9 ms·

At this point, I think people of a certain age would just be happy to have a parcel of land with a roof over their head to call their own as opposed to buying a

At this point, I think people of a certain age would just be happy to have a parcel of land with a roof over their head to call their own as opposed to buying a house as some sort of long term investment whose value keeps accumulating (and whose tax value will continue to increase as a result)

notyourwork 3y ago
Exactly, I just want my own place. The land and roof to do what I want with. It’s not monopoly for most people.
- dataflow 3y ago
  Sure if you have a separate home on your own dedicated land, but what about everyone with HOAs, property taxes, etc. to deal with? For many people they still have to pay "rent" and still can't really do whatever they want with the land and roof, so they don't see much of these benefits either, right?
  - b112 3y ago
    This is like women's pants, and women complaining about the lack of pockets. If everyone refused to buy with a HOA, then they would vanish in new builds, and could even be uniformly voted to disband in old builds. But apparently some like HOAs (don't ask me why).
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      HOAs are the only legal mechanism for a development to assess fees to maintain common amenities. If your neighborhood hires landscapers, or has a pool, or you share literally any part of the building structure, then an HOA comes into play. Often new developments have private roads that need maintenance, snow clearing, etc.
    - throwaway646465 3y ago
      Many local municipalities actually require the developer to include a new HOA as part of the permitting process for new development. This is because small local governments are often too cash poor to foot the additional road maintenance, utilities, etc so they want to offload the cost to the developers/ the developers customers.
      - hnaccount_rng 3y ago
        As a European, this really reads like the thing with the "give them 5 more minutes and they'll rediscover taxes" situation.. Yeah if you outsource government functions to private institutions you'll have to require those to exist. Just that, being private, there's no accountability to be had..
        jen20 3y ago
        The HOA fees are _on top_ of property taxes that would make Europeans’ eyes water.
        lostlogin 3y ago
        You you share what you pay? I don’t understand how this could be true. I’m in Auckland, New Zealand and don’t have a housing association. I pay about US$1500 per year in property tax. It covers rubbish collection, library access, street cleaning, park maintenance, subsidised public transport (which is an abysmal service) etc. https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/property-rates-valuations/your-rates-bill/Pages/what-rates-pay-for.aspx#:~:text=Services%20your%20property%20rates%20pay%20for&text=collecting%20rubbish,maintaining%20parks https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/property-rates-valuation...
        punk-coder 3y ago
        I live in Georgia, City of Decatur. My house is a 1920 craftsman, 2,800 sq ft, 4 bedroom, 3 bath. We pay ~$1,200 a month in property taxes.
    - cantaloa 3y ago
      In many places, the HOA is the only entity that will do anything about bad neighbors like a dog that barks 24/7 or someone playing music all night—things that don't necessarily break city law but do affect your life, or things that do break city law but the city won't bother enforcing. It all comes down to luck of the draw.
      - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
        Those things should break city law though! To me, this is another of privatizing what should be the government's job, resulting in less accountability and less democratic control.
        matthewdgreen 3y ago
        I don’t know if HOAs are great or not, but I live in a mid-size city with a lot of more important problems than taking care of my neighbors’ unsightly home situations. I can’t realistically expect city government to handle it, and moreover different neighborhoods have different very comfort levels with that sort of thing. Moving that sort of “minor living arrangements” governance out of the big city government into the neighborhood actually works much better.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        seti0Cha 3y ago
