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This is unnecessarily confrontational and inaccurate. According to census.gov, the current national homeownership rate is hovering at about 66%, which is about

This is unnecessarily confrontational and inaccurate. According to census.gov, the current national homeownership rate is hovering at about 66%, which is about the same rate that it's been (+/- 3%) since they started tracking in 1964 [0][1]. This isn't restricted to old people either: 49% of 30 to 34 year olds and 58% of 35 to 39 year olds owned a home in Q4 2023 [2]. There are certainly regional differences in housing affordability, but the average American lives in a home that they own by the time they're 35. [0] https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/current/index.html https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/current/index.html [1] edit since there's some confusion—here's the direct link to the table I'm citing from, entitled "Quarterly Homeownership Rates for the U.S. and Regions: 1964 to Present"—https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab17.xlsx https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab17.xlsx [2] "Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder: Fourth Quarter 2022 and 2023"—https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr423/tab7.xlsx https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr423/tab7.xlsx

voidfunc 3y ago
HN has a blindness for the vast land area of America that isn't The Bay Area, NYC, Seattle, Boston, and a handful of other insanely expensive locations. Home ownership has probably plummeted in those markets (I don't have the data) but it leads to certain types of comments being passed around as fact. The narrative on Twitter/TikTok that every Millenial and GenZ is starving to death and on the brink of being homeless is really exhausting.
- echelon 3y ago
  > The narrative on Twitter/TikTok that every Millenial and GenZ is starving to death and on the brink of being homeless is really exhausting. The algorithm has turned (some) people into whiners and doomers. It really sucks to watch them take defeatist attitudes on everything in life. I see lots of these young 20-somethings on Reddit thinking their lives are over. It's absurd. They have their entire lives ahead of them, and all it takes is one break into a career. They even think climate change is going to "kill all of us" before they're elderly. That's not even what the science says. On the topic of having children, though - people aren't having kids because they're choosing to focus on themselves. There are ten times as many forms of entertainment today as there were in the 1980s, and people can endlessly consume content in their hands. You can go glamping at a music festival, post it on Instagram, and hook up with new friends and romantic partners you meet. All incredibly easily. Our culture has become built around experience and consumption. I know people in their 40s that are partying, going to clubs and concerts, doing bar crawls, cruises, visiting abroad, jet setting, and climbing the corporate ladder while living incredibly active lives. They don't want to give up their lifestyle to suddenly have to raise children.
  - atoav 3y ago
    As someone who is doing well financially I don't think you found the reason. The gist of it is: There are worlds and circumstances into which people want to bring kids. We mostly failed to create that world and those circumstances. If tou want to know what a solution looks like look at western democracies with high birth rates. E.g. France, Ireland, New Zealand, Denmark. The rest is probably due to individualism. Kids cost time and energy and capitalism tells us we should live our best lives. And the best live does not involve herding 6 kids, even if they are your own. We created this world willingly, and the low birth rate is a consequence — and so is the need for migration if we wanna stay wealthy. The thing is: now that the genie is out of the bottle we are not gonna be able to force people to have kids. We can just create circumstances in which they are willing to. I am in my 30s and I am unsure if I will ever be able to retire. I am sure however that I will have to change my job and career multiple times throughout my life. Despite me being financially well off, I am not sure if I would be able to support kids in the future. This is not about being whiny. I just think if I had kids it is my responsibility to throw them into a world that can sustain them. This one can't.
    - sangnoir 3y ago
      > Kids cost time and energy and capitalism tells us we should live our best lives. Thought experiment for all the unrestrained free-market folk: how can the free hand of the market can solve for low birthrates? Bonus points if the solution doesn't involve government-issued visas.
      - namdnay 3y ago
        > Thought experiment for all the unrestrained free-market folk: how can the free hand of the market can solve for low birthrates tax cuts for families, subisidies for child birth and care - none of these are contrary to the idea of a free competitive market
        echelon 3y ago
        > tax cuts for families, subisidies for child birth and care - none of these are contrary to the idea of a free competitive market Moreover, a free market can benefit from regulation and certain socialist policies (eg. transportation and education).
- Runways 3y ago
  Texan here. Your ad hominem attack is BS. Our house prices, North of Dallas and deep in the suburbs - far from the bay areas and Seattles, have doubled. That includes my home. People in our profession usually have to live by big cities, like Dallas. But the homes are ridiculously priced and it's insane. My juniors have no hope of owning a home that is big enough to raise a family without years of saving. And they're college educated engineers, some of them married with dual incomes.
  - wombatpm 3y ago
    Dual income has its own set of problems when it comes time for kids. Lose an income or pay for child care.
    - pc86 3y ago
