> the proportion of 25-year-olds that can afford to buy a house in the area they grew up in of some reasonable size is about the same as it was for boomers OK,

> the proportion of 25-year-olds that can afford to buy a house in the area they grew up in of some reasonable size is about the same as it was for boomers OK, first, boomers aren't relevant here. The people buying houses in anything like OP's timeframe were GenX, not boomers, and I'm going to stick with that timeframe. Second, I just don't think your claim is true. For example, in Massachusetts (where I live) median income in 1990 was $62K and median home price was $162K for a ratio of 2.6:1. Today those numbers are $77K and $408K for a ratio of 5.3:1. That's all of Massachusetts, not just the high-demand areas. Even your source admits that Seattle, Portland, and Ft. Lauderdale show much larger ratio increases, but casually dismisses them as anomalies instead of considering that they might be the tip of the real iceberg. I believe that any scientific sample would show a very different picture than that derived from cherry-picked extremes. It's practically all because of wage stagnation BTW. That's a 3.1% annual increase in home prices, vs. a paltry 0.7% for wages.