        If the HOA is entirely elected by the people who live in it, it sounds as if it would be more democratic and more accountable than a town or city government. Your vote will have more power and the people elected will literally be your neighbors.
        tzs 3y ago
        Why not have both? City law sets a baseline for the city, but that will be a one size fits all solution. Someone who wants a place quieter than the noise level the city enforces can find a development with an HOA that sets a lower level. Someone who is particularly sensitive to smoke can find a development that bans outdoor fires on more days than the city does. As long as an HOA is only limiting things that actually affect other people and maintaining common property, and it is legally structured in a way that prevents scope creep (or ensures that existing owners are grandfathered if new restrictions are imposed), I don't see anything inherently wrong with having an HOA.
    - nkrisc 3y ago
      Like most things in life: it depends. I live in an HOA. We pay about $150 a year, they keep the common areas maintained, coordinate with the county for road and other municipal work, and … that’s basically it. They’re pretty much otherwise invisible and are just my neighbors. Sometimes I even break the rules and put my garbage bins out too early and leave them out too late and I’ve never heard a word about it. There was even a foreclosed house in the neighborhood that was increasingly unmaintained, and the HOA hounded the bank and got them to take better care of the property until it was finally sold. Overall, our HOA is a net positive. I also was part of an HOA for 4-unit condo building I lived in previously. It was perfectly fine and its purpose and necessity was very apparent. I’m sure there are nightmare HOAs out there, just like there are nightmare neighbors in places with no HOA.
      - grepfru_it 3y ago
        An HOA is like socialism. It's great for the first two, maybe three generations. But then new owners come in and they DGAF about HOA rules and/or the HOA (what's a measly $150/year on my sr engineer salary). And finally the HOA and/or property starts falling apart^W^Wchanging. We are witnessing this right now, having not moved from our townhome. First decade was great, everyone follow the rules, HOA cared about the look of our properties and kept everyone in check. Then HOA stopped sending letters about the dirty facades. Then the neighbors one by one all decided its okay to leave their garbage cans out even though the bylaws specifically forbid this. Then they cut back on services they offer (illegal parking is only enforced during HOA business hours, no more landscape maintenance), they stopped enforcement (neighbor has 4 pets, facades haven't been cleaned in 5-6 years, trash and toys are being left in the shared driveway). The final slap in the face, we got an email last month saying they are raising the HOA fee by 25%. Unlike socialism, I can politic my way into the board and demand change. Which looks like something I'm going to have to do to get back the HOA (and property) that I loved
        lostlogin 3y ago
        Is the price rise a slap on the face? It sounds like it’s what you want. If you want letters to go out for minor issues and landscaping, towing etc, you need funding to do it. This has to happen before enforcement increases. I think that getting your ideal back is going to take several more big increases. > Unlike socialism, I can politic my way into the board and demand change. That sounds like the definition of socialism. What do you mean?
    - mmh0000 3y ago
      I’ve posted this before and it wasn’t well received but I love HOAs. When I bought my first house, I was adamant that I didn’t want an HOA. Over the next ten years the neighborhood went to crap. I ended up living next to neighbors who didn’t maintain their yards, parked junker cars on their lawn and let their houses go to trash. When I moved, I specifically wanted an HOA. After five years, I still love my HOA. Mostly for two reasons. First, other neighbors here generally have the same mind set and care about their most expensive possession. Second when someone starts letting things slide the HOA slaps ‘‘em on the wrist.
      - harshalizee 3y ago