      My wife and I are expecting. Daycare is expensive, but it's only an outrageous expense if you have two people making up to about 3x minimum wage. Below that, it makes sense (at least in our area) to have one person stay home. But the cheapest state-regulated, licensed daycares are around $1500/mo for full-day infant care. $18k/yr is a lot to spend on anything when you're making $20/hr for sure, but if you've got two professional people making $75-100k/yr each it becomes a very manageable expense and nobody considers staying home to save that.
      - cableshaft 3y ago
        $75k is about $56k after taxes. And many people that have children tend to have at least two children, so you can double that $18k to $36k/year for those people. Once you get to that point, it gets harder to justify having someone work just to take home an extra $20k a year. It starts making more sense for one person to stay home (or work a part-time gig that lets them still raise their children) and the other person to try to make a bit more money on their end instead. My parents got around the daycare cost problem by my mother running a daycare out of the home, so she was making money while still able to raise us. But I imagine that's become so much more risky nowadays (like legal issues, parental trust, etc) that it probably wouldn't be worth doing that anymore. And as soon as we both graduated high school she stopped doing it and went back into the workforce elsewhere.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  There are also people who pretend like problems highlighted in the Bay Area and other metropolitan cities are unique to them. Yet every time it looks like those are just the first wave of the changes that are heading to other regions first. Like the wave of homelessness. People made fun of SF, then it spread to the broader Bay Area, then LA, then other parts of the country. Turns out the effects of income inequality and how it impacts housing are rippling through the US. While it may be too doomer, it’s worthwhile to listen and understand the struggles of people who aren’t you to understand what’s coming. Certainly home ownership is rarer even for millennials and Genz is likely going to have even lower rates (its a little too early to compare since they’re too young for it)
  - AlchemistCamp 3y ago
    > ”Certainly home ownership is rarer even for millennials and Genz is likely going to have even lower rates” Looking at the data, certainly not: https://x.com/noahpinion/status/1649492485968891904?s=46&t=CRBDO2D7VnJVQhLZQofo4w https://x.com/noahpinion/status/1649492485968891904?s=46&t=C...
    - vlovich123 3y ago
      25 is too young to start making those predictions I think. We won’t for a while
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > People made fun of SF, then it spread to the broader Bay Area, then LA, then other parts of the country. Turns out the effects of income inequality and how it impacts housing are rippling through the US. These aren't automatic, though. Who's to say they aren't produced by policy that's often done first in SF first?
    - nostrademons 3y ago
      The policy is usually in response to the problems, not vice versa. California is actually dysfunctionally democratic (with a small "d", not "Democratic"). The state constitution gives ballot initiatives powers that they don't have in many other states, and the state has a tradition of individual rights and political activism that means the citizenry isn't shy about using that. A lot of people in the rest of the country tend to think "Oh, that's just dysfunctional California politics, we'll vote in different policies and things will go differently for us." Yes, you will vote in different policies. No, things will not go differently for you. California voted in different policies too - remember that it's the source of the Reagan Revolution, the hippie generation, the Chinese Exclusion Act, all sorts of policies that took hold nationally but are now the antithesis of what California stands for. At the root of this is a misperception of the power of politics. Most ordinary people think that laws are laws and the people who make the laws have ultimate power. California (and U.S. history in general) proves that laws are reactions to specific social and demographic forces, and the laws reflect the shape of those forces. Economics drives politics and technology drives economics.
- refurb 3y ago
  Pretty much. I used to live in a mid-sized mid-West city in the US and still keep in touch. Most everyone I know bought a house, even with the modest wages they had. Why? Because there are plenty of homes in the $100-$200k range, even now.
  - vundercind 3y ago
    Hell, you can buy beautiful, updated small mansions in the heart of many small midwestern towns for under $200k. The trouble is: 1) no local jobs to speak of (unless you want to clerk at the farm & feed or assistant-manage the McDonald’s out by the highway) 2) nearest hospital that can do more than stabilize you before shipping you somewhere better, is over an hour away. 3) the schools are really, really bad 4) no local services or amenities. Hope the nearest state park (if any) is really good. But if it’s a midwestern one it’s probably not. Remote work, being young and healthy and willing to take a little extra risk, having no kids and planning to have none, and being kinda a home-body (or being really into readily available rural midwestern outdoor activities like hunting and fishing), can make it a viable way to go, but that’s a lot of qualifiers. In our medium-ish sized midwestern city there are smaller slightly-run-down houses in the low $200Ks, but universally in bottom-half school districts for the city. Solid choice if no kids, though. But also local tech jobs pay at most 50% of big-city equivalents.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      "the schools are really, really bad" Depends on the state and locality. Some rural schools have good opportunities. But pretty much agree on the other parts.
      - vundercind 3y ago
        They exist, but they’re needles in a haystack. Especially if you exclude rural districts that aren’t cheap because they’re basically captured by the same folks who attend the country club the community’s centered around (there are a few of these, particularly in the Northeast)
riku_iki 3y ago
> According to census.gov, the current national homeownership rate is hovering at about 66% majority of those 66% are older generation who benefited dramatically on homes prices increase. New gen is priced out.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lolinder 3y ago
