5 ms·

> It's also funny to see the "the economy is roaring!" "incomes are up!". Great, have they increased by as much as inflation? Can I afford a home? Gen Z home o

> It's also funny to see the "the economy is roaring!" "incomes are up!". Great, have they increased by as much as inflation? Can I afford a home? Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age. There's a lot of denial around this topic because everywhere you turn there's a Reddit post or news headline about how housing is impossible to afford. > Pay's less. Less than the narrow window of post-COVID mania pay maybe, but inflation adjusted wages are actually up over the long term. > Nobody can take a break. Pressure's on. Annual working hours per worker is flat or slightly down from when your mom's generation made up most of the workforce https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-worker https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-... When it comes to happiness, the numbers don't actually matter though. Perceptions do. Your and your mom's worldview that everything "isn't working any more", that young people can't possibly be buying homes, that real wages are down, and that working hours are up are actually very common ideas, especially if you zoom in on demographics who read a lot of certain types of social media (Reddit especially!) where classic doomerism prevails.

tech_ken 7mo ago
> Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age. There's a lot of denial around this topic. Yeah but aren't they putting down less/leveraging themselves deeper? edit: also it seems like the millenial/genZ divide here is on the order of like 1-5%, whereas the gap between either of those generations and boomers/genX is more like 10%+. It's good that the trend hasn't gotten worse in recent history, but I think it's pretty inarguable that the housing market is much worse than it was 30 years ago.
- tempaccount5050 7mo ago
  From what I understand, yes. My 24 year old coworker makes $65k/year and has a $2200/mo mortgage. It's an old starter home in the Midwest, nothing fancy. It stresses him out to the point of not going to a happy hour once in a while unless there's a buy one get one deal or something or I offer to buy (which I do happily). No vacations, no eating out, no fun. It's super sad to see. He talks about being in his prime but being unable to enjoy it at all.
  - trhway 7mo ago
    fast-forward 15-20 years. He has most probably paid out his mortgage (salary growth/inflation, etc. so most people i know paid their mortgages in about 15 years, and some by that time got second or even 3rd property - the observations are over the last 30 years here, included are only salaried employees and excluded are the ones who made "exits" which is completely different game level). Even if he is still paying his mortgage, his non-homeowner coworkers would be by that time paying $4K+ in rent while he is still paying 2200 (out of at least 100K+ salary by that time). He can have cats/dogs while it is a big issue for renters. Add the land/home appreciation - about double. And if he gets tired of such comfortable life, he can always HELOC and venture into say a startup, all while still may be not even 40 (and with great health as no drinking&eating out :).
    - bsder 7mo ago
      Until he gets laid off and now is in a complete panic because he MUST make that mortgage payment. I have watched this scenario dissolve marriages over and over among my friends. You cannot assume your job is stable for 15 years nowadays.
    - lovich 7mo ago
      thats a cool assumption. Our industries are routinely telling people who just spent 4-6 years in training that tough shit, you picked the wrong career. You are looking at this with a lens of stability that no longer exists, which I personally believe is a major component about why everyone is so unhappy. You cant just reach a level of life that you are comfortable with and stay there anymore. Its a constant cycle of learning new skills that are then useless then learning more skills that are then useless, ad on infinitum.
    - intended 7mo ago
      If we are talking hypotheticals, then why not just assume he wins a lottery? That’s Easier than assuming they can venture into startup land?
    - carlosjobim 7mo ago
      > Add the land/home appreciation - about double. Birth rates have collapsed completely, so this gravy train is ending very soon. There won't be another sucker to buy the real estate, because new buyers aren't being born.
whatisthiseven 7mo ago
Can you link a source for gen z with higher homeowner rates than millennial, st the same age? Because redfin shows that just is very clearly not true https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation-2024/ https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation...
- RickS 7mo ago
  That chart is comparing point in present time, not point in generation-relative time. IE zoomers at ~25 mills at ~40. If you were to approximately age sync the red and yellow lines on that chart, by moving their start dates to the same point, the red line is higher.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - ribosometronome 7mo ago
