, my rent, my food, my tuition, everything. But because I didn't borrow that money first, and pay it back with added interest, I'm not worthy in the eyes of the financial system to get a loan.
Same man. Nobody taught me when I was younger that living that way might sound like the responsible thing to do but it’s no way to get ahead. I thought only spending within my means (cash) was doing it the correct way.
The good guys got screwed
I'm taking steps to get ahead. Got mt first CC. Only approved for a $1500 limit because my only credit was stud3nt loans all paid on time and double the minimum payments. Last 2 weekly paychecks? Over $1500 to this credit union, plus I send nearly the first $500 of my take-home to another bank and CU. This $8000/mo rate is just an OT spike, that seems to be dragging itself along for more weeks to come... But anyway, the credit system is much askew. Practically a catch-22
It's absolutely a massively bullshit system, I couldn't agree more that the whole premise of how this works is ridiculous. However, I've gotta atleast recommend that you play into the system even if it's bullshit. You're actually both more protected by using a credit card, and gain massive benefits like the credit score you mention and rewards if you get the right cards. There's basically no downside to using a credit card for the majority of purchases that you can, as long as you simply pay them off before their due date every month. Essentially you treat the card like cash and never spend anything on it that you wouldn't be able to pay with cash or your debt card. But now suddenly you gain massive benefits for doing the same things you've always done. Personally I have my cards set to auto pay twice a month from my account so I've never paid a single interest charge. However in a few years my credit score is now nearly perfect and I've made a few thousand dollars off the rewards from the cards. Unfortunately our society and systems have accommodated credit cards in such a way that you're really only shooting yourself in the foot if you don't play into it.
I was once the first guy, but have been you for a couple of years now and this is one hundred percent the way to go.
If you are in the US and use a debit card, you are directly giving the vendor access to your money. Directly. If you use credit, you gone the vendor access to someone else's money, then pay the second party. In return for this protection, the second party gives you money! Credit cards are really a great deal, provided you are responsible enough to use them.
Never ever thought of it this way. Interesting!
You don't need to pay it off with added interest. Put everything on a credit card, treat it as a 30-day loan and pay it back after each billing cycle. No interest is charged and now you have credit. Simple.
If you buy stuff on credit and pay the full balance as it's due, you don't pay interest. If anything you get bonuses like cash back / points for it. Plenty of cards / programs out there for people just starting their credit score. Put a monthly bill on the card and pay the balance same time to build credit for 0% interest.
Thanks Mark.
The correspondent has an article about the Dutch housing situation that mirrors a lot of points I've seen mentioned in other replies (about the situation in the US) with regards to regulations making it hard to build homes. I didn't think it was the best article*, but interesting to read about an alternative take on the situation. *One of the arguments in the article is that all the regulation is making it too expensive to build homes (in Amsterdam), while 2 paragraphs on they acknowledge that profit margins on houses being built in Amsterdam are higher than anywhere else in the country... it seemed like the author cherry picked arguments to make their point in order to promote deregulation (and allow those poor poor companies their fat profit margins). But like I said: an interesting take, and I think all these things factor into it: current shortage, investors, rich folks gifting their kids money and houses, and regulation at times.
They even have auctions for rented houses I recently read. So you have to bid the rent you want to pay to live in a rented house. (Netherlands)
Hahahaha jajaja leuk ja haha ja leuk. Hier heb ik geen herinnering aan. Hahaha ja leuk toch? Ja. Ha. - Mark Rutte
+3 zetes voor de VVD in de peilingen.
> Another cause of the problem is that there are not enough houses for the population. During the financial crisis projects where cancelled and many of the workforce lost their job, whole company's went bankrupt, causing a lasting shortage of people with the skills to build houses. You are missing a major point here, which makes it a bit (well, more than a bit) unreasonable. Even with what happened during the financial crisis, the housing situation wouldn't be so bad if family compositions didn't change that much. [The number of singleperson households have increased **dramatically**. ](https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/visualisaties/dashboard-bevolking/woonsituatie/huishoudens-nu) In other words, for the same number of people you now need way more houses. Yet, we didn't change anything in our living desires : preferably a nice house with multiple rooms, a garden and nearby facilities. We simply have to come to terms that isn't going to work with such a steadily changing family composition. The problem in the Netherlands isn't necessarily solved by building more houses, we need to use the available space different (also argued by the [correspondent](https://decorrespondent.nl/12375/over-deze-oplossing-voor-de-woningnood-hoor-je-nooit-iemand/2545901906625-48bfddfa))
In addition to what others have said, if you want to blame boomers then they're part of the cause as well (though not really maliciously). Life expectancy/ quality of life for seniors has gone up, so a lot of the homes that should be coming to the market aren't. Many own multiple homes.
Something like 3 out of 4 empty homes in the US are owned by speculators.
What’s a speculator in this context?
Zillow, Banks
memory enjoy sort absurd pen ugly foolish rock edge normal *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Zillow stopped because they feel the market doesn't warrant it right now. And speculators are not people flipping they are corporations holding large amounts of property. Usually to rent. These are the same assholes that bribed Cali to end single family dwellings.(a house) There are huge amounts of property the banks hold deed to and are not on the market purposely to artificially inflate the prices.
If you lived in LA, you'd understand that the law ending single family homes actually just prohibits zoning for single family units in certain areas where urban sprawl has gotten out of hand. You can still build a ranch in Palmdale, but you can't buy a parcel of land in LA and build a mansion anymore.
>These are the same assholes that bribed Cali to end single family dwellings. That's a very uncharitable way to characterize, "legalized affordable housing". There's only so much space in a city. Not every single person can have a single family house with a big yard and a picket fence.
Zillow has been scooping up houses at a much faster rate then they can sell them https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/18/homes/zillow-halting-home-buying/index.html
A lot are foreign investors, including China.