  I see you didn't get further into my comment than the percent sign.
  - riku_iki 3y ago
    your comment doesn't contradict to what I said from math point of view. 35yo still could catch low rate mortgages, and lower prices homes 10 years ago. Today's 20yo (new generation) is in very larger scrunity. Also, you didn't support your numbers about age distribution with any kind of references.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      Ah, I have a hard time remembering that the millennials have taken the boomers' place as the oppressive older generation. Gen Z doesn't have a monopoly on spending their 20s in a scary financial situation. Let's see what the numbers look like in 10 years—if prior trends (the data I linked to above) are anything to go by, I expect them to be roughly the same as they always have been at about 66%+/-3%.
      - riku_iki 3y ago
        > I expect them to be roughly the same as they always have been at about 66%+/-3%. No, graphs like wealth inequality, income to housing cost ratio, national debt will tell you that numbers will be very different.
        3y ago
hmcq6 3y ago
You're misconstruing what census.gov says. If you look into the "definitions" section it defines "Housing Unit. A housing unit is a house, an apartment, a group of rooms, or a single room occupied or intended for occupancy as separate living quarters." and "Householder. The householder refers to the person (or one of the persons) in whose name the housing unit is owned or rented [...]" 49% of people aged 30-34 aren't homeowners, 49% of us are homeowners or renters. > The avg American is completely priced out of owning a home right now. You haven't disproven this statement in any way, you've just linked to some statistics that show we can still afford rent.
- lolinder 3y ago
  No, I'm not. I'm citing the numbers in the table entitled "Quarterly Homeownership Rates for the U.S. and Regions: 1964 to Present"* (emphasis added). That table is talking about homeownership rates, not householdership rates, and the definition they give is this: > Homeownership Rates. The proportion of households that are owners is termed the homeownership rate. It is computed by dividing the number of households that are owners by the total number of occupied households (table 5 and 6) Here's the table: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab17.xlsx https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab17.xlsx And for the benefit of others, here are the definitions: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/definitions.pdf https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/definitions.pdf * EDIT: I was also citing "Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder: Fourth Quarter 2022 and 2023", which is likewise about homeownership
  - hmcq6 3y ago
    That table doesn't break things down by age. Just own it dude. You pulled the "49% of people aged 30-34" thing from this chart https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr423/tab7.xlsx https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr423/tab7.xlsx or some variation of it and you misunderstood it.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      Sorry, I just updated my links to include the citation for the age breakdown, which is in fact the link you linked to. Note the title of the chart you linked to (tab7.xlsx): "Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder" (emphasis added). This is percentage of householders who own the home that they are the householder of. EDIT: Also, while I'm at it, here's "Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder: 1994 to Present" (again, homeownership), which shows a 39% homeownership rate under 35 years old, which is about the same rate as it was throughout the 90s. It broke 40% in the 2000s for a while before coming back down, but was never higher than about 43%. https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab19.xlsx https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab19.xlsx
NoPicklez 3y ago
Whilst I don't disagree with you. That doesn't mean those with mortgages aren't struggling to pay. Also if true, that is insane that the average american lives in a home that they own by the time they're 35. That is so far and wide not the case here in Australia. Here in Australia, we don't have fixed rate mortgages for the life of the mortgage we have variable and fixed upto around 1-5 years. Our interest rates have gone from around 2-3% to over 5.8% and the value of homes since COVID have gone up enormously, some 30-40% across our cities and nationally combined 27%. I know we're just talking about the US here I assume, but I earn a chunk above the average salary and I be considered "at risk" in affording the average cost of a home. I know plenty of people who bought their house 3 years ago right when COVID kicked off, of which they would not have been able to afford it today given the increase in just house prices.
- skissane 3y ago
  > Here in Australia Australia has made a bunch of home-ownership-unfriendly decisions which the US hasn't – e.g. in the US you get a mortgage interest deduction on your primary residence, in Australia you only get it on investment properties (joint filing for married couples, which the US has but Australia doesn't, also helps here); in the US owner-occupier mortgages are normally no-recourse, in Australia they are almost always full recourse; US government policy encourages long-term fixed interest mortgages, the Australian government has no comparable policy Some of it is also geography – Australia is very centralised, with most people living on the coast. Each state has its population dominated by a single metro area which also serves as the state capital – quite unlike the US where majority of the time the state capital is outside the state's largest metro area. Australia's comparative lack of rainfall inland is a factor, but political culture, and hence decisions by politicians, also plays a big part – suppose NSW moved its capital to (say) Dubbo or Bathurst? Many government jobs would leave Sydney, followed by many consulting/etc jobs which provide services to the government - right now, central and western NSW has plenty of affordable housing, but a big shortage of jobs providing incomes to pay for that housing. Never going to happen: it would require a degree of originality and thinking outside the box of which Australian politicians are constitutionally incapable.