    There's several charts, the second is: Gen Zers, Millennials Less Likely to Own Homes Than Their Parents at the Same Age which does a direct "at same age" comparison and showed that Gen Z started off slightly stronger than millennials but fell behind. I do wonder about how they're calculating some of this. It looks like in the chart is saying 16% of the cohort born between 1981 and 1996 (aka millennials) owned a home in 2000. I wouldn't even expect 16% of that group to be over 18.
  - corysama 7mo ago
    > If you were to approximately age sync the red and yellow lines on that chart, by moving their start dates to the same point, the red line is higher. Like this: https://imgur.com/a/d7stXVN https://imgur.com/a/d7stXVN
    - epicureanideal 7mo ago
      Thanks for sharing! Seems to show that both are doing poorly relative to earlier generations, and it doesn’t seem Gen Z is greatly (or much at all) outpacing millennials.
traderj0e 7mo ago
Yeah, a house is always affordable to someone, and it's not like all the single-family homes are owned by huge landlords renting out. Some areas have become more sought-after, so young adults there are finding that they can't afford to buy a house where they grew up.
- amluto 7mo ago
  > Yeah, a house is always affordable to someone It’s actually not true that a house is affordable to the person living in it. First, plenty of people own houses, paid-off even, but have little else in the way of income or assets, and, other than not wanting to move, they might be much better off if the home magically turned into cash. Second, taxes. In the US, in HCOL markets, selling your house may involve large amounts of capital gains tax, and in California, you risk losing your low Property 13 basis. I suspect that, in markets like Palo Alto, a lot of houses are owned by people who could not credibly afford those houses if they were to sell and then decide to buy an equivalent house next door. Sure, someone can afford your house, but that’s a nearly vacuous statement.
  - abustamam 7mo ago
    My in-laws bought a house in the East Bay area in 2000 for about $400k. Worth about $1.5m (according to zillow and similar homes in the neighborhood that have recently sold). Fully paid off now, and they're retired. If they were to sell it, they'd have to pay taxes on 1.1m of "profit." sure they can write off renovations and deduct $500k but that's still a lot of taxes to pay! So yeah, they wouldn't be able to sell and rebuy even their own house because uncle sam just took about $100k on the sale of their house.
    - anamax 6mo ago
      The first $500k is federal tax-free. The rest is taxed at long-term capital gains rates. IIRC, California taxes that $1.1M as ordinary income.
      - 6mo ago
grafmax 7mo ago
> inflation adjusted wages are actually up over the long term Inflation is a tool for monetary policy. It doesn't track cost of living. For example, if luxury items become more affordable, but housing prices rise, inflation-adjusted pay doesn't capture this kind of negative effect on the working class.
- pjscott 7mo ago
  It doesn't track cost of living? The way it's calculated is all about cost of living! In the US, the official inflation numbers are based on a "basket of goods" meant to be representative of a typical person's spending. Housing currently makes up about a third of the basket, while luxury items are a fairly small percentage. Here's a pretty well-written summary, albeit with numbers from 2022: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/24/as-inflation-soars-a-look-at-whats-inside-the-consumer-price-index/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/24/as-inflat... Changes in housing prices have a large effect on the BLS's inflation figures. Downward changes in the price of luxury goods have a small (and bounded) effect. Even if all luxury goods became free, the reduction in inflation wouldn't be all that much.
  - phendrenad2 7mo ago
    [dead]
  - smallmancontrov 7mo ago
    Nope. CPI is an excellent differential indicator -- "how much did a typical person's cost of living rise this year" -- but it's a terrible integral indicator if you compound it because it's blind to the difference between forced and voluntary substitution. If essentials inflate faster than wages, money_in=money_out drives a reduction in nonessentials -- forced substitution -- and the CPI basket adjustments launder the forced substitution into voluntary substitution. Well, "launder" is a strong word that the hardworking bureaucrats at BLS do not deserve, but the people who use CPI as a deflater so that they can wave around graphs "proving" that things have never been better absolutely deserve it, so I'll keep it in. Bonus meme: the American Dream was not to Owner Imputed Rent a house.
vannevar 7mo ago
>Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age. Not according to this Redfin report (also linked by others in the thread): "Take 28-year-olds as an example: 38.3% of 28-year-old Gen Zers owned their home in 2025, compared to 42.5% of Gen Xers when they were 28 and 44.4% of baby boomers when they were 28." (There is an accompanying chart in the linked report.) https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation-2025/ https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation... That seems to show a pretty clear decline in home affordability over time, for people of the same age.
arkis22 7mo ago
one thing to also consider is that maybe the younger kids who are capable of buying houses may be getting their down payment from the bank of mom and dad. not good for people thinking things are fair
globalnode 7mo ago
nice debunk, thats just a wall of words that besides likely being wrong, has no evidence and goes against what i hear people saying all the time. edit: besides, happiness is not about money. freedom of expression and free/impartial institutions are at all time lows across the western world. which as we speak is in an arms race to be the biggest and best surveillance system it can be.
api 7mo ago
I can’t grasp the math. How are young people buying homes? Is the average income now over $100k? Or are they taking out mortgages they can never pay off, meaning they are almost renting not on a path to actually buying or owning and most of their payments are interest. If that’s the case they are renting a leveraged financial position. Previous generations could own homes. As in pay them off.
- SmirkingRevenge 7mo ago
  The interest is fixed in a typical mortgage, so just as long as you reliably pay the mortgage payments, you will own the home eventually when the term is complete. Owners only really get screwed if their home value goes down and they need to sell for some reason. Prices are usually going up (at least on a long enough time frame), so most owners make out pretty well when selling even with little home equity.
  - api 7mo ago
    Sure, I know that, but even a small down payment on crazy home prices is insane let alone the monthly payment. I suspect these stats are nationwide. There are places you can still actually buy a home without an exit event. Maybe genZ has wised up and is avoiding high cost of living traps and that’s how.
ryukoposting 7mo ago
> Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age. The median Zoomer is in their mid-20s. You're comparing rounding errors.
HDBaseT 7mo ago
Home "ownership" is misleading. You don't own a home until you've paid it off. Younger people are getting into more debt, for much longer in order to be able to survive. When we start comparing the numbers (i.e, house paid off, even reflected as a percentage paid off, relative to age) the numbers reveal the real crisis. Anecdotally, I know tons of 20-30 year olds getting into the property market (with insane levels of debt with almost impossible loan lengths) simply because if they don't do it now, there is a high chance homeless is the next option.
- greenavocado 7mo ago
  To be pedantic what most people consider ownership is a revocable land lease from the state government which you forfeit if you fail to pay protection money to the gov. True ownership is non-existent.
  - lovich 7mo ago
    You could always seastead! But yes, you do not truly own anything unless you are a sovereign power.
  - cman1444 7mo ago
    There are plenty of entities that don't pay property taxes. Charities, religious facilities, some disabled people, spouses of fallen service members.
    - givemeethekeys 7mo ago
      > spouses of fallen service What if they get remarried?
      - smitty1e 7mo ago
        A widow receiving a military pension will not uncommonly "live in sin" before losing the monthly check. Which is a pointer to the "real", general issue: materialism. Ain't no joy in $tuff. Joy is of the Lord.
FpUser 7mo ago
Cut the bullshit please. I bought house in 1998 for $200K, guess what's the price is now. And salaries did not all that much since then. Definitely not 5 times.
rambojohnson 7mo ago
[dead]
reddozen 7mo ago
This reminds me that people only care about what you tell them to care about. Grocery store prices was the first thing out of any "undecided muh both sides" voters mouth in 2024. But on Jan 20, 2025 it was magically fixed instantly despite grocery store prices increasing because voters decided to elect in blanket import taxes. No one cares about these issues. They just care about the aesthetic.
camgunz 7mo ago
> Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age. There's a lot of denial around this topic because everywhere you turn there's a Reddit post or news headline about how housing is impossible to afford. It's more the case that Gen Z is giving up on having the homes that Millennials want in the places they want them. They're buying fixer uppers, moving into 3rd/4th tier cities, etc. They also have some benefits millennials didn't have: inheritances and way less student loan debt. You can look at this in a number of ways, but it's clear we didn't solve the problem of "so you want to live in NYC/LA/Chicago/SF/Seattle". https://www.nar.realtor/magazine/real-estate-news/how-gen-z-buyers-are-succeeding-in-the-housing-market https://www.nar.realtor/magazine/real-estate-news/how-gen-z-...