        I don't understand this mentality at all. Why do you care how they maintain their property if it doesn't harm you directly? I never understood why anyone would harass someone else over their lawn. It's only a matter of time where you end up with neighbors who don't share the same mindset to start micromanaging the neighborhood. I live in north Seattle area where non-HOA homes are priced higher than HOA homes. The area has a couple of older somewhat rundown houses and no one cares. Prices are still at least $100k higher than the new builds with HOAs on the next block. So there goes the old excuse for maintaining home value.
        mmh0000 3y ago
        You don't understand why I would care about the neighborhood that I live in? My house is the most expensive thing I own, I worked incredibly hard to get it. I am proud of it. I take care of it. I want to live in a neighborhood with others who feel the same way. To your second point, yes, not all HOAs are great. If you frequent fark.com, you'll find multiple threads per month about some terrible thing an HOA is doing. But, that's why you do your due diligence when selecting an HOA. You carefully read the CC&Rs before signing on the house, you talk to others in the neighborhood before moving in. Much like selecting an insurance plan. For example, my HOA is setup so that leadership fully rotates every 3 years, with the rotations staggered. Worst case we get bad leadership for 1 year. Though, so far, in the in the 15 years the HOA has existed, they've done nothing but enforce rules everyone has agreed to. (Well that, and they killed off a bunch of common-area grass by hiring the cheapest lawn care they could find. )
    - prepend 3y ago
      My HOA is pretty nice. They manage the common areas and maintain a community pool and tennis court. It was one of the positive reasons I bought my house. But they also aren’t allowed to monitor grass height and whatnot.
    - l1tany11 3y ago
      The problem is that cities encourage/force HOAs to exist. The city gets the HOA to maintain the infrastructure indefinitely. So you can’t really vote with your wallet. Developers often don’t want to make HOAs, it costs more money and it’s a pain. But that’s the big thing with all construction. It’s super, super regulated. It’s probably the most heavily regulated thing there is… what gets built is the small subset of things that can both work financially and get approved. If you got on the right merry go round early enough, it’s great. It’s probably the biggest thing creating inequality. The irony is that long term, many HOAs hurt property values. But supposedly they exist to enhance property values.
- scrapcode 3y ago
  Not without the HOA's permission, though.
  - notyourwork 3y ago
    Not every house is under an HOA.
pydry 3y ago
Meanwhile other people are pretty happy with the (r>g) gradual decline into feudalism driven by asset and land ownership accumulating in fewer and richer hands.
- sooheon 3y ago
  I love Piketty for bringing the data, but it's clear that r incorrectly lumps together land and capital. R can be decomposed into returns to land (rent) and returns to capital, and the former is much more pernicious. https://equitablegrowth.org/land-rather-than-capital-the-long-run-oppressor-of-the-workers/ https://equitablegrowth.org/land-rather-than-capital-the-lon...
pmoriarty 3y ago
The overwhelming majority of habitable land in the world is uninhabited. The problem is most people want to live close to cities, where land and housing is expensive. We need to decentralize.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  I think there are probably serious limits on the extent to which decentralization is viable in North America. The lifestyle that comes with rural life for example is not one that the majority of the population finds attractive, with how far removed from not only creature comforts but also employment opportunities and essential services it makes one. There's also many things that don't work out economically for towns below a certain size. This is why little towns of 1k-10k tend to have only megacorp chain shops and restaurants — despite the cost of operations being so much cheaper than they are in more urban areas, things like little family owned bakeries, delis, etc are mostly found in cities in the US. The latter of those paragraphs could perhaps be changed, but it'd take an earth-shattering level of infrastructural redevelopment that I don't see happening any time soon.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  We need to decentralize. Hard disagree here. Decentralization might reduce housing costs, but makes many other things more expensive. More roads to pave and maintain. Higher delivery costs. More time in the car to get to work, shopping, entertainment. What we need is more/smarter infill development. And the elimination of R1 zoning (single-family only). Let the market decide what housing density should exist on a given block (within reason).
