8 ms·

Whatever it is, it doesn't look good for young people. Good luck to them buying a house with these prices & interest rates, or trying to save for a downpayment

Whatever it is, it doesn't look good for young people. Good luck to them buying a house with these prices & interest rates, or trying to save for a downpayment while renting. The previous generation is hellbent on maximum extraction & I got mine mentality & rent-seeking.

gedy 3y ago
> The previous generation is hellbent Previous generation is what, Gen X? Millenials? Yeah gee they had it so easy. Stop with the "generation blaming" stuff and blaming voodoo on them. Blame the people you vote for and who they kowtow to, nothing will ever change with petty envy and sour grapes for your neighbor down the street, etc.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- reedf1 3y ago
  The older generations are larger than younger ones in a demographic balloon, hence older generations are a plurality. This has many externalities (for which I agree) are caused by people voting simply in their best interests rather than malice. Now here is where I push back, is complaining about this unfair scenario "sour grapes" or "envy"? This is a winner takes all scenario. This wealthy group can vote for direct wealth extraction from the poor (which they do, again out of simple self interest) by constraining housing supply in an effective monopoly. That isn't fair, it's a moral hazard. It's not "petty" if you are proveably on the wrong side of demographics. Infact talking about it like this is the only way it can be fixed, as people can be informed into voting for the interests of someone other than themselves.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Define “older generations”: https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/ Those in their 30s right now are the biggest proportion. And 20 or 30 years ago, that population pyramid was even more tilted towards people in their 0 to 30s (obviously).
    - reedf1 3y ago
      https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/05/2020-census-united-states-older-population-grew.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/05/2020-census-u...
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        Your link is about rate of growth of population, your claim is about population. The basis of your first paragraph will be true in the future, but is not yet (unless you define 30s and 40s as old). The thing that makes the dynamic in your argument true is that young people do not (or cannot) vote and participate in the political process as much as old people can. We have people who can no longer produce, but want to consume (and their potential beneficiaries) on one side, and on the other we have people can produce. The former group need to collect rent from the latter group, otherwise they offer nothing to the latter group in exchange for their production. Which is funny when I see young people advocate for income taxes, when they should be advocating for property/inheritance taxes.
mc32 3y ago
The people in charge want it both ways so they keep on printing money and funding several optional wars simultaneously. They've kicked consequences down the road and seemingly, the new budget approved, kicks it further down the road. That and you add 10MM new legal+illegal immigrants in the span of three years to the housing demand pool and it pushes citizens further away from housing attainability. It's nuts. Then you have lax enforcement for criminal activity and you get what we have now. If the Biden admin wants to win the election, they will have to deal with the fact that foreign workers are pushing out perhaps lazier American workers who are also unwilling to work for devalued wages caused by inflation. Foreign workers are used to inflation and whatever we have is better than what they have at home. The Admin will have to deal with that tension -else they will have more traditional core supporters hold their noses and vote for the other guy once again. I'm quite certain if we had a Ross Perot running as a third party candidate, he or she would win. Biden is decrepit and can't decide if he's for American workers or foreign workers more. Trump shoots from the hip too much and is too thin skinned and impulsive.
- erellsworth 3y ago
  Birth rates in the US have been below replacement levels for some time now. This means we will need more immigrants to sustain the never ending growth capitalism demands.
  - mc32 3y ago
    Those same people in charge seemly also are cozying up to degrowth which is at odds with historical capitalism. I don't think they have figured out what they want which is why the approach is schizophrenic --that want econ growth and degrowth, they want pop growth but also don't want growth so their bargain is to import the growth that they don't want...
    - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
      It's almost like "those people in charge" are not a monolithic group...
  - 3y ago
pfdietz 3y ago
My daughter just bought her first house.
- ddorian43 3y ago
  What city/country, what total cost, what interest rates, how far from city center? When you combine all these factors it's usually not a good place to be either renting or buying in most places.
- yetihehe 3y ago
  One datapoint is not a trend. I've built a house 3yr ago. I earn almost twice more now but couldn't afford it if I wanted to do the same today.
  - ddorian43 3y ago
    Yep. A pretty simple exercise for many people is if they can buy now the house they bought a couple of years ago. Or how their wage changed to support the new monthly payment if buying now. Or if they were renting now can they even save for the downpayment to buy their own house?
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    > One datapoint is not a trend. Most adult Gen Zers are tracking ahead of where parents were at the same age - see homeownership rates by age for each generation: https://fortune.com/2024/01/17/redfin-baby-boomers-gen-z-housing-market-homeownership/ https://fortune.com/2024/01/17/redfin-baby-boomers-gen-z-hou...
- arrowsmith 3y ago
  So?
- forgotmyinfo 3y ago
  [flagged]
hsyehbeidhh 3y ago
[flagged]
- afavour 3y ago
  > “You’ll own nothing and be happy”, remember? > They convinced young women that it’s a sign of independence to have an OF, the Europeans that Russia is an enemy, and half the western population that men can be women. The latter has absolutely zero to do with the former, it's just a grab bag of reactionary culture complaints (and the Russia one is just straightforwardly true). Which, ironically, is exactly what the global elites really want people to do: divide themselves over cultural issues and spend all of their time arguing with each other rather than come together and examine the financial system we all live under.