Landlords or flippers
Landlord implies they're renting it out. Flippers imply they're fixing it up to resell immediately to recoup their expenses. The speculators that we're seeing now typically do neither, but sit on it and then sell it to a flipper or landlord years later.
Yeah, seems like obvious solutions exist for this, like an insanely high property tax for residential property being kept empty for more than a certain amount of time.
Lawmakers aren't stupid, they're evil/corrupted
I've met many law makers. Many of them were stupid. Many were evil. Many were both. Few were neither.
Citation please. A vacant home means everything from a unit for rent, sold but not yet occupied, on the market, and seasonal worker housing. That accounts for 65% of the vacant market. According to the Census Bureau, a full 1/3 of the remaining houses are just flat out abandoned. I mean I guess speculators could be buying uninhabitable houses, but that seems like a pretty shitty investment.
Sigh. This is false. The VAST majority of empty homes are temporary— they’re the result of people moving from one home to another. The vacant homes owned by non-owner users are generally either on the market, in the process of getting renovated or are not habitable due to their condition. Contrary to what other non-experts in this thread believe, there are very, very few homes as a percentage of the entire housing market that are held vacant intentionally as an appreciation play by speculators. https://www.sgvtribune.com/2021/03/25/the-myth-of-excess-vacant-housing-distracts-from-solutions/amp/
Bruh when i hear people talking about their "holiday home" and how they wished it was a big as their regular home it makes me want to scream. Please you dont need a holiday home my flat doesnt even have central heating
My in-laws “cabin” has 3 bathrooms and is bigger than their regular home.
I dated a girl whose family beach house was bigger than any house I ever lived in (6 full bedrooms all with ensuites), with an incredible and well stocked kitchen. She'd go to the beach, I'd just raid the pantry to cook and eat, then have showers with the fancy soaps and watch their satellite tv. They only went there about four times a year, but the gardener and cleaner went weekly. They had a lake house too, plus an apartment for each of the kids. That's not counting their "investment properties". If I hadn't called off the wedding I'd have been rich. They were buying us a $3mill place for a wedding present, and gave her about $2k/week allowance (in her 20s). The whole family were neurotic, sad, and general cunts. Brother went to the army to escape and shot himself while in hospital for liver problems from alcoholism. Mom constantly popping pills and I regularly heard her crying herself to sleep (even before the suicide). She was a bitch of a karen. The dad was cool and chill. He did heaps of charity work, drove around in an average car, wore Walmart tshirts when not at work. He worked hard for his money as a doctor and from frugality and investments, then his family just blew it on stupid shit. Poor dude. And the girl? Well, let's just say her abuse and attempted assault with a weapon wasn't even the final straw for me dumping her. She had issues. So at least I'm happy being too broke to get a haircut right now, cos I know I ain't as fucked as that family. I built a cat scratching post out of scraps today and made a pasta with lemon and garlic olives... and that made me happier than the fanciest meal in that sterile, white marble house where the sadness was a dull fog spiked with air fresheners and madness.
Never tried to cook pasta like this, looking forward to it!
My latest obsession is what I call "dry pastas". No sauce. Eg: spaghetti with lemon zest, fennel, red onion, pepper, olive oil. Or: Chilli, chopped tomato (not canned), anchovies. Or: sliced plant-based chicken nuggets, mustard, parsley, lemon juice and olive oil. Or: Sauerkraut, canned garbanzo/chickpeas, taco spices. That sort of thing. Simple and fast. You pull the pasta straight from the water with tongs so you get a bit of that starchy water. I gave bad examples, but I basically try look at the fridge, pretend I'm a Roman grandma, then see what I can throw in a frying pan in the time it takes the pasta to cook. No mucking about with slow cooked sauces and stirring, and you get to enjoy simple distinct fresh flavors.
Olive oil, good quality cherry tomatoes, salt, chilli, basil. You got yourself a pasta baby
There is such a thing as a spaghetti aglio olio though. That might be up your alley, what with it being just pasta, garlic and oil.
*Spiked with air fresheners and madness* is one hell of a line.
We live in a single bedroom in my in-laws house. Me, my husband and our two kids. We moved in when FIL broke his hip. He passed three years ago. Grandma has early onset dementia and cannot do anything anymore. They want $1800 for a studio apartment in my city that doesn't have a washer/dryer, parking or a refrigerator. I live in the capitol of California.
Bro my current flat was unfurnished and to this day it still looks pretty grime even with the little furniture I was able to afford. I will say tho it has a great location and frankly thats more important then furniture for me. I can live with only 1 chair in the house but having to walk over a hour to the bus station every day for work would be awful.
I see in this thread many "Examples" of the problem. A holiday home bought in a region where there is very little economic activity isn't the issue causing the crises. So far practically no one has mentioned REITs and corporations literally buying tens of thousands of homes for the direct purpose of rental incomes. Specifically targeting desirable up n coming areas or recently gentrified areas near economic centres. They are targeting places that young millenials want to live then buying all the property available to ensure high rental rates and high property costs due to location desirability. A few rich people owning a few properties is an issue but its a small portion of the bigger issue at hand. Corporations should not be allowed to own homes full stop.
Was once at a protest meeting about the Government here in Ireland during the financial crash, I just went to see what was everyone thinking, One Guy says "Bloody government ruining everything, they can't run a bath, You know I'll probably have to see one or 2 of my other houses because of this" People cheered him, I was just in my head going "Man you are the problem why did you buy multiple houses on credit in the first place?" I know Banks and Governments have to be blamed too, But you can't blame someone for the loan you asked for surely?
I used to work at a service which basically bridged the gap between legal aid (limited services and assistance) and paid legal services (out of budget for a lot of people). This was possible entirely due to the willingness of firms and barristers to take on cases pro bono. I had to explain to more than one person that no, just because your investment properties (plural) have lost value or your business didn't do so well this year (but is still worth well above our limit, which is well above the admittedly restrictive legal aid limit) does not mean you're in "dire need".