  - tzs 3y ago
    > Hard disagree here. Decentralization might reduce housing costs, but makes many other things more expensive. More roads to pave and maintain. Higher delivery costs. More time in the car to get to work, shopping, entertainment. I think when people talk about decentralization they usually mean people moving from the big cities to existing less big cities. Those less big cities are usually built on the road and/or rail networks that are used to supply the big cities. Decentralizing to such exiting smaller cities wouldn't necessarily be costly, especially if not done too fast.
paulcole 3y ago
It’s my belief that in a few generations in the US “owning a home” will no longer be the default dream people have. You can kind of see a similar shift today in how teens/young adults are losing interest in driving — something their great-grandparents would have thought crazy. “But a car is what makes you free!”
- max_expectation 3y ago
  This is already the case for people my age unless one gets a significant parental handout. Certainly for anywhere within an hour or two commute of a city where most jobs are.
- ziftface 3y ago
  Maybe I'm just sandwiched between those generations but I don't see how those are equivalent. The desire for stable housing isn't a social construct. If you can't secure that you'll always be stressed.
  - paulcole 3y ago
    Stable housing isn’t limited to owning a single family home. Renting a small apartment can be very stable (I’ve done this for the past 15 years). Owning a small condo can be very stable. There are also many stressed homeowners who worry about making mortgage payments. The reason many see these as unstable today is because of the default-ness of single family housing as the default goal. Similarly how driving a car was the default goal for 16 year olds for several generations. It’s hard to imagine not wanting to purchase a home because we’ve been sold it as the smart and obvious thing to do for quite awhile now.
    - thegginthesky 3y ago
      Renting might be stable but it's very dependant on whoever owns the house and what type of regulations and protections your government has in place. Owning a home (house/apartment/land/etc) gives you more rights over where you live and more stability in most countries. I've seen rents go up with inflation where inflation grows at 25% yoy, and I've seen people kicked out of an apartment 3 months after moving in because the owner found a buyer with a good deal. But I agree with you, single family housing is the goal for some cultures and generations, and it was carefully crafted by governmental policy, propaganda, marketing and third party interests. We are now seeing the consequences of such. Yet, not all people have that goal, but a lot are content to just owning a place to live even with relatives, a community or others. I feel it's hard to not wanting to own something if it grants more rights and protections against injustices. In the countries I've lived, having a property deed of any sorts with your name on it makes your life so much better and stress free.
alistairSH 3y ago
Which age do you mean? (In the US) GenZ has outpaced both GenX and Millennials in rate of home-ownership by age 25 (30% vs 28% and 27%). https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/21/gen-z-ahead-of-millennials-and-their-parents-in-owning-their-own-homes/?sh=7f897627d0e6 https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/21/ge...
- ascotan 3y ago
  https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf So i think the trendline in terms of homeownership rates seems to be gently decreasing for all age groups, but there's a big spike during the 2 housing bubbles we've seen when rates were at historic lows.
Gigachad 3y ago
Why on earth would I do that when I could just rent and put the money in index fund which will appreciate.