  - mantas 3y ago
    Catch-22. If you sign off on postmodern culture, you loose. If you argue over talking points of postmodern culture, you loose.
    - afavour 3y ago
      > If you sign off on postmodern culture, you loose. In what way? To take OP's examples, in what way do I lose when OnlyFans exists, or when people are able to change their gender if they wish to?
      - mantas 3y ago
        As in you loose agains „the elites“. IMO the current dopamine and consumption driven culture only benefits a very small slice of the society. While externalized costs ruin many lives. Mental and physical health is going down the drain and nobody cares. E.g. obesity pandemic, drugs abuse and so on. People don't abuse junk food because of happiness and content. And yet we all end up paying, at least in countries with state health insurance :) We as a society are at a loss when people think OnlyFans is a viable career path. Or a hobby, which is even worse. OF is the same as prostitution. Vast majority (if not all) people end up there for very sad reasons and we as a society should strive to eliminate it. Normalizing such abuse of the vulnerable is even worse. Many cases of gender „change“ are similar symptoms of long running abuse we as a society normalize. E.g. trans athletes. Or over-sexualized display of how some people envision what it is to be a woman.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
I'd rather be a young person in the 2020's than a young person in the 1920's. That group was called the "greatest generation" for a reason, and it wasn't because they had it easy.
- anthonypasq 3y ago
  what wonderful consolation, we might have it better than people 100 years ago. I sure am glad the system is working.
ben_w 3y ago
> buying a house with these prices & interest rates, or trying to save for a downpayment while renting. While there are certainly problems here, higher interest rates drive demand down and lower prices, while lower interest rates drive up demand and raise prices. Investors tend to look for the best return on investment, the number I often see given is 5%/year. The rent I collect is close to that fraction of the market value of the apartment I own in the UK. The choice between "rent" and "mortgage" is where the cost of the two is about equal in the first year, which is always a bit unfair on first-time purchasers as (1) they're generally younger and thus earning less money, and (2) the impact of interest payments is always front-loaded towards the beginning of the repayment period. This in turn means that there's a temptation for very long repayment periods to make it seem easier: in a world of genuinely 0% interest mortgages, paying off a ¤600k over 40 years is clearly easier than paying it off over 20, and lower rates asymptotically approach this. Conversely, when the interest rate is high enough that (even without paying off the capital and regardless of repayment period) it approximates the rental market rate of the property, this drives down demand. To see why, go back to that previous example of a ¤600k (sale price) property: if the landlord can ask for ¤2.5k/month rent, and the interest rate on a mortgage is 5% AER, then the cost to service the interest without paying capital is the same as you get from the rent — which means investors will ask "why should I buy this?" and renters will ask "why would I want that kind of mortgage?", forcing down the asking prices because the only people still interested are people who can do it without borrowing any money.
asynchronous 3y ago
The inevitable outcome seems to be the younger generation giving up altogether and then social security is going to dry up real fast.
- ddorian43 3y ago
  Especially with real estate. Either rent indefinetily by paying their pension , buy the house for 2x-3x+ the monthly rent so you pay their pension in lump sum, or go 1+ hour away from city(also high cost in terms of time etc). The politicians are also older people who can't empathize. The young also don't vote. And if you do buy high now, who are you gonna sell even higher when you retire, since there are so few new kids being born?
  - westmeal 3y ago
    For sure but I gotta ask, even if the young did vote who is there to vote for? The bipartisan system here is rigged IMO. Even if you vote for a less popular candidate they're usually still beholden to the party.
    - bell-cot 3y ago
      If the young reliably voted, for their own interests...then both parties have these things called "primaries", where their general election candidates are picked. Sometimes from a wide field of contenders, and usually with very low barriers to entry (either to vote, or to be a candidate). My understanding is that career politicians' take on the youth vote is: "If the stars happen to align, and you play it right, the youth vote can win you an election. But usually not - so you should mostly let your opponent waste his time chasing the youth vote."
      - Izkata 3y ago
        Primaries have a weird system based on delegates, not direct votes. It's really difficult to know who you're actually voting for, I couldn't find any information on which candidate the delegates on my ballot were actually for.
consp 3y ago
Not just young people, those who missed the boat are left behind as well which is a considerable part of the population.
- ddorian43 3y ago
  I agree, but people often try to demonize them like they had multiple chances (true & false, but still doesn't matter). While young people never had a chance and it's easier to send the point across.
  - smallmancontrov 3y ago
    It's always a mistake to give in to Titanic Life Boat logic ("The design of the Titanic was fine, anyone could have gotten into a life boat / but could everyone get into a life boat? / what are you, a COMMUNIST?"). If you try to avoid the problem by focusing on young people, they'll just focus on a young person who made it and hold them up as proof that it's possible (see: person downthread "my daughter just bought a house"). Plenty of kids got into titanic life boats so it's fine, see? The rest just didn't hustle hard enough. Do you want society to be full of cripples who can't hustle into a lifeboat? Don't play that game. No, if the system forces a growing fraction of people to lose we have to be honest about that, pin down why, and ask if it's really truly unsolvable. Hint: food and clothing and house construction have shrunk dramatically over time as a fraction of our economic activity. The first-principles problems did not get harder and we did not get worse at solving them. This hell is of our own design. It will hurt to solve, but it can be solved.