tech_ken 7mo ago

> Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age. There's a lot of denial around this topic. Yeah but aren't they putting down less/leveraging themselves deeper? edit: also it seems like the millenial/genZ divide here is on the order of like 1-5%, whereas the gap between either of those generations and boomers/genX is more like 10%+. It's good that the trend hasn't gotten worse in recent history, but I think it's pretty inarguable that the housing market is much worse than it was 30 years ago.

tempaccount5050 7mo ago
From what I understand, yes. My 24 year old coworker makes $65k/year and has a $2200/mo mortgage. It's an old starter home in the Midwest, nothing fancy. It stresses him out to the point of not going to a happy hour once in a while unless there's a buy one get one deal or something or I offer to buy (which I do happily). No vacations, no eating out, no fun. It's super sad to see. He talks about being in his prime but being unable to enjoy it at all.
- trhway 7mo ago
  fast-forward 15-20 years. He has most probably paid out his mortgage (salary growth/inflation, etc. so most people i know paid their mortgages in about 15 years, and some by that time got second or even 3rd property - the observations are over the last 30 years here, included are only salaried employees and excluded are the ones who made "exits" which is completely different game level). Even if he is still paying his mortgage, his non-homeowner coworkers would be by that time paying $4K+ in rent while he is still paying 2200 (out of at least 100K+ salary by that time). He can have cats/dogs while it is a big issue for renters. Add the land/home appreciation - about double. And if he gets tired of such comfortable life, he can always HELOC and venture into say a startup, all while still may be not even 40 (and with great health as no drinking&eating out :).
  - bsder 7mo ago
    Until he gets laid off and now is in a complete panic because he MUST make that mortgage payment. I have watched this scenario dissolve marriages over and over among my friends. You cannot assume your job is stable for 15 years nowadays.
  - lovich 7mo ago
    thats a cool assumption. Our industries are routinely telling people who just spent 4-6 years in training that tough shit, you picked the wrong career. You are looking at this with a lens of stability that no longer exists, which I personally believe is a major component about why everyone is so unhappy. You cant just reach a level of life that you are comfortable with and stay there anymore. Its a constant cycle of learning new skills that are then useless then learning more skills that are then useless, ad on infinitum.
  - intended 7mo ago
    If we are talking hypotheticals, then why not just assume he wins a lottery? That’s Easier than assuming they can venture into startup land?
  - carlosjobim 7mo ago
    > Add the land/home appreciation - about double. Birth rates have collapsed completely, so this gravy train is ending very soon. There won't be another sucker to buy the real estate, because new buyers aren't being born.

whatisthiseven 7mo ago

Can you link a source for gen z with higher homeowner rates than millennial, st the same age? Because redfin shows that just is very clearly not true https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation-2024/ https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation...

RickS 7mo ago
That chart is comparing point in present time, not point in generation-relative time. IE zoomers at ~25 mills at ~40. If you were to approximately age sync the red and yellow lines on that chart, by moving their start dates to the same point, the red line is higher.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- ribosometronome 7mo ago
  There's several charts, the second is: Gen Zers, Millennials Less Likely to Own Homes Than Their Parents at the Same Age which does a direct "at same age" comparison and showed that Gen Z started off slightly stronger than millennials but fell behind. I do wonder about how they're calculating some of this. It looks like in the chart is saying 16% of the cohort born between 1981 and 1996 (aka millennials) owned a home in 2000. I wouldn't even expect 16% of that group to be over 18.
- corysama 7mo ago
  > If you were to approximately age sync the red and yellow lines on that chart, by moving their start dates to the same point, the red line is higher. Like this: https://imgur.com/a/d7stXVN https://imgur.com/a/d7stXVN
  - epicureanideal 7mo ago
    Thanks for sharing! Seems to show that both are doing poorly relative to earlier generations, and it doesn’t seem Gen Z is greatly (or much at all) outpacing millennials.

