Why is the number of first-time US homebuyers at a generational low?
Why is the number of first-time US homebuyers at a generational low?
Young Americans are holding off on buying a home, with the average age in 2024 being a record high of 38
This is a really, really stupid question.
I love it when a headline makes me audibly laugh, thought this was the onion for a second
Two posts down my feed is this:
Investors bought 27% of US homes in Q1, as traditional buyers struggle to afford
Being muscled out by cash paying conglomerates, investment funds and venture capital is always fun.
because the previous generation were all robber barons that drained the world for their personal gain at the expense of the children they insisted on having.
I watched my own father illicitly borrow millions of dollars by bullshitting other rich boomers, acquire vast acres of property across the country, promise the family he would pass it all down to us and our futures were set, then have everything taken away by courts as he and and the rest of my family drank themselves to death after snorting away every family assets on cocaine and other drugs.
I lost everything I owned after investing my time and energy into being there for my family and they just crashed out without any accountability to their next generation. Starting over in the middle of my life from nothing. I may never own property of any kind. I probably will never retire.
I feel like it was all just a microcosm view of what's happening broadly. The legacy of the boomer generation is going to be crushing us for a century to come or maybe forever.
I hear many millennials prefer to live in their cars. 🤡
The longer you live in a car, the more coffee and avocado toast you can have.
"Holding off"? No, I can't afford it. I'd love to own a home but my wage doesn't keep up with inflation.
At today’s prices, a family would need to earn $126,700 a year to afford monthly payments on an average home purchased in 2024, up from $79,300 annually in 2021, according to a report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
We are so screwed.
And they think someone can save for a down payment how? If you need 6 figures to afford the payments who can do that and have a down payment?
Jesus fuckin christ are these people seriously asking that question??
WE ARE ALL FUCKING POOR
Honestly, better than being rich. I mean it.
As far as having a personality and sense of empathy? Absolutely. I also like knowing that people love me for who I am, rather than because I'd have money.
But to not have to worry about affording the roof over my head would be pretty nice.
People aren't paid enough. The rich have too large a portion of the resources.
Eat the rich. Bury their collaborators.
The worst part is that I am getting paid a salary I could have only dreamed about years ago, and yet I still can't afford anything with how drastically everything went up in price.
Wages in general have gone up a little bit, but it's crazy to me that I'm earning more than 5x as much as I used to 15 years ago and feel like my buying power has not noticeably improved at all. I'm still stuck living in crappy apartments because that is all I can afford.
Exactly! My partner and I together make over $100,000 a year and finally we are just barely comfortable. All of our bills get paid and even though the budget is tight, we still have a little money and decent credit. I could put a $1,000 guitar on credit and pay that off no problem, but there's no way we could get a house.
Maybe if our wages doubled then we could find something further out in the sticks. Hopefully by that time more companies allow full remote work because I already lose an hour or more a day traveling.
Stop the food waste. Collaborators can be eaten too.
If they're too bitter for consumption, they can probably be composted and used in a garden. Either way, we'll get a rich meal.
Bury them where? I can't afford a plot of land :(
Bring back the Commons; fertilize with rich bodies.
Been unable to afford a house since I first tried avocado toast circa 2008
Article title writer pictured here
I know no one really asked this question.
- Average house price in Q1 2025 was $500,000.
- $100k down at 6.5% with great credit and monthly payments of $3180 for 30yrs.
How many people can say they will have a job that pays that well for 30 yrs?
$100k down
Fucking LMAO
"Yeah, before you buy, we want an amount of money you will never have at any one point in your entire life before we consider thinking about suggesting a mortgage to you"
Unless you live near a major city. Then you double the price of housing.
also, major city now means any city with even an attempt at commuter rail
Maybe it has something to with home prices rising an average of about 7.5 % per year over the last 10 years which means more than doubling.
Bought my house 2 years ago and it had doubled in price since 2013.
Meanwhile, wages have not kept up, largely to support/advantage/non-impact for those who bought in earlier. Boomers take advantage of low taxes, low-cost services, etc. driven by low wages.
Even with low interest rates, the size of the necessary downpayment is prohibitive and exposure to interest rate related shocks are much greater.
And everything else is much more expensive for an expensive house, including insurance, which is also getting harder to get and more expensive due to climate change.
Tl;DR: Younger generations are not getting housing because of older generations. We all know the answer to this question...
Probably the same reason megacorporatins are turning in record profit, year over year, and a very few people have increased their income by several billions of dollars, but that's just a guess. 💁
Don't forget about the corporations that are buying as many houses a quick as possible (faster than a person who will have a mortgage can) and at a higher price than what a person can/will pay becaue they are using them as investments.
Actually the report that came out recently (the one that found institutional real estate investors buying something like 27% of all available homes) made an important note: most of the companies buying these homes are so-called "mom n pop" landlords who own < 5 houses
So it's actually corporations AND fucking boomers.
Absolutely!
It must be because of those dang woke DEI!
Those... those [Insert Other]!
oh we know why, it’s not a mystery to anyone who talks to the average american worker. we are criminally underpaid for our labor and it gets worse the younger the generation is. millennials are more poor than their parents’ generation, and gen z will likely end up poorer than millennials.
Homes are fucking expensive. I couldn't afford to buy a house in most markets at current prices. I have no idea how people are able to buy homes today.
Even my neighbor down the street...1st home for him, wife, and 2 year old kid. He tried to sell because he didn't understand how property taxes worked. The previous owner of 30 years payed 1.5K a year. He bought the home and was hit with a 15K tax bill. He couldn't afford it and thought his bill would also be 1.5K. The closing agent and real estate agent didn't explain anything to him. They were just happy to collect commission and fees on a very expensive house.
Ah, a Californian
This doesn't make sense to me.