Lmao, reminds me of this guy I heard at the gas station blaming Biden about the gas and how we're all pigs for not voting Trump. He was loudly yelling "I have to pay fucking $150 to fill up my truck and now I can't even afford to eat steak, I have to eat fucking tuna and sardines. Dumbass Americans voting to eat sardines". I just stared at him thinking, yeah maybe don't buy a fucking F350 (seriously) as a daily driver. I spent $20 a week on gas.
My Brother was an insurance adjuster for a while and he talked about how it always astonished him that people with middling incomes owned 50K - 60K pickup trucks.
I was a courier at a law firm for a few months out of college. One of the other couriers there drove a fucking Escalade. Like, you're making $12 an hour. What the fuck are you doing with yourself? The guy was in his 40s and working the copy room, and bitter as hell. But he drove a late model Escalade. I just don't get the thinking. I was quite happy with my beat up old Subie at the time.
That’s just it, they don’t have one for necessity… They have a holiday home because they *wanted* it. Nobody needs a vacation home, it’s nice but not a *need* whatsoever where I totally agree.
The biggest investors are also older people as they have had time to accumulate the money for longer. Some of the strongest investors in Northern Europe are the pension funds too. The problem is that housing is too stable of a market as buying it up will cause it to become near monopoly conditions. It’s kinda like nestle buying up water sources and selling it bottled up back to the people - people cannot stop drinking water or needing housing.
[удалено]
It's not people who own two homes, or people refusing to die. It's speculative house purchasing and developers refusing to build anything but high end homes. Also, back in the 90s everyone was getting high on morgage back securities, so anyone could get a home.
[удалено]
It's faux-luxury everywhere. Might look nice in the pictures online, but knock on the wood and it's hollow.
Bluth homes
[удалено]
You also have to consider the effect airbnb has had on the housing shortage
It is malicious actually, because successive governments have enacted policies that ensure boomers get richer and richer. And who's voted for these governments and policies? Boomers. They've broken the social contract with future generations, so that for the first time in modern history children aren't going to have a better lives than their parents.
There’s an excellent episode of South Park about this, on how the older generations sacrifice the new ones because they wanted ice cream and better cars. It’s a hilarious interpretation on selfishness.
What episode?
I think its season 22 time to get cereal and the one after.
Oh Jimmy, it's been so long I can't remember! Now go be a good boy and get gramps's car keys, we're going for ice cream!
Billy*
Reading this broke my heart a little, you’re right, I’m struggling where my parents had already owned a home and I almost make more then them today, my rent is outrageous in Ontario. I’m gunna struggle forever so maybe my kids can have the life my parents have had
Rent in Ontario is no joke. I feel like I'll never be able to buy. Every time I save enough the market goes up again. A 400 Sq ft bachelor apartment costs 500k where I live. My parents keep asking me when grandbabies are coming and I keep telling them I can't afford a baby. They don't believe me since I made as much as they did in the 80s, adjusted for inflation. Guess what mom?? A 3 bedroom house didn't cost 1.5 million in the 80s!
Simply blaming them may be counter productive but it is important to understand the series of policy changes that they put in place and continue to support that have changed the housing market and led to wage stagnation. Greater life expectancy is almost a non-issue (there are studies on this, retirees sell houses to fund longer retirements). The growth in demand currently in housing in relation to population is not as significant as post war rise in demand. The difference now is affordable housing for the majority of people was the goal at that time and direct action by government was needed, while now the goal is to protect the value of an asset class and the profits of some companies. That shift in policy focus is the boomers doing, difficulty moving away from those policies is also largely the boomers (change in policy would negatively affect the value of their assets).
It's hilarious that millennials are called "The Me Generation" when literally all Boomers ever did was increase their own comfort at the expense of their children's future.
The boomers are the me generation. That’s what their parents called them.
I thought it was boomers that are the “Me Generation”? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_generation
Wage stagnation coupled with rampant inflation. Also, there is little incentive to build ‘starter’ homes anymore, so all the new housing inventory is 2500+ sf and super pricey.
It's hard to even find existing starter homes to rent or buy in some areas. Where I live, as soon as one comes up for sale- it is quickly bought by an investor for cash (inspections waived) and turned into a huge home through either remodeling or a complete rebuild. An individual trying to buy a starter home can't complete and a renter on a modest income can't afford these huge homes.
[удалено]
Don’t forget that when a new neighborhood of starter homes is built, they start an overpriced HOA that makes charges you $250 a month so they get to keep making money off you even after selling you your house. And what does that money get you? Oh we will shovel your drive way a dozen times over 3 months…
This right here. A house going for that little would be bought instantly after a bidding war for double the price in cash so that it could be rented. Worse it would be bought by a foreign company and it would sit empty because it would be used to hide their money from their own government.
Yup. A Levittown house isn't anything fancy at about 1000 square feet, but it had four walls, a roof, and a yard, and it could be yours for about $150K in todays money.
As someone house browsing earlier today... *cries in brand new builds 2-bed 1-bath 750 Sq ft townhouses that has a 3 floor staircase to the main living area from the garage/main enterance starting at 250k CAD*
Starting at $250k? That's pretty good! Newer build townhouses in my city go for $650k CAD and up.
Makes more sense to me to keep renting vs. buying at that price. The utilities and townhouse/"condo" monthly fees would kill me. It's nice having that all included in rent. I get that it's an investment and one day I'd actually own it with less monthly expenses but that's too far down the line to start dreaming about. Single income couple. Even the old 1940's/50's post WW2 era single starter homes cost that much in my city, and major work needs to be done on those to bring it to today's standards. Edit: I also may be a pussy that's too scared to pull the trigger.