traderj0e 7mo ago

Yeah, a house is always affordable to someone, and it's not like all the single-family homes are owned by huge landlords renting out. Some areas have become more sought-after, so young adults there are finding that they can't afford to buy a house where they grew up.

amluto 7mo ago
> Yeah, a house is always affordable to someone It’s actually not true that a house is affordable to the person living in it. First, plenty of people own houses, paid-off even, but have little else in the way of income or assets, and, other than not wanting to move, they might be much better off if the home magically turned into cash. Second, taxes. In the US, in HCOL markets, selling your house may involve large amounts of capital gains tax, and in California, you risk losing your low Property 13 basis. I suspect that, in markets like Palo Alto, a lot of houses are owned by people who could not credibly afford those houses if they were to sell and then decide to buy an equivalent house next door. Sure, someone can afford your house, but that’s a nearly vacuous statement.
- abustamam 7mo ago
  My in-laws bought a house in the East Bay area in 2000 for about $400k. Worth about $1.5m (according to zillow and similar homes in the neighborhood that have recently sold). Fully paid off now, and they're retired. If they were to sell it, they'd have to pay taxes on 1.1m of "profit." sure they can write off renovations and deduct $500k but that's still a lot of taxes to pay! So yeah, they wouldn't be able to sell and rebuy even their own house because uncle sam just took about $100k on the sale of their house.
  - anamax 6mo ago
    The first $500k is federal tax-free. The rest is taxed at long-term capital gains rates. IIRC, California taxes that $1.1M as ordinary income.
    - 6mo ago

grafmax 7mo ago

> inflation adjusted wages are actually up over the long term Inflation is a tool for monetary policy. It doesn't track cost of living. For example, if luxury items become more affordable, but housing prices rise, inflation-adjusted pay doesn't capture this kind of negative effect on the working class.

pjscott 7mo ago
It doesn't track cost of living? The way it's calculated is all about cost of living! In the US, the official inflation numbers are based on a "basket of goods" meant to be representative of a typical person's spending. Housing currently makes up about a third of the basket, while luxury items are a fairly small percentage. Here's a pretty well-written summary, albeit with numbers from 2022: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/24/as-inflation-soars-a-look-at-whats-inside-the-consumer-price-index/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/24/as-inflat... Changes in housing prices have a large effect on the BLS's inflation figures. Downward changes in the price of luxury goods have a small (and bounded) effect. Even if all luxury goods became free, the reduction in inflation wouldn't be all that much.
- phendrenad2 7mo ago
  [dead]
- smallmancontrov 7mo ago
  Nope. CPI is an excellent differential indicator -- "how much did a typical person's cost of living rise this year" -- but it's a terrible integral indicator if you compound it because it's blind to the difference between forced and voluntary substitution. If essentials inflate faster than wages, money_in=money_out drives a reduction in nonessentials -- forced substitution -- and the CPI basket adjustments launder the forced substitution into voluntary substitution. Well, "launder" is a strong word that the hardworking bureaucrats at BLS do not deserve, but the people who use CPI as a deflater so that they can wave around graphs "proving" that things have never been better absolutely deserve it, so I'll keep it in. Bonus meme: the American Dream was not to Owner Imputed Rent a house.

vannevar 7mo ago

>Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age. Not according to this Redfin report (also linked by others in the thread): "Take 28-year-olds as an example: 38.3% of 28-year-old Gen Zers owned their home in 2025, compared to 42.5% of Gen Xers when they were 28 and 44.4% of baby boomers when they were 28." (There is an accompanying chart in the linked report.) https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation-2025/ https://www.redfin.com/news/homeownership-rate-by-generation... That seems to show a pretty clear decline in home affordability over time, for people of the same age.