gedy 3y ago

> The previous generation is hellbent Previous generation is what, Gen X? Millenials? Yeah gee they had it so easy. Stop with the "generation blaming" stuff and blaming voodoo on them. Blame the people you vote for and who they kowtow to, nothing will ever change with petty envy and sour grapes for your neighbor down the street, etc.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
reedf1 3y ago
The older generations are larger than younger ones in a demographic balloon, hence older generations are a plurality. This has many externalities (for which I agree) are caused by people voting simply in their best interests rather than malice. Now here is where I push back, is complaining about this unfair scenario "sour grapes" or "envy"? This is a winner takes all scenario. This wealthy group can vote for direct wealth extraction from the poor (which they do, again out of simple self interest) by constraining housing supply in an effective monopoly. That isn't fair, it's a moral hazard. It's not "petty" if you are proveably on the wrong side of demographics. Infact talking about it like this is the only way it can be fixed, as people can be informed into voting for the interests of someone other than themselves.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Define “older generations”: https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/ Those in their 30s right now are the biggest proportion. And 20 or 30 years ago, that population pyramid was even more tilted towards people in their 0 to 30s (obviously).
  - reedf1 3y ago
    https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/05/2020-census-united-states-older-population-grew.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/05/2020-census-u...
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Your link is about rate of growth of population, your claim is about population. The basis of your first paragraph will be true in the future, but is not yet (unless you define 30s and 40s as old). The thing that makes the dynamic in your argument true is that young people do not (or cannot) vote and participate in the political process as much as old people can. We have people who can no longer produce, but want to consume (and their potential beneficiaries) on one side, and on the other we have people can produce. The former group need to collect rent from the latter group, otherwise they offer nothing to the latter group in exchange for their production. Which is funny when I see young people advocate for income taxes, when they should be advocating for property/inheritance taxes.