notyourwork 3y ago

Exactly, I just want my own place. The land and roof to do what I want with. It’s not monopoly for most people.

dataflow 3y ago
Sure if you have a separate home on your own dedicated land, but what about everyone with HOAs, property taxes, etc. to deal with? For many people they still have to pay "rent" and still can't really do whatever they want with the land and roof, so they don't see much of these benefits either, right?
- b112 3y ago
  This is like women's pants, and women complaining about the lack of pockets. If everyone refused to buy with a HOA, then they would vanish in new builds, and could even be uniformly voted to disband in old builds. But apparently some like HOAs (don't ask me why).
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    HOAs are the only legal mechanism for a development to assess fees to maintain common amenities. If your neighborhood hires landscapers, or has a pool, or you share literally any part of the building structure, then an HOA comes into play. Often new developments have private roads that need maintenance, snow clearing, etc.
  - throwaway646465 3y ago
    Many local municipalities actually require the developer to include a new HOA as part of the permitting process for new development. This is because small local governments are often too cash poor to foot the additional road maintenance, utilities, etc so they want to offload the cost to the developers/ the developers customers.
    - hnaccount_rng 3y ago
      As a European, this really reads like the thing with the "give them 5 more minutes and they'll rediscover taxes" situation.. Yeah if you outsource government functions to private institutions you'll have to require those to exist. Just that, being private, there's no accountability to be had..
      - jen20 3y ago
        The HOA fees are _on top_ of property taxes that would make Europeans’ eyes water.
        lostlogin 3y ago
        You you share what you pay? I don’t understand how this could be true. I’m in Auckland, New Zealand and don’t have a housing association. I pay about US$1500 per year in property tax. It covers rubbish collection, library access, street cleaning, park maintenance, subsidised public transport (which is an abysmal service) etc. https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/property-rates-valuations/your-rates-bill/Pages/what-rates-pay-for.aspx#:~:text=Services%20your%20property%20rates%20pay%20for&text=collecting%20rubbish,maintaining%20parks https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/property-rates-valuation...
        punk-coder 3y ago
        I live in Georgia, City of Decatur. My house is a 1920 craftsman, 2,800 sq ft, 4 bedroom, 3 bath. We pay ~$1,200 a month in property taxes.
  - cantaloa 3y ago
    In many places, the HOA is the only entity that will do anything about bad neighbors like a dog that barks 24/7 or someone playing music all night—things that don't necessarily break city law but do affect your life, or things that do break city law but the city won't bother enforcing. It all comes down to luck of the draw.
    - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
      Those things should break city law though! To me, this is another of privatizing what should be the government's job, resulting in less accountability and less democratic control.
      - matthewdgreen 3y ago
        I don’t know if HOAs are great or not, but I live in a mid-size city with a lot of more important problems than taking care of my neighbors’ unsightly home situations. I can’t realistically expect city government to handle it, and moreover different neighborhoods have different very comfort levels with that sort of thing. Moving that sort of “minor living arrangements” governance out of the big city government into the neighborhood actually works much better.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - seti0Cha 3y ago
        If the HOA is entirely elected by the people who live in it, it sounds as if it would be more democratic and more accountable than a town or city government. Your vote will have more power and the people elected will literally be your neighbors.
      - tzs 3y ago
        Why not have both? City law sets a baseline for the city, but that will be a one size fits all solution. Someone who wants a place quieter than the noise level the city enforces can find a development with an HOA that sets a lower level. Someone who is particularly sensitive to smoke can find a development that bans outdoor fires on more days than the city does. As long as an HOA is only limiting things that actually affect other people and maintaining common property, and it is legally structured in a way that prevents scope creep (or ensures that existing owners are grandfathered if new restrictions are imposed), I don't see anything inherently wrong with having an HOA.
  - nkrisc 3y ago
    Like most things in life: it depends. I live in an HOA. We pay about $150 a year, they keep the common areas maintained, coordinate with the county for road and other municipal work, and … that’s basically it. They’re pretty much otherwise invisible and are just my neighbors. Sometimes I even break the rules and put my garbage bins out too early and leave them out too late and I’ve never heard a word about it. There was even a foreclosed house in the neighborhood that was increasingly unmaintained, and the HOA hounded the bank and got them to take better care of the property until it was finally sold. Overall, our HOA is a net positive. I also was part of an HOA for 4-unit condo building I lived in previously. It was perfectly fine and its purpose and necessity was very apparent. I’m sure there are nightmare HOAs out there, just like there are nightmare neighbors in places with no HOA.
