alt Hacker News>"if you can rent cheaply enough for 10-20 years the boomers will start dying in sufficient numbers that if there is somehow no reversion on home prices in the mean time there should be insufficient buyers at that point and prices will eventually fall"
But that "10-20 years" is your life, and there's no getting it back. Millennials (the largest generation in US history) have entered into our prime family starting age, and the fact that most are priced out of the housing market right now and stuck renting apartments is a complete tragedy. At a 90th percentile income, I can just barely be able to afford a home and provide for a family of 3-4 like our parents and grandparents did on a highschool education with no higher skills.
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This might be a bit of talking past one another. The rent vs buy argument should be comparing similar housing, but your comment bakes in the assumption that renting=apartment. That may be true for your area, just wanted to point out the dissonance.
I doubt your parents instantly bought a house as unskilled workers at age 18. Maybe in a very few ultra cheap housing markets that would have been possible.
For example in 1980 in SF the median home was $130k and the median household income was $16k. Today it’s $1240k and $141k. So yes it’s less affordable but it’s hardly a massive difference as you imply.
> most are priced out of the housing market right now and stuck renting apartments is a complete tragedy
It absolutely is, but as one of those myself, I just refuse to even attempt to pay their prices and will make the best of life while renting and doing other things, not having kids, not owning property unless the ratio changes dramatically. Owning at most a tiny condo for half a million where I live, or moving to the boonies to own marginally more for less is simply not appealing to me, it doesn't unlock anything but a vague sense of security and a shit ton of liability. I hope more people choose the same until the working age tranch of purchasing power isn't as available as they'd like and prices have to drop. It's a major issue, but maybe I should be thankful I never adopted the boomer/genx dreams of owning a place and having a family or whatever. It's something I'm morbidly watching from the sidelines for now (in my early-mid thirties), but there are no circumstances except a miracle side hustle that could create the circumstances for me to actually pursue a mortgage on a place in my city.
Starting? The Millenials are in their 40s! You'd better be well into raising kids by your 40s.
Yeah, it definitely feels like the TFR crisis where the actual problems won't show up until it's too late and we're basically turbofucked.