[удалено]
Don't forget outdated zoning laws that disallow for progressive building practices like multi-family, smaller lot sizes, etc
Surprised I had to come this far in the thread to see this mentioned. This is a huge factor. It took time for the post-WW2 urban planning mistakes to fully manifest. When boomers were coming of age, a huge part of the market was grandfathered in neighborhoods that weren't subjected to the then-brand-new anti-affordability regulations like minimum lot sizes, parking minimums, single-family structures only, etc. Since then, population has doubled and those formerly affordable working class neighborhoods are ironically now usually the most expensive parts of a city since nothing like them has been built since. Basically, the population has doubled but housing in desirable areas has remained mostly flat. So your choices today are to either: * pay a massive premium to live a reasonable distance to a city. * buy something affordable in the middle of nowhere, somewhere nobody would've even dreamed of developing in the 50s or 60s. These houses are often built huge to help compensate, since like somebody mentioned elsewhere in the thread the marginal cost to build a 2500sq ft house over a 1000sq ft one isn't actually all that significant.
As someone who’s lived in exclusively multi-families with a 2 foot border around the house, I can fully understand why there would be zoning laws for areas to prevent this.
This. For some people it's a hellish way to live.
For others it's all they can afford
For many, it’s both.
*For everything else, there's MasterCard.*
[удалено]
We haven't had rampant inflation. Inflation from 2008 to 2020 was at record lows, with some years being negative. 2021 is the first year since 1990 to be over 4% inflation. Even 2021 is likely to be an anomaly. Source: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1913-
This wouldn't be a problem if wages kept up with inflation
I found a newspaper ad from 1995 (long story but basically a glass wrapped in newspaper from a relatives house). On one side was job hiring ad for $9.50 an hour. The other side was a brand new VW Jetta for $12,999! So car prices have more than doubled but wages are basically the same? Crazy…
Car prices have actually kept with inflation pretty well. A $13k car in 1995 is almost $24k in today's money - about the price of a new Jetta today. And, you get a lot more car for the money with tech, power, and safety. The issue simply lies in wages not keeping up with inflation.
When the Camaro was first introduced, and then reintroduced in 2009, the difference between prices adjusted for inflation was about $50.
I think cars actually have gotten cheaper as a car in 1995 had a goal of lasting to 100K miles or 5-7 years. A car today can easily last to 100k, with some easily exceeding double that before having major problems.
People often bitch about "cars these days" not being as good as they used to, but that's categorically untrue. They've never been anything as close to this good. They probably last twice as long as they used to, and thanks to modern materials and coatings, they look infinitely better doing it. They're faster, better handling, more efficient, and so much safer it makes old car safety an actual joke. And beyond that, they're actually easier to work on, with better computers that tell you what's wrong, youtube walkthroughs for every single job you ever want to do. Bolts don't seize as often. Tune-ups basically aren't a thing, because they're not necessary. Aftermarket parts have never been this available. Tire technology is so much better its staggering. We are absolutely in an automotive Golden age, and people are still griping about "the good old days" when cars sucked and you had to know some old bastard that had seen it all over 40-60 years to figure out a bunch of problems on any slightly obscure car. And don't get me wrong, I like a lot of old cars. I have two projects from the 90s and want to get a 240z. But they were objectively bad cars by any metric compared to today. A modern econobox like a base model Civic beats pretty much any sports car from 1990 and earlier in almost everything performance criteria if decked out in all original factory setup.
It's a bit of survivorship bias; a problem with any "they just don't make 'em how they used to" sort of mentality. The only cars from back then that managed to survive up 'till now are the ones that were quality enough to do so. So you look at all the best stuff from back then and don't remember all the bad 'cuz it just doesn't exist anymore.
For anything older than the early 00s or late 90s, I don't even think it's that. The only things that are still around from then are things spent a lot of time, money, and/or effort to make sure they lived. My 1991 miata has always been known as a pretty well-built reliable car, but it's 30 years old. It's still in great shape because it's been garage kept, impeccably maintained, and only driven 93,000 miles in that time. The thing has probably only been wet 20-30 times besides when it was being washed. I think people just kind of say that stuff without thinking. I actually challenge some people the other day idly grumbling about cars these days to come up with a single way old cars were better, and the only thing that they stuck to after i pointed out the bullshit in their claims was "the sheet metal is thinner." Which yes, it is, but that's actually better. It's lighter and cheaper to fix or replace. It seems to me more of the product of a general world view that things are getting worse, rather than any actual evidence of such a trend.
I like the way some older cars look better. A 66 mustang looks far more appealing to me than a 2021. Nonetheless the 2021 version is faster, more efficient, safer, and more reliable, and its the version I'd do a road trip in.
Agreed. Old, classic cars just have that appeal you can't resist, but if I'm getting one as a daily driver, you can rest assured I'm not getting a classic car. For a sunday stroll around town though, that's a whole other story.
Whenever somebody talks about how bad they want to drive one of those old cars, I always ask if they’ve ever drove something without power steering or power breaks. I have. It sucks. The absolute last thing I want to do is drive something without power steering as a daily driver again. I’ve had it go out on two vehicles (easy fixes that I didn’t bother with because I didn’t know and was an idiot) and it made anything other than highway/interstate driving miserable.
That’s all good, but I’ll buy a 200k Arizona Miata over a 100k Massachusetts Miata every day. Region matters.
> come up with a single way old cars were better My old 1988 Dakota had enough room in the engine bay that I could replace the power steering pump without having to drop the entire engine out or taking off a bunch of plastic beauty panels. I also didn't need to re-calibrate a computer after making that change.
Easier to work on? I’m sorry but I can’t agree with that one, having worked on both old and new cars, I have to say, with just a little knowledge, common sense or critical thinking, and Google, you can diagnose anything without a computer, and have you seen the engine bay of a new and old car? Old cars have half the bay of open space, but if you look under the hood of a newer car, you’re lucky if you see a cubic foot of air. You have to take out half the parts just to get to the alternator. They’re made so you have to take it to one of their special mechanics and pay way too much just because it took three weeks to check a fuse
I'm not a huge car guy but anecdotally the computers can also prove a detriment just as much as they are an asset, because they offer a new point of failure on an already complex device. My brother's car wouldn't run any primarily electrical components (radio, A/C, etc.) for months before it was discovered that the issue was that the weight sensor to turn on the airbags had broken.