    - grepfru_it 3y ago
      An HOA is like socialism. It's great for the first two, maybe three generations. But then new owners come in and they DGAF about HOA rules and/or the HOA (what's a measly $150/year on my sr engineer salary). And finally the HOA and/or property starts falling apart^W^Wchanging. We are witnessing this right now, having not moved from our townhome. First decade was great, everyone follow the rules, HOA cared about the look of our properties and kept everyone in check. Then HOA stopped sending letters about the dirty facades. Then the neighbors one by one all decided its okay to leave their garbage cans out even though the bylaws specifically forbid this. Then they cut back on services they offer (illegal parking is only enforced during HOA business hours, no more landscape maintenance), they stopped enforcement (neighbor has 4 pets, facades haven't been cleaned in 5-6 years, trash and toys are being left in the shared driveway). The final slap in the face, we got an email last month saying they are raising the HOA fee by 25%. Unlike socialism, I can politic my way into the board and demand change. Which looks like something I'm going to have to do to get back the HOA (and property) that I loved
      - lostlogin 3y ago
        Is the price rise a slap on the face? It sounds like it’s what you want. If you want letters to go out for minor issues and landscaping, towing etc, you need funding to do it. This has to happen before enforcement increases. I think that getting your ideal back is going to take several more big increases. > Unlike socialism, I can politic my way into the board and demand change. That sounds like the definition of socialism. What do you mean?
  - mmh0000 3y ago
    I’ve posted this before and it wasn’t well received but I love HOAs. When I bought my first house, I was adamant that I didn’t want an HOA. Over the next ten years the neighborhood went to crap. I ended up living next to neighbors who didn’t maintain their yards, parked junker cars on their lawn and let their houses go to trash. When I moved, I specifically wanted an HOA. After five years, I still love my HOA. Mostly for two reasons. First, other neighbors here generally have the same mind set and care about their most expensive possession. Second when someone starts letting things slide the HOA slaps ‘‘em on the wrist.
    - harshalizee 3y ago
      I don't understand this mentality at all. Why do you care how they maintain their property if it doesn't harm you directly? I never understood why anyone would harass someone else over their lawn. It's only a matter of time where you end up with neighbors who don't share the same mindset to start micromanaging the neighborhood. I live in north Seattle area where non-HOA homes are priced higher than HOA homes. The area has a couple of older somewhat rundown houses and no one cares. Prices are still at least $100k higher than the new builds with HOAs on the next block. So there goes the old excuse for maintaining home value.
      - mmh0000 3y ago
        You don't understand why I would care about the neighborhood that I live in? My house is the most expensive thing I own, I worked incredibly hard to get it. I am proud of it. I take care of it. I want to live in a neighborhood with others who feel the same way. To your second point, yes, not all HOAs are great. If you frequent fark.com, you'll find multiple threads per month about some terrible thing an HOA is doing. But, that's why you do your due diligence when selecting an HOA. You carefully read the CC&Rs before signing on the house, you talk to others in the neighborhood before moving in. Much like selecting an insurance plan. For example, my HOA is setup so that leadership fully rotates every 3 years, with the rotations staggered. Worst case we get bad leadership for 1 year. Though, so far, in the in the 15 years the HOA has existed, they've done nothing but enforce rules everyone has agreed to. (Well that, and they killed off a bunch of common-area grass by hiring the cheapest lawn care they could find. )
  - prepend 3y ago
    My HOA is pretty nice. They manage the common areas and maintain a community pool and tennis court. It was one of the positive reasons I bought my house. But they also aren’t allowed to monitor grass height and whatnot.
  - l1tany11 3y ago
    The problem is that cities encourage/force HOAs to exist. The city gets the HOA to maintain the infrastructure indefinitely. So you can’t really vote with your wallet. Developers often don’t want to make HOAs, it costs more money and it’s a pain. But that’s the big thing with all construction. It’s super, super regulated. It’s probably the most heavily regulated thing there is… what gets built is the small subset of things that can both work financially and get approved. If you got on the right merry go round early enough, it’s great. It’s probably the biggest thing creating inequality. The irony is that long term, many HOAs hurt property values. But supposedly they exist to enhance property values.
scrapcode 3y ago
Not without the HOA's permission, though.
- notyourwork 3y ago
  Not every house is under an HOA.