  - 3y ago
hayst4ck 3y ago
Home ownership rate is a poor statistic to make the point you are attempting to make, particularly because homes are "bought" with debt. Saying someone can "afford" a home because they are in one doesn't speak to being able to afford a home or not. Government programs to promote home ownership by taking riskier debt is an even more complicating factor. That was at the core of the 2008 financial crisis, IIRC. https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-income-ratio/ https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco... Here is a statistic that is a better measurement of affordability: "Home Price to Median Household Income Ratio."' It shows homes are less affordable. If we could see the 25th percentile it would likely even paint a bleaker picture, at least if you believe those stats.
michaelt 3y ago
> the average American lives in a home that they own by the time they're 35 According to [1] relative monthly fertility rates for women drop from 1.0 at age 30 to 0.65 at age 35 to 0.1 at age 40. If your society wants to raise birth rates, you can't rely on 35-40 year olds to do it. [1] https://www.britishfertilitysociety.org.uk/fei/at-what-age-does-fertility-begin-to-decrease/ https://www.britishfertilitysociety.org.uk/fei/at-what-age-d...
- lolinder 3y ago
  You also don't actually need to own a home in order to have kids. I spent the first 8 years of my life with 3 siblings in a tiny 2 bedroom apartment in a student housing development. We bought a home when I was 8, while my parents were in their 30s. Plenty of other commenters had already pointed out that fallacy of OP's argument, so I decided to take on the idea that homeownership rates have significantly changed instead.
AmericanChopper 3y ago
The parent commenter also doesn’t know what the word “housing” means. Being able to afford housing means being able to afford a place to live, it doesn’t mean owning your own house. Just like being able to afford food doesn’t mean owning your own farm, having access to drinking water doesn’t mean owning your own well or river, and having access to the internet doesn’t mean owning your own ISP. To be clear I agree that affordable home ownership is a big problem, but not being able to afford home ownership is a very different thing from not being able to afford housing, and substituting one concept with the other is just an intentionally dishonest way of muddying the waters of any discussion on the topic.
mdorazio 3y ago
Ownership is not affordability, which is the point of the parent poster that you're ignoring entirely. Recent headline: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homes-for-sale-affordable-housing-prices/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homes-for-sale-affordable-housi...
- lolinder 3y ago
  That's, as you say, recent. It bodes ill for the future if something doesn't change, but it can't possibly account for the long-term decline in birth rates being discussed here.
- mistermann 3y ago
  > Ownership is not affordability, which is the point of the parent poster that you're ignoring entirely. Exactly....it'd be hilarious if figuring out this abstract phenomenon is the key to figuring out the object level phenomenon.
swozey 3y ago
If you seriously think 40-49%, whatever ridiculous mis-read stat you're choosing to use this time, of 30-34 year olds are home owners I have a bridge to Hawaii to sell you. I'm 40, make around 300k and know a LOT of people my age and the vast, VAST majority don't own houses. I owned a house in 2016 and sold it, I don't want to own a house because I'm single and they're $800k minimum here, none of my friends want houses because for 99% of us it means moving 45 minutes away to some suburb. Would they take a house a block over here downtown? Absolutely, but that's $2mil+. I can count how many times I walk into an ACTUAL house, like a free standing house not a condo, apartment, or townhouse - on one hand over ONE year. I think I have 2 friends with houses out of 20+ here in Denver, and I'm of course including condos/ths, anything purchasable. Almost everyone I know over 30 lives in a 1-2 bd apartment. And this is hackernews where I can pretty much assume someone like you is so far from the average American reality you have no idea what's going on. There's already a post right above this from some compsci engineer talking about how, oh no, there really are a lot more americans making over $100k than you'd imagine!! You don't have any real humans in your life to use THAT anecdata from? You sound like you're vastly out of that age range, your "you're too confrontational uwu" style of writing and you're obvious lack of knowledge related to the topic at hand.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  You can't disagree with statistics. You are living a very unique lifestyle, that is highly paid in HCOL areas with high standards for housing. That is not the norm whatsoever.
  - swozey 3y ago
    All statistics have absolutely correct data and fundamentally sound designs, right? That's literally the entire argument going on in this conversation you've hopped on. How these statistics are being misconstrued or not. I moved into programming from bartending after dropping out of school. I am absolutely not ignorant to the lifestyles of all of my friends who aren't engineers. In fact it's the polar opposite. I am vastly aware of how ignorant my engineer friends are to real people. Like all of my $300k+ friends who have massive houses and 4 kids and 2 suburbans and wonder why a huge portion of their friends, like me, aren't giving them playdates or "cousins" to their kids so they have to go find dad-friends at the kids soccer games who their only real commonality is .. kids.
specto 3y ago
Owning a house is a ton easier without kids.
standardUser 3y ago
You just stated that over 40% of people under 40 don't own a home. I don't think that proves the point you want it to. And that's before we even get into how much of that home they even "own".
namlem 3y ago
Yeah but how has the consumer surplus changed? Are people paying a higher percentage of their income for housing?