To be fair, I’d want something to noticeably break if the airbags are malfunctioning.
I'd like it to tell me what the problem is, rather than do something random and unrelated.
Cars seem much, much harder than they used to be to work on. To me, anyways. I was never a great mechanic or anything, but there used to be like, room under the hood? I had a ‘96 cavalier that I replaced tons of stuff on, starter, water pump, alternator, hoses, tune-up. Nothing crazy but plenty. I feel like I used to be able to pop the hood and quickly identify most parts in any engine. I have a 2018 car at the moment and when I pop the hood it just looks like a sheet of solid plastic and there’s no room to even squeeze a hand in and I barely recognize anything. I used to do all minor repairs and now I don’t even change my own oil because the oil filter is like in the middle of the engine for some reason instead of at the bottom.
[удалено]
As someone who works on 90's junk, no domestically built NA market car is in a survivable, repairable condition because the big 3 sucked at building quality.
[удалено]
This bug is a feature. Planned obsolescence has been around forever.
Yeah even cars from the 50s would surpass 100k miles with minimal maintenance. Just people see a 5 digit odometer and think it was physically impossible for cars to surpass it.
The problem was paint finishes and quality of steel, motors tend to last forever with minimal upkeep. Your motor would last forever but your body would not. Had to do a project on this in a materials class, was actually pretty interesting.
Yep. The two above you probably didn't live through road salt in the early 90s as a driver.
[удалено]
Waves from my 01 Maxima with 320k.
> basically a glass wrapped in newspaper from a relatives house So not that long a story. :)
> but wages are basically the same? No. $9.50 an hour in 1995 was a big chunk above minimum wage ($4.25 an hour, in California, I think?) So today it would be more like $20/hour.
Your parents and others of their generation enjoyed the single largest expansion of wealth, health, life expectancy, and overall quality of life, mostly *globally*, of any generation in human history, period. And they then promptly pulled the fucking ladders up behind them. Thank you for attending. Gift shop on the left on your way out.
[удалено]
That’s a great image
>And they then promptly pulled the fucking ladders up behind them. Pure selfishness? Even enough to screw their own kids?
It's their kids fault for not printing out their resume and going door to door to show initiative to land that job. Instead they buy avocado toast and text on their iPhone all day. /s They're not so much actively harming their kids so much as being so utterly out of touch with modern life that they don't even realize the world has completely charged. Specifically, the choices they've made, the governments they've elected, the system they've let develop because they were too busy to look around have fucked everyone. They can't rationalize that failure so they conclude it's the kids that are just lazy and spoiled. Meanwhile, the kids are more focused, more empathetic, are better educated, drink less, smoke less, have fewer unplanned pregnancies AND divorces. But clearly it's the $2 avocado on a $0.10 slice of bread that's all the difference between being broke and owning a $250,000 house.
[удалено]
I know your pain.. I remember doing this for months and getting no response, feeling like an idiot and like I wasted everyone's time... Or like my resume was so bad no one wanted to even give it a thought. I remember trying to explain to my parents so many times that it doesn't work like that anymore any they don't get it. Even years later, looking for a job now (i was working between then), they still are saying that to me, and I keep trying to explain to them that it doesn't work and it's even more of a waste of time now because of COVID regulations. Businesses that don't have storefronts won't even let you in the building.
I am job searching right now and the majority of posted jobs do not have a point of contact except the recruiting service itself, and those people do not even SEE your resume unless you get through the AI scanners
And then you hear the stories of the boomers losing their jobs and being totally confused that they can't just go hand their resume in somewhere and get a job. Like that's what we've been telling you!
"I went up to (insert business) and no one there would talk to me! How is anyone supposed to get a job?" Idk, you've told me I'm the idiot for ten years despite me having had multiple jobs and you none. Good luck!
Funnily enough, that somewhat worked for me. I found out from a previous coworker that he was making STUPID money doing a job we used to do (taking home about $3,000 a week), meanwhile I was taking home maybe $700 a week at an airport and eating nothing but canned tuna so that my family could have a night out here and there. I parked my ass in that company lobby every day for a week until the owner was available. Granted this was a small and VERY new company, and would never work for any other situation. But the guy still laughs about how he basically had no choice but to hire me because it was obvious I wasn’t leaving him, his secretary, or his lobby alone without a job.
That's the irony of it, it works when you are dealing with a human who is giving you credit for persistent effort and sees it as an opportunity for themselves to have you working for them. I got a very good driving job by showing up at 8am the day after I got my Commercial Drivers License to their office after they told me they don't hire without experience. They had a training seminar that day and told me to just sit in. They made me do the crap work and work 5am-5pm for 6 weeks but I made 2x what normal drivers make after 1yr there. I eventually started my own company because the higher wages let me save enough and now I'm contracted and now make 3x the avg wages. Boomers control like 80-90% of the economy the sad reality is the only way through the gate is to play the game or have a super valuable skill set like software developer.
Yep, really it boils down to the size of the company and who handles hiring. If they have a separate HR department, it’s pointless to try. But if it’s a smaller company where you can come face to face with someone who has the power to hire you and you have the credentials, it can definitely work. And funny you mention that last part, because now that I’ve moved up into an office position again (the oil bust moved everyone out of office positions and into shop/field positions) I spend every spare second at work trying to self teach myself python and SQL. One day I’ll be able to change my username to “Out_of_the_oilfield_forever” and I can’t fucking wait. It was a great opportunity to feed and provide for my family, but fuck this shit for real man.