pydry 3y ago

Meanwhile other people are pretty happy with the (r>g) gradual decline into feudalism driven by asset and land ownership accumulating in fewer and richer hands.

sooheon 3y ago
I love Piketty for bringing the data, but it's clear that r incorrectly lumps together land and capital. R can be decomposed into returns to land (rent) and returns to capital, and the former is much more pernicious. https://equitablegrowth.org/land-rather-than-capital-the-long-run-oppressor-of-the-workers/ https://equitablegrowth.org/land-rather-than-capital-the-lon...

pmoriarty 3y ago

The overwhelming majority of habitable land in the world is uninhabited. The problem is most people want to live close to cities, where land and housing is expensive. We need to decentralize.

kitsunesoba 3y ago
I think there are probably serious limits on the extent to which decentralization is viable in North America. The lifestyle that comes with rural life for example is not one that the majority of the population finds attractive, with how far removed from not only creature comforts but also employment opportunities and essential services it makes one. There's also many things that don't work out economically for towns below a certain size. This is why little towns of 1k-10k tend to have only megacorp chain shops and restaurants — despite the cost of operations being so much cheaper than they are in more urban areas, things like little family owned bakeries, delis, etc are mostly found in cities in the US. The latter of those paragraphs could perhaps be changed, but it'd take an earth-shattering level of infrastructural redevelopment that I don't see happening any time soon.
alistairSH 3y ago
We need to decentralize. Hard disagree here. Decentralization might reduce housing costs, but makes many other things more expensive. More roads to pave and maintain. Higher delivery costs. More time in the car to get to work, shopping, entertainment. What we need is more/smarter infill development. And the elimination of R1 zoning (single-family only). Let the market decide what housing density should exist on a given block (within reason).
- tzs 3y ago
  > Hard disagree here. Decentralization might reduce housing costs, but makes many other things more expensive. More roads to pave and maintain. Higher delivery costs. More time in the car to get to work, shopping, entertainment. I think when people talk about decentralization they usually mean people moving from the big cities to existing less big cities. Those less big cities are usually built on the road and/or rail networks that are used to supply the big cities. Decentralizing to such exiting smaller cities wouldn't necessarily be costly, especially if not done too fast.

paulcole 3y ago

It’s my belief that in a few generations in the US “owning a home” will no longer be the default dream people have. You can kind of see a similar shift today in how teens/young adults are losing interest in driving — something their great-grandparents would have thought crazy. “But a car is what makes you free!”

max_expectation 3y ago
This is already the case for people my age unless one gets a significant parental handout. Certainly for anywhere within an hour or two commute of a city where most jobs are.
ziftface 3y ago
Maybe I'm just sandwiched between those generations but I don't see how those are equivalent. The desire for stable housing isn't a social construct. If you can't secure that you'll always be stressed.
- paulcole 3y ago
  Stable housing isn’t limited to owning a single family home. Renting a small apartment can be very stable (I’ve done this for the past 15 years). Owning a small condo can be very stable. There are also many stressed homeowners who worry about making mortgage payments. The reason many see these as unstable today is because of the default-ness of single family housing as the default goal. Similarly how driving a car was the default goal for 16 year olds for several generations. It’s hard to imagine not wanting to purchase a home because we’ve been sold it as the smart and obvious thing to do for quite awhile now.
  - thegginthesky 3y ago
    Renting might be stable but it's very dependant on whoever owns the house and what type of regulations and protections your government has in place. Owning a home (house/apartment/land/etc) gives you more rights over where you live and more stability in most countries. I've seen rents go up with inflation where inflation grows at 25% yoy, and I've seen people kicked out of an apartment 3 months after moving in because the owner found a buyer with a good deal. But I agree with you, single family housing is the goal for some cultures and generations, and it was carefully crafted by governmental policy, propaganda, marketing and third party interests. We are now seeing the consequences of such. Yet, not all people have that goal, but a lot are content to just owning a place to live even with relatives, a community or others. I feel it's hard to not wanting to own something if it grants more rights and protections against injustices. In the countries I've lived, having a property deed of any sorts with your name on it makes your life so much better and stress free.

alistairSH 3y ago

Which age do you mean? (In the US) GenZ has outpaced both GenX and Millennials in rate of home-ownership by age 25 (30% vs 28% and 27%). https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/21/gen-z-ahead-of-millennials-and-their-parents-in-owning-their-own-homes/?sh=7f897627d0e6 https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/21/ge...

ascotan 3y ago
https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf So i think the trendline in terms of homeownership rates seems to be gently decreasing for all age groups, but there's a big spike during the 2 housing bubbles we've seen when rates were at historic lows.

Gigachad 3y ago

Why on earth would I do that when I could just rent and put the money in index fund which will appreciate.