In my state the bank pays the property taxes. Its included in the monthly mortgage and goes into an escrow account for taxes.
I guess the rules vary by state.
Some places cap property tax increases per year, or even have a flat rate based on purchase price (or appraisal?) that never goes up… until you sell the house to someone new. Then the tax gets recalculated based on the current value of the house. So if the price of the house went up 10x in those 30 years, the tax is going to be 10x higher. It’s actually beneficial to the taxpayer IMO to have a consistent predictable tax that doesn’t go up over time if your neighborhood gets gentrified or whatever and home prices skyrocket.
Escrow isn't a requirement. The only requirement is that you pay your taxes and insurance whether you have someone else doing it or do it yourself.
What varies from place to place is how property taxes are calculated. Many places "lock you in" to a rate when you buy and only reassess when the property changes hands. In my state, the rate just increases by 3% every year regardless of whether you sell or not so nobody is hit with a big surprise bill.
It’s because all the realtors are woke!
Everyone I know around my age that have purchased either bought before 2019 in the smaller cities of Texas where it was a house or it was sometime 2020-2022 when rates were sub 4% and home prices didn't explode yet and those were condos. Also everyone was dual income or it was to co-own a house. I know one person that purchased by themselves but they sleep in the smallest room and rent out every other room to siblings and friends
Since some point in 2022, the only people I know that bought a home were a married late 30s couple that were high income and the home was like 70+ years old and a pipe burst and there turned out to be a lot of mold that made it unlivable for a period of time
Cost.
A 7% interest rate doesn’t help
We bought in 2020 and have a 2.875% rate on our mortgage. We only put 10% down and had PMI but the broker was all, "you can refinance to get rid of that".
I asked him when in the world we'd ever be able to refinance at or below that rate? He had nothing to say to that.
We bought ours in 2022 at a 4.15% rate with only 5% down and since I dealt with a local lender, got a conventional loan with no PMI. Thank God. The PMI was my biggest worry, but we were very fortunate.
Also found a house for under $300k, but it was built in 1952 and we're a little in the boonies. We have a Walmart nearby and some fast food, but that's it. We both work 20 miles away in the much larger town. And then we're about an hour or so (depending on traffic) from a major city. So we had to make some concessions in order to even get a house. Though I love being in a small quiet neighborhood and being able to live away from the bustle of a larger town, but it does have drawbacks.
Just FYI there are stipulations to removing PMI from a mortgage but refinancing usually isn’t one of them. Each situation is unique though. FHA and VA loans are different, etc.
I had two houses at that interest rate in the 2000’s. The wage to house price was still reasonable then. Made $40k, paid $88k for a 3/2 in middle class suburban Tampa. I’m making 30% more now but houses are 400% more.
Not on top of the wild overvaluation.
While true, I would point out that the low mortgage rates that increased housing prices --- low mortgage rates permit people to borrow more and tends to drive up prices --- in the decade-and-a-half before 2022 was unusual for the US. Prior to about 2008, interest rates were at or higher than they are today.
Here's a graph of the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US
Here's the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. This measures same-home prices --- that it, it attempts to factor out changes in types of home being built, so new homes being larger won't drive it up.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPISA
It's not adjusted for inflation, though.
Here's an inflation-adjusted graph:
https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-vs-inflation/
Between about 2011 and 2022, the real price of a given house rose rapidly in a low mortgage rate environment. In 2022, mortgage rates returned to something that's more historically-normal.
I expect that to sell a house in this environment, a homeowner will probably have to cut what they're asking.
Now combine them both and do average monthly payment.
Even with higher prices, lower interest rates mean lower monthly costs
A house is a huge liability. If i lose my job, what do i do about the debt? It's the job market uncertainty that i fear more than the current pay levels, tbh.
House is an asset. Mortgage is a liability. Having one without the other is now a dream.
Because those who make the rules don't want you to own shit.
...could it be because they're only affordable to first-time US homebuyers with generational wealth?..
capitalism. there. article done.
$$$$?!?
They will never acknowledge it unless they are made to
hcol, cant afford, and piss poor job prospects which seems to be intentional those entering entry level right outside of many majors/fields. the only lucky ones last decade was mostly tech.
Because of the increasing gap between wages and property values?
and poor job prospects on many fields, as well.
Because the only part of the economy doing well is home values
Because the common citizens will have more problems than buying a house after the Orange Goblin and his fellow criminals started to irrevocably dismantle the nation forever? 🤔
Because home ownership is increasingly becoming a trap? Gee, lemme save up a high 5 digit sum of money over the course of a decade so i can afford to BUY IN to a ridiculous sum of debt that, even if its paid off eventually, will be taken away to cover medical debt in old age! All to prop up infinite growth in property values to prop up a stock market.
wattt
Given interest rates’ impact on the housing market, Trump has repeatedly demandedthat the Fed lower them. “You have cost the USA a fortune and continue to do so,” Trump told the central bank’s chair, Jerome Powell, in a handwritten note.
But Powell and other Fed officials argue that Trump’s tariffs have created ongoing economic uncertainty, especially around prices. Some consumers say they’ve already seen prices rise, and cutting rates risks fueling more inflation.
“It’s a risk we feel. As the people who are supposed to keep stable prices, we need to manage that risk,” Powell told the US Senate last month.
Bangup job so far, Powell you asshole. I’d like to see how your mindset changes after spending a few years working a crap job for $35K a year.
Not saying Trump isn’t also a colossal d-bag; but Powell’s entitled ass does not get a pass from me.
When the headline is a question, the answer usually is 'no'. EDIT: It was a joke about headlines asking things that should be obvious by now.
Hmmm
See also: why hip-hop sucks in '96.
It's the money-ey-ey-ey