arkis22 7mo ago

one thing to also consider is that maybe the younger kids who are capable of buying houses may be getting their down payment from the bank of mom and dad. not good for people thinking things are fair

globalnode 7mo ago

nice debunk, thats just a wall of words that besides likely being wrong, has no evidence and goes against what i hear people saying all the time. edit: besides, happiness is not about money. freedom of expression and free/impartial institutions are at all time lows across the western world. which as we speak is in an arms race to be the biggest and best surveillance system it can be.

api 7mo ago

I can’t grasp the math. How are young people buying homes? Is the average income now over $100k? Or are they taking out mortgages they can never pay off, meaning they are almost renting not on a path to actually buying or owning and most of their payments are interest. If that’s the case they are renting a leveraged financial position. Previous generations could own homes. As in pay them off.

SmirkingRevenge 7mo ago
The interest is fixed in a typical mortgage, so just as long as you reliably pay the mortgage payments, you will own the home eventually when the term is complete. Owners only really get screwed if their home value goes down and they need to sell for some reason. Prices are usually going up (at least on a long enough time frame), so most owners make out pretty well when selling even with little home equity.
- api 7mo ago
  Sure, I know that, but even a small down payment on crazy home prices is insane let alone the monthly payment. I suspect these stats are nationwide. There are places you can still actually buy a home without an exit event. Maybe genZ has wised up and is avoiding high cost of living traps and that’s how.

ryukoposting 7mo ago

> Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age. The median Zoomer is in their mid-20s. You're comparing rounding errors.

HDBaseT 7mo ago

Home "ownership" is misleading. You don't own a home until you've paid it off. Younger people are getting into more debt, for much longer in order to be able to survive. When we start comparing the numbers (i.e, house paid off, even reflected as a percentage paid off, relative to age) the numbers reveal the real crisis. Anecdotally, I know tons of 20-30 year olds getting into the property market (with insane levels of debt with almost impossible loan lengths) simply because if they don't do it now, there is a high chance homeless is the next option.

greenavocado 7mo ago
To be pedantic what most people consider ownership is a revocable land lease from the state government which you forfeit if you fail to pay protection money to the gov. True ownership is non-existent.
- lovich 7mo ago
  You could always seastead! But yes, you do not truly own anything unless you are a sovereign power.
- cman1444 7mo ago
  There are plenty of entities that don't pay property taxes. Charities, religious facilities, some disabled people, spouses of fallen service members.
  - givemeethekeys 7mo ago
    > spouses of fallen service What if they get remarried?
    - smitty1e 7mo ago
      A widow receiving a military pension will not uncommonly "live in sin" before losing the monthly check. Which is a pointer to the "real", general issue: materialism. Ain't no joy in $tuff. Joy is of the Lord.

FpUser 7mo ago

Cut the bullshit please. I bought house in 1998 for $200K, guess what's the price is now. And salaries did not all that much since then. Definitely not 5 times.

rambojohnson 7mo ago

[dead]

reddozen 7mo ago

This reminds me that people only care about what you tell them to care about. Grocery store prices was the first thing out of any "undecided muh both sides" voters mouth in 2024. But on Jan 20, 2025 it was magically fixed instantly despite grocery store prices increasing because voters decided to elect in blanket import taxes. No one cares about these issues. They just care about the aesthetic.

camgunz 7mo ago

> Gen Z home ownership is outpacing millenial home ownership at the same age. There's a lot of denial around this topic because everywhere you turn there's a Reddit post or news headline about how housing is impossible to afford. It's more the case that Gen Z is giving up on having the homes that Millennials want in the places they want them. They're buying fixer uppers, moving into 3rd/4th tier cities, etc. They also have some benefits millennials didn't have: inheritances and way less student loan debt. You can look at this in a number of ways, but it's clear we didn't solve the problem of "so you want to live in NYC/LA/Chicago/SF/Seattle". https://www.nar.realtor/magazine/real-estate-news/how-gen-z-buyers-are-succeeding-in-the-housing-market https://www.nar.realtor/magazine/real-estate-news/how-gen-z-...