mc32 3y ago

The people in charge want it both ways so they keep on printing money and funding several optional wars simultaneously. They've kicked consequences down the road and seemingly, the new budget approved, kicks it further down the road. That and you add 10MM new legal+illegal immigrants in the span of three years to the housing demand pool and it pushes citizens further away from housing attainability. It's nuts. Then you have lax enforcement for criminal activity and you get what we have now. If the Biden admin wants to win the election, they will have to deal with the fact that foreign workers are pushing out perhaps lazier American workers who are also unwilling to work for devalued wages caused by inflation. Foreign workers are used to inflation and whatever we have is better than what they have at home. The Admin will have to deal with that tension -else they will have more traditional core supporters hold their noses and vote for the other guy once again. I'm quite certain if we had a Ross Perot running as a third party candidate, he or she would win. Biden is decrepit and can't decide if he's for American workers or foreign workers more. Trump shoots from the hip too much and is too thin skinned and impulsive.

erellsworth 3y ago
Birth rates in the US have been below replacement levels for some time now. This means we will need more immigrants to sustain the never ending growth capitalism demands.
- mc32 3y ago
  Those same people in charge seemly also are cozying up to degrowth which is at odds with historical capitalism. I don't think they have figured out what they want which is why the approach is schizophrenic --that want econ growth and degrowth, they want pop growth but also don't want growth so their bargain is to import the growth that they don't want...
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    It's almost like "those people in charge" are not a monolithic group...
- 3y ago

pfdietz 3y ago

My daughter just bought her first house.

ddorian43 3y ago
What city/country, what total cost, what interest rates, how far from city center? When you combine all these factors it's usually not a good place to be either renting or buying in most places.
yetihehe 3y ago
One datapoint is not a trend. I've built a house 3yr ago. I earn almost twice more now but couldn't afford it if I wanted to do the same today.
- ddorian43 3y ago
  Yep. A pretty simple exercise for many people is if they can buy now the house they bought a couple of years ago. Or how their wage changed to support the new monthly payment if buying now. Or if they were renting now can they even save for the downpayment to buy their own house?
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > One datapoint is not a trend. Most adult Gen Zers are tracking ahead of where parents were at the same age - see homeownership rates by age for each generation: https://fortune.com/2024/01/17/redfin-baby-boomers-gen-z-housing-market-homeownership/ https://fortune.com/2024/01/17/redfin-baby-boomers-gen-z-hou...
arrowsmith 3y ago
So?
forgotmyinfo 3y ago
[flagged]

hsyehbeidhh 3y ago

[flagged]

afavour 3y ago
> “You’ll own nothing and be happy”, remember? > They convinced young women that it’s a sign of independence to have an OF, the Europeans that Russia is an enemy, and half the western population that men can be women. The latter has absolutely zero to do with the former, it's just a grab bag of reactionary culture complaints (and the Russia one is just straightforwardly true). Which, ironically, is exactly what the global elites really want people to do: divide themselves over cultural issues and spend all of their time arguing with each other rather than come together and examine the financial system we all live under.
- mantas 3y ago
  Catch-22. If you sign off on postmodern culture, you loose. If you argue over talking points of postmodern culture, you loose.
  - afavour 3y ago
    > If you sign off on postmodern culture, you loose. In what way? To take OP's examples, in what way do I lose when OnlyFans exists, or when people are able to change their gender if they wish to?
    - mantas 3y ago
      As in you loose agains „the elites“. IMO the current dopamine and consumption driven culture only benefits a very small slice of the society. While externalized costs ruin many lives. Mental and physical health is going down the drain and nobody cares. E.g. obesity pandemic, drugs abuse and so on. People don't abuse junk food because of happiness and content. And yet we all end up paying, at least in countries with state health insurance :) We as a society are at a loss when people think OnlyFans is a viable career path. Or a hobby, which is even worse. OF is the same as prostitution. Vast majority (if not all) people end up there for very sad reasons and we as a society should strive to eliminate it. Normalizing such abuse of the vulnerable is even worse. Many cases of gender „change“ are similar symptoms of long running abuse we as a society normalize. E.g. trans athletes. Or over-sexualized display of how some people envision what it is to be a woman.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