voidfunc 3y ago

HN has a blindness for the vast land area of America that isn't The Bay Area, NYC, Seattle, Boston, and a handful of other insanely expensive locations. Home ownership has probably plummeted in those markets (I don't have the data) but it leads to certain types of comments being passed around as fact. The narrative on Twitter/TikTok that every Millenial and GenZ is starving to death and on the brink of being homeless is really exhausting.

echelon 3y ago
> The narrative on Twitter/TikTok that every Millenial and GenZ is starving to death and on the brink of being homeless is really exhausting. The algorithm has turned (some) people into whiners and doomers. It really sucks to watch them take defeatist attitudes on everything in life. I see lots of these young 20-somethings on Reddit thinking their lives are over. It's absurd. They have their entire lives ahead of them, and all it takes is one break into a career. They even think climate change is going to "kill all of us" before they're elderly. That's not even what the science says. On the topic of having children, though - people aren't having kids because they're choosing to focus on themselves. There are ten times as many forms of entertainment today as there were in the 1980s, and people can endlessly consume content in their hands. You can go glamping at a music festival, post it on Instagram, and hook up with new friends and romantic partners you meet. All incredibly easily. Our culture has become built around experience and consumption. I know people in their 40s that are partying, going to clubs and concerts, doing bar crawls, cruises, visiting abroad, jet setting, and climbing the corporate ladder while living incredibly active lives. They don't want to give up their lifestyle to suddenly have to raise children.
- atoav 3y ago
  As someone who is doing well financially I don't think you found the reason. The gist of it is: There are worlds and circumstances into which people want to bring kids. We mostly failed to create that world and those circumstances. If tou want to know what a solution looks like look at western democracies with high birth rates. E.g. France, Ireland, New Zealand, Denmark. The rest is probably due to individualism. Kids cost time and energy and capitalism tells us we should live our best lives. And the best live does not involve herding 6 kids, even if they are your own. We created this world willingly, and the low birth rate is a consequence — and so is the need for migration if we wanna stay wealthy. The thing is: now that the genie is out of the bottle we are not gonna be able to force people to have kids. We can just create circumstances in which they are willing to. I am in my 30s and I am unsure if I will ever be able to retire. I am sure however that I will have to change my job and career multiple times throughout my life. Despite me being financially well off, I am not sure if I would be able to support kids in the future. This is not about being whiny. I just think if I had kids it is my responsibility to throw them into a world that can sustain them. This one can't.
  - sangnoir 3y ago
    > Kids cost time and energy and capitalism tells us we should live our best lives. Thought experiment for all the unrestrained free-market folk: how can the free hand of the market can solve for low birthrates? Bonus points if the solution doesn't involve government-issued visas.
    - namdnay 3y ago
      > Thought experiment for all the unrestrained free-market folk: how can the free hand of the market can solve for low birthrates tax cuts for families, subisidies for child birth and care - none of these are contrary to the idea of a free competitive market
      - echelon 3y ago
        > tax cuts for families, subisidies for child birth and care - none of these are contrary to the idea of a free competitive market Moreover, a free market can benefit from regulation and certain socialist policies (eg. transportation and education).
Runways 3y ago
Texan here. Your ad hominem attack is BS. Our house prices, North of Dallas and deep in the suburbs - far from the bay areas and Seattles, have doubled. That includes my home. People in our profession usually have to live by big cities, like Dallas. But the homes are ridiculously priced and it's insane. My juniors have no hope of owning a home that is big enough to raise a family without years of saving. And they're college educated engineers, some of them married with dual incomes.
- wombatpm 3y ago
  Dual income has its own set of problems when it comes time for kids. Lose an income or pay for child care.
  - pc86 3y ago
    My wife and I are expecting. Daycare is expensive, but it's only an outrageous expense if you have two people making up to about 3x minimum wage. Below that, it makes sense (at least in our area) to have one person stay home. But the cheapest state-regulated, licensed daycares are around $1500/mo for full-day infant care. $18k/yr is a lot to spend on anything when you're making $20/hr for sure, but if you've got two professional people making $75-100k/yr each it becomes a very manageable expense and nobody considers staying home to save that.
    - cableshaft 3y ago