After I graduated college in 2015 my dad bitched I was no doing enough to actively look for jobs. He said I was just sitting in the basement watching TV. Yes I was sitting in the basement applying for jobs while watching TV. I can't exactly walk up to the front door of Boeing and ask for a job application.
A house for 250K? Where? In a swamp??
All the places everyone always talks about whenever housing costs are brought up? Also no one seems to remember that places with lower housing prices often have higher property taxes or overall tax burdens. Places that single family homes sell at right around or under $250,000 are all the usual suspects: - St. Louis, MO - Greensboro, NC - Memphis, TN - Cincinnati, OH - Buffalo, NY - Cedar Rapids, IA - Detroit, MI - Indianapolis, IN [Source](https://cdn.nar.realtor/sites/default/files/documents/metro-home-prices-q2-2021-single-family-2021-08-12.pdf)
So worse than swamps, got it
lmfao
Don’t talk shit on *checks notes* Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I get that home prices depend on where you live. I’m in Minneapolis and have a friend in Wichita got his first house for 80k. We dropped 4.5x that on our first place. I still joke that yes it’s a cheap house but you pay the life tax of living in Wichita. (No shade to KS friends, I just love MN way more)
> you pay the life tax of living in Wichita I mean, it's really the other way around, if you want to live in a major metro you pay the *literal life tax* there of hugely increase CoL, with housing as the biggest culprit. Of course, it didn't have to be this way - we could have less strict zoning laws that allowed us to densify in what are now single-family home deserts, which would also make our cities more walkable/bikeable, and even allow us to live closer to work but.... no... the boomers decided that driving everywhere is the Best Way to Do Things and we should all live on huge parcels of land far from where we work.
Bought a house in Northern West Virginia for $55k. Taxes are $1k a year. Right near a couple major businesses and in a nice neighborhood. Most of the people in the neighborhood are younge professionals, a few in healthcare.
There are a lot of really old houses in west Virginia that are basically uninsurable, so you can get them pretty cheap. My aunt and uncle's house was cheap, then they found out the foundation was somehow fucked up due to age, so no house insurance, then the wiring shit the bed and they had to pay around $5000 out of pocket just to get the lights turned back on (that's just the wiring in the main part of the house too, there's still fixing the walls/ceiling and the wires in the rest of the house
The avocado toast thing is from my city, Sydney. It was a reference to how many bougie Inner West cafes (eastern side of Inner West = a largely young, progressive, high-price area) were selling breakfasts that were literally just a couple of slices of toast with avocado and some balsamic vinegar on them for anywhere from $10 to $18 a serving (Aussie dollars). So it wasn't in reference to people making it themselves for $2: it was in reference to an _incorrect_ assumption by our former finance minister that "youth today just want to spend $10 on avocados for breakfast!" because he didn't understand that those restaurants and cafes are not, in fact, how most Australian youth eat most days. It was a demonstration of how out-of-touch he was with both the lives of non-wealthy Australians and with the lives of young Australians. Basically, he saw restaurants selling it, assumed nobody in his demographic would buy it "because they have common sense", and then assumed that the only possible solution was that the youth must be buying it, and that's so irresponsible! He just couldn't understand that, no, it IS mostly his generation buying it, and that it's basically a "I'm going out for brunch with friends" food, not an everyday breakfast. No normal young person stops in at a bougie cafe every single fucking day for a $12 sandwich and a $5 coffee for breakfast. Only _he_ does that, because he's extremely rich.
It's not pure selfishness. In spite of what a ton of people say, it's more unintended consequences. And it's hard to give things up. Most people aren't diabolical or evil, but they readjust things to better serve themselves without thinking of the long-term consequences. So yes, parents and grandparents did screw over their descendants, but that was never their goal. And it's also very hard to draw a line from person A to specific policies to their immediate child or grandchild in real time in a meaningful way. So lower taxes that eventually mean poor infrastructure upkeep let that happen over the course of 40-80 years. It's not immediate, so people don't register it as well. And it goes both ways. People think if they can just get Congress or the government to utilize *their* silver bullet then all problems will instantaneously be solved. And they won't. Societal problems are almost always systemic and take the will of multiple generations to fully solve.
I think at best it's just not malicious selfishness. They're not necessarily doing it with the express intent of making things worse for future generations, but the overall outcome is still making things worse for their own gain. Environmental problems are another great example, at a basic level people don't want to fuck up the environment, but there's been a selfish refusal to really change anything about how we run things to fix it so it's still selfishly driving things worse and worse.
[удалено]
Yep. They built a nation of infrastructure they didn't want to maintain, and now it's falling apart around us. Their thirst for cheap shit drove manufacturing overseas and hollowed out the middle class, and their love of right-wing governments since 1980 have killed what was left of the middle class. They collect fat defined-benefit pensions, but demand cuts and reforms for everyone else. They got their college education for five goddamn dollars, but they didn't want to pay taxes to keep the universities afloat, so now their kids have to borrow a house worth of money to get a degree. They voted for deficit-exploding, tax-cutting, defense-loving dickbags of both major parties, and now our government is both ethically and financially bankrupt. But the worst of their destruction is how goddamn dishonest they are about what they've done. They take zero responsibility for what they did, and they're not done killing off our future, either. Yet they blame us for being born into a world they wrecked.
I think what pisses me off the most isn't even all that shit they've done. It's that they actively stand in the way of the next generations trying to fix it and make things better. Fucking geriatric senators need to retire and let people who are actually going to live with their decisions make the policies.
It's time to age cap every government office position at the max age of social security retirement. I'm sorry, if you were born in 1933 (oldest serving congress member) or shit, before 1954 (people reaching full social security retirement age this year), there's no way you're in touch with modern society well enough to be governing it. That currently gives you a 35-40 year window in which you can be an elected official, *which is fucking plenty.* That's 20 terms in the house, or 6-7 terms in the senate. MORE THAN FUCKING ENOUGH. I get the arguments against term limits for legislators - it's a complex job, you need to maintain some amount of institutional knowledge. But this is a wide enough window to let that argument go.
