I hate these articles.
Please tell me more how that down payment assistance program will help you buy that $1m house you mentioned, Mr dude.
(Narrator: it doesn’t. I don’t mean to rip dpa’s cuz it’s a good idea, but there’s little way it can help people in locations with crazy housing markets. If you make a salary that qualifies, there is still no house you can afford that’s not a tear down. If you make more, you don’t qualify so you still can’t afford it.)
😡
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiegold/2023/08/08/heres-how-gen-z-can-become-homeowners/
@Beanc Give it a few months. The apartment market is beginning to soften. Housing is probably next.
https://fortune.com/2023/09/18/rental-market-softening-lardlords-offering-deals-says-redfin/
@Coctaanatis I appreciate the optimism, but the improvement required when median houses are 10-20 times median salary is….. if solved by softening.
As the author notes, the house he grew up in , accounting for inflation whatnot, would be about $250k and sold for over $1M.
It’s untenable.
@Beanc There's a mean trendline. We're currently well above it. Historically, that means prices will drop quite a bit.
Sure, but that chart proves my point (although CA specific, the issue isn’t).
The price index is the baseline.
Houses are five times more expensive than one (or two) generations up *at the baseline*
Said differently, that house that is $ 1m + in the article will *never* drop to the 258k it would be just accounting for inflation, that older generations saw the joy of.
@Beanc Older houses really aren't comperable to modern houses. Most were much smaller, lacked air-conditioning and building materials were lower grade. Fortunately, most of the really bad houses, think coldwater shotgun shacks, tiny capes, etc., are gone.
Also location makes a huge difference. As cities and suburbia have grown, so have median house prices. But in many rural areas houses are, even at today's inflated prices, relatively inexpensive.
@Coctaanatis @Beanc: The home I sold in 2016 for $145,000 because that was what it was appraised at then was on the market again earlier this year for $235,700. It's a 2,010 sq. ft. ranch style house on one acre and with a nearly matching rental house less than thirty feet to its west. The house is a modular built in July of 2001. There are 1.5x as many houses within two miles as there were in 2001.
The house is NOT worth $235,000.
@thedisasterautist @Beanc Prices are very high now, but if you see my earlier comment, real estate prices regress towards a mean trend line.
(And, yes, I used one for California, but it applies more broadly.)
Prices well above the trend line are a good sign not to buy as historically they tend to peak and then fall back to the line.
@Beanc @Coctaanatis: I wasn't arguing that it didn't/wasn't. I wasn't disagreeing. I was just exampling(?) of how bananas it all is.
@Beanc @Coctaanatis: I can't even afford an apartment, alas.
@thedisasterautist
Sorry.
It’s all crap 😭
@thedisasterautist @Coctaanatis haha no I was agreeing with you.
Anyhoo…
Buy me house?
*bats eyelashes*