      $75k is about $56k after taxes. And many people that have children tend to have at least two children, so you can double that $18k to $36k/year for those people. Once you get to that point, it gets harder to justify having someone work just to take home an extra $20k a year. It starts making more sense for one person to stay home (or work a part-time gig that lets them still raise their children) and the other person to try to make a bit more money on their end instead. My parents got around the daycare cost problem by my mother running a daycare out of the home, so she was making money while still able to raise us. But I imagine that's become so much more risky nowadays (like legal issues, parental trust, etc) that it probably wouldn't be worth doing that anymore. And as soon as we both graduated high school she stopped doing it and went back into the workforce elsewhere.
vlovich123 3y ago
There are also people who pretend like problems highlighted in the Bay Area and other metropolitan cities are unique to them. Yet every time it looks like those are just the first wave of the changes that are heading to other regions first. Like the wave of homelessness. People made fun of SF, then it spread to the broader Bay Area, then LA, then other parts of the country. Turns out the effects of income inequality and how it impacts housing are rippling through the US. While it may be too doomer, it’s worthwhile to listen and understand the struggles of people who aren’t you to understand what’s coming. Certainly home ownership is rarer even for millennials and Genz is likely going to have even lower rates (its a little too early to compare since they’re too young for it)
- AlchemistCamp 3y ago
  > ”Certainly home ownership is rarer even for millennials and Genz is likely going to have even lower rates” Looking at the data, certainly not: https://x.com/noahpinion/status/1649492485968891904?s=46&t=CRBDO2D7VnJVQhLZQofo4w https://x.com/noahpinion/status/1649492485968891904?s=46&t=C...
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    25 is too young to start making those predictions I think. We won’t for a while
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > People made fun of SF, then it spread to the broader Bay Area, then LA, then other parts of the country. Turns out the effects of income inequality and how it impacts housing are rippling through the US. These aren't automatic, though. Who's to say they aren't produced by policy that's often done first in SF first?
  - nostrademons 3y ago
    The policy is usually in response to the problems, not vice versa. California is actually dysfunctionally democratic (with a small "d", not "Democratic"). The state constitution gives ballot initiatives powers that they don't have in many other states, and the state has a tradition of individual rights and political activism that means the citizenry isn't shy about using that. A lot of people in the rest of the country tend to think "Oh, that's just dysfunctional California politics, we'll vote in different policies and things will go differently for us." Yes, you will vote in different policies. No, things will not go differently for you. California voted in different policies too - remember that it's the source of the Reagan Revolution, the hippie generation, the Chinese Exclusion Act, all sorts of policies that took hold nationally but are now the antithesis of what California stands for. At the root of this is a misperception of the power of politics. Most ordinary people think that laws are laws and the people who make the laws have ultimate power. California (and U.S. history in general) proves that laws are reactions to specific social and demographic forces, and the laws reflect the shape of those forces. Economics drives politics and technology drives economics.
refurb 3y ago
Pretty much. I used to live in a mid-sized mid-West city in the US and still keep in touch. Most everyone I know bought a house, even with the modest wages they had. Why? Because there are plenty of homes in the $100-$200k range, even now.
- vundercind 3y ago
  Hell, you can buy beautiful, updated small mansions in the heart of many small midwestern towns for under $200k. The trouble is: 1) no local jobs to speak of (unless you want to clerk at the farm & feed or assistant-manage the McDonald’s out by the highway) 2) nearest hospital that can do more than stabilize you before shipping you somewhere better, is over an hour away. 3) the schools are really, really bad 4) no local services or amenities. Hope the nearest state park (if any) is really good. But if it’s a midwestern one it’s probably not. Remote work, being young and healthy and willing to take a little extra risk, having no kids and planning to have none, and being kinda a home-body (or being really into readily available rural midwestern outdoor activities like hunting and fishing), can make it a viable way to go, but that’s a lot of qualifiers. In our medium-ish sized midwestern city there are smaller slightly-run-down houses in the low $200Ks, but universally in bottom-half school districts for the city. Solid choice if no kids, though. But also local tech jobs pay at most 50% of big-city equivalents.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    "the schools are really, really bad" Depends on the state and locality. Some rural schools have good opportunities. But pretty much agree on the other parts.
    - vundercind 3y ago
      They exist, but they’re needles in a haystack. Especially if you exclude rural districts that aren’t cheap because they’re basically captured by the same folks who attend the country club the community’s centered around (there are a few of these, particularly in the Northeast)

riku_iki 3y ago

> According to census.gov, the current national homeownership rate is hovering at about 66% majority of those 66% are older generation who benefited dramatically on homes prices increase. New gen is priced out.