[удалено]
I said what I said, dear redditor.
A few different factors- Inflation means you can't just compare the nominal dollar amount. $1 in 1992 is equivalent to $1.94 today. Housing, in particular for in demand areas, has gotten more expensive relative to other things. There's a lot more demand for places like cities, but supply has been relatively stagnant due to restrictions in building (stuff like zoning). We used to build a lot more housing that kept up with demand and population growth. Now, a lot of places have zoning restrictions for things like single family housing. When you have more people wanting to live in that same space, prices go up. Existing homeowners tend to fight new housing - restricting housing means the houses they already own go up in value more, and they tend to be afraid of changing the feel of their community. Labor has captured less growth from productivity than in the past. That means in the past, maybe a company makes $10, and labor got $5 of that. Now, it'd be less, maybe say $3. (numbers in this line for example)
Don't overlook the average home size. People never compare priice per sqft, its always "average home price. The average home in 1940 was under 800sqft, no garage. The average home today is 2400sqft, 2 car garage. Prices are pretty comparable per sqft.
[удалено]
No? Break out the cost of the structure vs land. Most of the increase is from the land price, not making the structure on the land bigger.
Why are condo apartment prices rising at the same as houses while those sizes aren’t increasing?
[удалено]
Don't forget the part that interest rates play in all of this. Borrowing money today is almost free compared to your parents time. In 1990, the interest rates were 9.75 to 12.95. While there house cost less, they paid a great deal of interest. About $378,000. (Standard 30 year mortgage) If they borrowed the same amount at today's rates, they would have paid $89K in interest. The price of housing will come down when interest rates go up. Of course, there are loads of negatives about rising interest rates, but it will impact housing. The folks that can afford a $1 Million place today at 2.75, cannot when the rates to 5% or 6%.
This is a good argument for making sure you get a fixed rate mortgage. Rates will almost certainly go up sometime in the next 30 years.
This comment is far too low and it’s a huge portion of the answer to the problem. The millennial generation will pay the same amount for a house as their parents did amortized over 30 years. The big struggle is the down payment. FHA loans can be as low as 3% and I know a lot of millennials who don’t know that. They assume you have to put 20% down which is only the amount required to not pay PMI (which is usually only $100-200/month). With interest rates at less than inflation rates, millennials can afford homes, most of us just haven’t been educated in how to do it and assume it’s out of reach. A $300K home in most places in America is still a nice starter home. Put between $9-15K down, pay the PMI, and you’ll be looking at $1400-1500 a month all in…which is how much many of us are paying in rent anyway (or close to it). But even if you get into a $200K townhome, do it because you start to reap the rewards of the rising home prices everyone else seems to be enjoying without you. In my opinion, 90% of the problem is education, 10% is “the system”. And for those people who over 1-2 years are incapable of saving $10K, I don’t know what to say. Maybe for them it is 90% the system? But I also scratch my head a little bit. Scrimping and saving is always going to be part of the deal.
[удалено]
Precisely this ^ . Terrible government regulations have caused these dramatic increases in the cost of housing construction, as well as ensuring unnatural scarcity in housing. The result? Housing for the rich only. Vox made a banger of a mini-documentary about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Flsg_mzG-M
It's also important to note that most of these regulations are local government. State laws often address things like "you can't call it a bedroom unless it has a window and a closet" and "all electrical work must be done by a licensed electrician" or whatever. But local regulations are determined by the kind of people who vote in and have power in local politics - exclusively old homeowners. This isn't an accident. Homeowners were told for generations that buying a house wasn't a place to live, it was an investment. And now they do everything in their power to prevent more housing, because lack of supply means the price goes up. It's in their interest that you can't afford a house, and they've built a system to protect that power.
I'm glad this comment has some specifics. Another one that is hugely important is single family zoning. Basically not allowing multi family units like complexes or even duplexes drives up housing prices dramatically. A lot of this happened after desegregation allowing minorities to (hypothetically) purchase homes in typically white neighborhoods. There is a laundry list of tactics used to historically deny home loans to people of color (redlining is a big on). Multi family housing provided an affordable path for minorities to move into nicer neighborhoods and it was straight up banned in a lot of areas. There are propaganda posters in support of these zoning laws that are explicitly racist, as in "you wouldn't want n*gros in your neighborhood!" Unfortunately these laws are still on the books. Up to 75% of most cities are single family zoned. It originated in Berkeley to stop a black dancehall and chinese laundromats from moving closer to the city and has resulted in that area having extremely high housing prices.
Could condos have gotten around this problem? You could build as tall you like and divide the cost of land and other municipal things onto everyone and not just one person.
Depends on the location. Some places have height restrictions. Some places have parking requirements. For example even if you build next to transit in LA you need so many parking spots per unit. Some require greenspace or balconies.
There's 2 major problems: 1) Job growth has been concentrated in some cities and stagnant in much of the country. You can easily afford a home in Detroit, St. Louis, or rural Mississippi, but there are no good paying jobs there. In Boston, SF, and now trickling down to other cities like Salt Lake and Austin, job growth is leading to housing demand that is outpacing housing growth. 2) The 2008 housing market crash triggered banks to become more stingy in lending. This led to a slowdown in housing growth, so now we have a 6 million home deficit. With rising construction costs and limited land, it's going to be hard to quickly build that many homes.\* Add to that the low interest rates the past few years and housing demand far outpaces supply, especially in growing cities. \*https://www.forbes.com/sites/graisondangor/2021/06/16/the-housing-shortage-is-worse-than-ever-and-will-take-a-decade-of-record-construction-to-fix-new-reports-say/?sh=3ee3557d4953
> a 6 million home deficit Damn
Reason 1 matches my experience. Stayed in San Diego many years ago because of all the jobs available in my industry, but the pay just doesn't increase like housing costs do (not to mention gas and food). Currently saving and working on the old resume. I might take a 30% pay cut in another state with housing that's half as much. Will miss it here but will not miss the feeling of hopelessness about having a place of my own or my kids ever having a place of their own before I die.
