alt Hacker News> It's also funny to see the "the economy is roaring!" "incomes are up!". Great, have they increased by as much as inflation? Can I afford a home?
Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age. There's a lot of denial around this topic because everywhere you turn there's a Reddit post or news headline about how housing is impossible to afford.
> Pay's less.
Less than the narrow window of post-COVID mania pay maybe, but inflation adjusted wages are actually up over the long term.
> Nobody can take a break. Pressure's on.
Annual working hours per worker is flat or slightly down from when your mom's generation made up most of the workforce https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-...
When it comes to happiness, the numbers don't actually matter though. Perceptions do. Your and your mom's worldview that everything "isn't working any more", that young people can't possibly be buying homes, that real wages are down, and that working hours are up are actually very common ideas, especially if you zoom in on demographics who read a lot of certain types of social media (Reddit especially!) where classic doomerism prevails.
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> inflation adjusted wages are actually up over the long term
Inflation is a tool for monetary policy. It doesn't track cost of living. For example, if luxury items become more affordable, but housing prices rise, inflation-adjusted pay doesn't capture this kind of negative effect on the working class.
> Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age.
The median Zoomer is in their mid-20s. You're comparing rounding errors.
Can you link a source for gen z with higher homeowner rates than millennial, st the same age?
Because redfin shows that just is very clearly not true
https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation...
Yeah, a house is always affordable to someone, and it's not like all the single-family homes are owned by huge landlords renting out. Some areas have become more sought-after, so young adults there are finding that they can't afford to buy a house where they grew up.
> Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age. There's a lot of denial around this topic.
Yeah but aren't they putting down less/leveraging themselves deeper?
edit: also it seems like the millenial/genZ divide here is on the order of like 1-5%, whereas the gap between either of those generations and boomers/genX is more like 10%+. It's good that the trend hasn't gotten worse in recent history, but I think it's pretty inarguable that the housing market is much worse than it was 30 years ago.
I can’t grasp the math. How are young people buying homes? Is the average income now over $100k?
Or are they taking out mortgages they can never pay off, meaning they are almost renting not on a path to actually buying or owning and most of their payments are interest.
If that’s the case they are renting a leveraged financial position.
Previous generations could own homes. As in pay them off.
one thing to also consider is that maybe the younger kids who are capable of buying houses may be getting their down payment from the bank of mom and dad. not good for people thinking things are fair
>Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age.
Not according to this Redfin report (also linked by others in the thread):
"Take 28-year-olds as an example: 38.3% of 28-year-old Gen Zers owned their home in 2025, compared to 42.5% of Gen Xers when they were 28 and 44.4% of baby boomers when they were 28." (There is an accompanying chart in the linked report.)
https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation...
That seems to show a pretty clear decline in home affordability over time, for people of the same age.
nice debunk, thats just a wall of words that besides likely being wrong, has no evidence and goes against what i hear people saying all the time.
edit: besides, happiness is not about money. freedom of expression and free/impartial institutions are at all time lows across the western world. which as we speak is in an arms race to be the biggest and best surveillance system it can be.
Home "ownership" is misleading. You don't own a home until you've paid it off.
Younger people are getting into more debt, for much longer in order to be able to survive.
When we start comparing the numbers (i.e, house paid off, even reflected as a percentage paid off, relative to age) the numbers reveal the real crisis.
Anecdotally, I know tons of 20-30 year olds getting into the property market (with insane levels of debt with almost impossible loan lengths) simply because if they don't do it now, there is a high chance homeless is the next option.