deleted 3y ago
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lolinder 3y ago
I see you didn't get further into my comment than the percent sign.
- riku_iki 3y ago
  your comment doesn't contradict to what I said from math point of view. 35yo still could catch low rate mortgages, and lower prices homes 10 years ago. Today's 20yo (new generation) is in very larger scrunity. Also, you didn't support your numbers about age distribution with any kind of references.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Ah, I have a hard time remembering that the millennials have taken the boomers' place as the oppressive older generation. Gen Z doesn't have a monopoly on spending their 20s in a scary financial situation. Let's see what the numbers look like in 10 years—if prior trends (the data I linked to above) are anything to go by, I expect them to be roughly the same as they always have been at about 66%+/-3%.
    - riku_iki 3y ago
      > I expect them to be roughly the same as they always have been at about 66%+/-3%. No, graphs like wealth inequality, income to housing cost ratio, national debt will tell you that numbers will be very different.
      - 3y ago

hmcq6 3y ago

You're misconstruing what census.gov says. If you look into the "definitions" section it defines "Housing Unit. A housing unit is a house, an apartment, a group of rooms, or a single room occupied or intended for occupancy as separate living quarters." and "Householder. The householder refers to the person (or one of the persons) in whose name the housing unit is owned or rented [...]" 49% of people aged 30-34 aren't homeowners, 49% of us are homeowners or renters. > The avg American is completely priced out of owning a home right now. You haven't disproven this statement in any way, you've just linked to some statistics that show we can still afford rent.

lolinder 3y ago
No, I'm not. I'm citing the numbers in the table entitled "Quarterly Homeownership Rates for the U.S. and Regions: 1964 to Present"* (emphasis added). That table is talking about homeownership rates, not householdership rates, and the definition they give is this: > Homeownership Rates. The proportion of households that are owners is termed the homeownership rate. It is computed by dividing the number of households that are owners by the total number of occupied households (table 5 and 6) Here's the table: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab17.xlsx https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab17.xlsx And for the benefit of others, here are the definitions: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/definitions.pdf https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/definitions.pdf * EDIT: I was also citing "Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder: Fourth Quarter 2022 and 2023", which is likewise about homeownership
- hmcq6 3y ago
  That table doesn't break things down by age. Just own it dude. You pulled the "49% of people aged 30-34" thing from this chart https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr423/tab7.xlsx https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr423/tab7.xlsx or some variation of it and you misunderstood it.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Sorry, I just updated my links to include the citation for the age breakdown, which is in fact the link you linked to. Note the title of the chart you linked to (tab7.xlsx): "Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder" (emphasis added). This is percentage of householders who own the home that they are the householder of. EDIT: Also, while I'm at it, here's "Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder: 1994 to Present" (again, homeownership), which shows a 39% homeownership rate under 35 years old, which is about the same rate as it was throughout the 90s. It broke 40% in the 2000s for a while before coming back down, but was never higher than about 43%. https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab19.xlsx https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab19.xlsx

NoPicklez 3y ago

Whilst I don't disagree with you. That doesn't mean those with mortgages aren't struggling to pay. Also if true, that is insane that the average american lives in a home that they own by the time they're 35. That is so far and wide not the case here in Australia. Here in Australia, we don't have fixed rate mortgages for the life of the mortgage we have variable and fixed upto around 1-5 years. Our interest rates have gone from around 2-3% to over 5.8% and the value of homes since COVID have gone up enormously, some 30-40% across our cities and nationally combined 27%. I know we're just talking about the US here I assume, but I earn a chunk above the average salary and I be considered "at risk" in affording the average cost of a home. I know plenty of people who bought their house 3 years ago right when COVID kicked off, of which they would not have been able to afford it today given the increase in just house prices.

skissane 3y ago
> Here in Australia Australia has made a bunch of home-ownership-unfriendly decisions which the US hasn't – e.g. in the US you get a mortgage interest deduction on your primary residence, in Australia you only get it on investment properties (joint filing for married couples, which the US has but Australia doesn't, also helps here); in the US owner-occupier mortgages are normally no-recourse, in Australia they are almost always full recourse; US government policy encourages long-term fixed interest mortgages, the Australian government has no comparable policy Some of it is also geography – Australia is very centralised, with most people living on the coast. Each state has its population dominated by a single metro area which also serves as the state capital – quite unlike the US where majority of the time the state capital is outside the state's largest metro area. Australia's comparative lack of rainfall inland is a factor, but political culture, and hence decisions by politicians, also plays a big part – suppose NSW moved its capital to (say) Dubbo or Bathurst? Many government jobs would leave Sydney, followed by many consulting/etc jobs which provide services to the government - right now, central and western NSW has plenty of affordable housing, but a big shortage of jobs providing incomes to pay for that housing. Never going to happen: it would require a degree of originality and thinking outside the box of which Australian politicians are constitutionally incapable.
- 3y ago

hayst4ck 3y ago

Home ownership rate is a poor statistic to make the point you are attempting to make, particularly because homes are "bought" with debt. Saying someone can "afford" a home because they are in one doesn't speak to being able to afford a home or not. Government programs to promote home ownership by taking riskier debt is an even more complicating factor. That was at the core of the 2008 financial crisis, IIRC. https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-income-ratio/ https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco... Here is a statistic that is a better measurement of affordability: "Home Price to Median Household Income Ratio."' It shows homes are less affordable. If we could see the 25th percentile it would likely even paint a bleaker picture, at least if you believe those stats.