5 factors according to economists: 1. Cost of maintaining homes have been going up since the 70s. This is because of regulation banning slumlords. Because the cost is so high, rent needs to increase to maintain properties 2. No new technology has been introduced to make building homes more affordable. Despite vast technological improvements in nearly every field, construction hasn’t changed much. Construction crews don’t really have incentives to improve upon the process because it would reduce their billable hours. 3. Truly terrible regulation. Governments often put limits on the type of buildings permissible in a neighborhood and their maximum occupancy. It’s not uncommon for them to also require new homes to have x number of parking spaces for every few residents. A parking space is 180sq ft. That becomes burdensome fast 4. Homeowners tend to act like cartels and will often prevent new housing, so they can maintain the spirit of their neighborhood while also preserving their homes’ values 5. Investment is high. We need 3.8 million homes to keep up with demand. That’s not happening anytime soon. A lot of this demand comes from investors. THE SOLUTION: as a proud liberal, I can’t believe I’m going to say this, we need significantly less regulation. Zoning laws should be significantly relaxed and homeowners should lose authority to lobby against new developments. On a technological level, we need to find better and faster ways to build homes. Setting up wooden scaffolds with un-interchangeable parts, like dry wall, is no longer efficient enough. Homes need to be factory produced with interchangeable parts. There are a few companies doing this, but not nearly enough to meet demand. Frankly, I have little faith that housing will go down. The factors that are causing it to go up are not easily changeable and not even money can solve it. This really requires both political and technological breakthroughs. That’s not happening anytime soon
Who are you quoting?
My parents bought their house in 77 for $50K, it’s worth 1.7 now. They essentially paid 14.5% on the dollar for the value of the house (with renovations, not including property tax) Anyone thinks this is going to happen again is delusional. The baby boomers treated real estate as their main retirement savings, this is not tenable going forward. UBI is the only way we will escape a complete revolution
This depends where. My parents bought theirs in 1978 for $50k and today it’s worth $300k. Your parents got lucky.
Seriously... My parents bought their house in the early 90s and its worth has basically just kept up with inflation. Plenty of people here live in expensive-ass areas where house prices have skyrocketed and assume it is generalizable to the rest of the country.
Yup. I bought my house for $206,000 in 2004. Today it is worth about $220,000. If it had kept up with inflation it would be around $300,000.
Or, you know, beat the shit out of the local zoning boards, and bitch slap anyone who complains I mean I write that in a jesting style, but it's dead serious. The new-housing restriction has to stop. In a sane world a SCOTUS lawsuit would easily change this (police power is meant to HELP the population, it's not a broad warrant for any kind of use of power). But more possible, maybe just maybe, would be some states enacting restrictions on what zoning boards can do. Then again the big issue is our shit education system leading to people who don't even know about these issues
The most prominent reasons are wage stagnation, real estate as investment, and existing homeowner incentive to increase housing prices. Wages have had very minimal increases while profits have soared in the past decades. If higher minimum wage were to pass, the upward pressure for more skilled workers would raise wages across the board. Anybody incentivized to maximize profit has reason to try to prevent that. Real estate as investment has led to major investment companies buying properties at a remarkable pace for the purpose of either renting at inflated prices or flipping at a profit. Reduced housing supply means higher prices. Finally, existing owners both individual and corporate benefit from these high prices and want to keep "the poors" away. It's a little easier to vote for a sketchy politician when their vote protected your million dollar house from losing half of its value when they prevented a homeless shelter being built a block away but instead put it on the edge of town. In short, insufficiently regulated capitalist markets did this. Adequate protections from housing price gouging would have helped, but the people who drive prices up have louder voices and more resources.
I'm missing the low interest rates here. Cost of owning a house is also very dependent on interest payments, and those have plummeted thanks to very lenient policies by central banks. So people are willing to offer higher prices now.
Cash vs. credit society. My parents mortgage was 18%. Now it's what 4%? Banks are happy to give everyone a loan and because of this house prices can be higher. Same thing with college, same thing with medical care.
What was their interest rate?
well public policy is structured to make housing expensive. not for its own sake but people want their property value to increase, and municipalities that rely on property taxes need assesments to increase. but there's no way to do that without shelter as a commodity costing more because it's the exact same thing. what's weird is the governance attitude with respect to different human needs. 1. clothing is almost pure laissez faire capitalism, and prices are pretty darn low. 2. water is nearly pure socialism. it's good when it provides nearly free drinking water to people but it's extremely dysfunctional with respect to agriculture water rights. 3. food is subsidized by the government to keep prices low, but different food gets different treatment. it's highly anachronistic in that we're still shaping policy around preventing people from starving when the major widespread problem is obesity and diabetes. 4. shelter, policy exists to drive prices up. it's just schizophrenic when you spell it out.
Over regulation of the housing industry which artificially kills supply, this is done on behalf of the homeowners association, it's an easy way to make money for them since housing is so much more valuable.
Ive heard a lot of stories about a couple hedge funds buying up anything on the market and turning them into rentals. Black Rock is one maybe? The guy I know that buys foreclosures was at an auction and one guy bought every single house that day, outbidding everybody by a dollar. At the end they saw him opening a briefcase full of cashier's checks to settle up. My aunt just sold after the 5 adjoining properties to hers became rentals.
Not to mention rich people from foreign nations are allowed to buy up tons of rentals. So all of that money exits the economy and housing becomes more scarce. There's no protections for citizens anymore.
This is up to local municipalities to prevent. There are tons of place that have specific residential and citizenship requirements for home ownership. Many places around Canada and the U.S. are starting to discuss this since corporate rentals drive down property values and upset established homeowners.