I'd rather be a young person in the 2020's than a young person in the 1920's. That group was called the "greatest generation" for a reason, and it wasn't because they had it easy.

anthonypasq 3y ago
what wonderful consolation, we might have it better than people 100 years ago. I sure am glad the system is working.

ben_w 3y ago

> buying a house with these prices & interest rates, or trying to save for a downpayment while renting. While there are certainly problems here, higher interest rates drive demand down and lower prices, while lower interest rates drive up demand and raise prices. Investors tend to look for the best return on investment, the number I often see given is 5%/year. The rent I collect is close to that fraction of the market value of the apartment I own in the UK. The choice between "rent" and "mortgage" is where the cost of the two is about equal in the first year, which is always a bit unfair on first-time purchasers as (1) they're generally younger and thus earning less money, and (2) the impact of interest payments is always front-loaded towards the beginning of the repayment period. This in turn means that there's a temptation for very long repayment periods to make it seem easier: in a world of genuinely 0% interest mortgages, paying off a ¤600k over 40 years is clearly easier than paying it off over 20, and lower rates asymptotically approach this. Conversely, when the interest rate is high enough that (even without paying off the capital and regardless of repayment period) it approximates the rental market rate of the property, this drives down demand. To see why, go back to that previous example of a ¤600k (sale price) property: if the landlord can ask for ¤2.5k/month rent, and the interest rate on a mortgage is 5% AER, then the cost to service the interest without paying capital is the same as you get from the rent — which means investors will ask "why should I buy this?" and renters will ask "why would I want that kind of mortgage?", forcing down the asking prices because the only people still interested are people who can do it without borrowing any money.

asynchronous 3y ago

The inevitable outcome seems to be the younger generation giving up altogether and then social security is going to dry up real fast.

ddorian43 3y ago
Especially with real estate. Either rent indefinetily by paying their pension , buy the house for 2x-3x+ the monthly rent so you pay their pension in lump sum, or go 1+ hour away from city(also high cost in terms of time etc). The politicians are also older people who can't empathize. The young also don't vote. And if you do buy high now, who are you gonna sell even higher when you retire, since there are so few new kids being born?
- westmeal 3y ago
  For sure but I gotta ask, even if the young did vote who is there to vote for? The bipartisan system here is rigged IMO. Even if you vote for a less popular candidate they're usually still beholden to the party.
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    If the young reliably voted, for their own interests...then both parties have these things called "primaries", where their general election candidates are picked. Sometimes from a wide field of contenders, and usually with very low barriers to entry (either to vote, or to be a candidate). My understanding is that career politicians' take on the youth vote is: "If the stars happen to align, and you play it right, the youth vote can win you an election. But usually not - so you should mostly let your opponent waste his time chasing the youth vote."
    - Izkata 3y ago
      Primaries have a weird system based on delegates, not direct votes. It's really difficult to know who you're actually voting for, I couldn't find any information on which candidate the delegates on my ballot were actually for.

consp 3y ago

Not just young people, those who missed the boat are left behind as well which is a considerable part of the population.

ddorian43 3y ago
I agree, but people often try to demonize them like they had multiple chances (true & false, but still doesn't matter). While young people never had a chance and it's easier to send the point across.
- smallmancontrov 3y ago
  It's always a mistake to give in to Titanic Life Boat logic ("The design of the Titanic was fine, anyone could have gotten into a life boat / but could everyone get into a life boat? / what are you, a COMMUNIST?"). If you try to avoid the problem by focusing on young people, they'll just focus on a young person who made it and hold them up as proof that it's possible (see: person downthread "my daughter just bought a house"). Plenty of kids got into titanic life boats so it's fine, see? The rest just didn't hustle hard enough. Do you want society to be full of cripples who can't hustle into a lifeboat? Don't play that game. No, if the system forces a growing fraction of people to lose we have to be honest about that, pin down why, and ask if it's really truly unsolvable. Hint: food and clothing and house construction have shrunk dramatically over time as a fraction of our economic activity. The first-principles problems did not get harder and we did not get worse at solving them. This hell is of our own design. It will hurt to solve, but it can be solved.