michaelt 3y ago

> the average American lives in a home that they own by the time they're 35 According to [1] relative monthly fertility rates for women drop from 1.0 at age 30 to 0.65 at age 35 to 0.1 at age 40. If your society wants to raise birth rates, you can't rely on 35-40 year olds to do it. [1] https://www.britishfertilitysociety.org.uk/fei/at-what-age-does-fertility-begin-to-decrease/ https://www.britishfertilitysociety.org.uk/fei/at-what-age-d...

lolinder 3y ago
You also don't actually need to own a home in order to have kids. I spent the first 8 years of my life with 3 siblings in a tiny 2 bedroom apartment in a student housing development. We bought a home when I was 8, while my parents were in their 30s. Plenty of other commenters had already pointed out that fallacy of OP's argument, so I decided to take on the idea that homeownership rates have significantly changed instead.

AmericanChopper 3y ago

The parent commenter also doesn’t know what the word “housing” means. Being able to afford housing means being able to afford a place to live, it doesn’t mean owning your own house. Just like being able to afford food doesn’t mean owning your own farm, having access to drinking water doesn’t mean owning your own well or river, and having access to the internet doesn’t mean owning your own ISP. To be clear I agree that affordable home ownership is a big problem, but not being able to afford home ownership is a very different thing from not being able to afford housing, and substituting one concept with the other is just an intentionally dishonest way of muddying the waters of any discussion on the topic.

mdorazio 3y ago

Ownership is not affordability, which is the point of the parent poster that you're ignoring entirely. Recent headline: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homes-for-sale-affordable-housing-prices/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homes-for-sale-affordable-housi...

lolinder 3y ago
That's, as you say, recent. It bodes ill for the future if something doesn't change, but it can't possibly account for the long-term decline in birth rates being discussed here.
mistermann 3y ago
> Ownership is not affordability, which is the point of the parent poster that you're ignoring entirely. Exactly....it'd be hilarious if figuring out this abstract phenomenon is the key to figuring out the object level phenomenon.

swozey 3y ago

If you seriously think 40-49%, whatever ridiculous mis-read stat you're choosing to use this time, of 30-34 year olds are home owners I have a bridge to Hawaii to sell you. I'm 40, make around 300k and know a LOT of people my age and the vast, VAST majority don't own houses. I owned a house in 2016 and sold it, I don't want to own a house because I'm single and they're $800k minimum here, none of my friends want houses because for 99% of us it means moving 45 minutes away to some suburb. Would they take a house a block over here downtown? Absolutely, but that's $2mil+. I can count how many times I walk into an ACTUAL house, like a free standing house not a condo, apartment, or townhouse - on one hand over ONE year. I think I have 2 friends with houses out of 20+ here in Denver, and I'm of course including condos/ths, anything purchasable. Almost everyone I know over 30 lives in a 1-2 bd apartment. And this is hackernews where I can pretty much assume someone like you is so far from the average American reality you have no idea what's going on. There's already a post right above this from some compsci engineer talking about how, oh no, there really are a lot more americans making over $100k than you'd imagine!! You don't have any real humans in your life to use THAT anecdata from? You sound like you're vastly out of that age range, your "you're too confrontational uwu" style of writing and you're obvious lack of knowledge related to the topic at hand.

monero-xmr 3y ago
You can't disagree with statistics. You are living a very unique lifestyle, that is highly paid in HCOL areas with high standards for housing. That is not the norm whatsoever.
- swozey 3y ago
  All statistics have absolutely correct data and fundamentally sound designs, right? That's literally the entire argument going on in this conversation you've hopped on. How these statistics are being misconstrued or not. I moved into programming from bartending after dropping out of school. I am absolutely not ignorant to the lifestyles of all of my friends who aren't engineers. In fact it's the polar opposite. I am vastly aware of how ignorant my engineer friends are to real people. Like all of my $300k+ friends who have massive houses and 4 kids and 2 suburbans and wonder why a huge portion of their friends, like me, aren't giving them playdates or "cousins" to their kids so they have to go find dad-friends at the kids soccer games who their only real commonality is .. kids.

specto 3y ago

Owning a house is a ton easier without kids.

standardUser 3y ago

You just stated that over 40% of people under 40 don't own a home. I don't think that proves the point you want it to. And that's before we even get into how much of that home they even "own".

namlem 3y ago

Yeah but how has the consumer surplus changed? Are people paying a higher percentage of their income for housing?