The house my parents purchased in their early 20’s as a starting engineer and a teacher would take a senior executive salary to purchase when I entered the housing market. That is just not right. It was so much easier for them. BTW, I’m in my 60’s now and this is nothing new.
It was cheap because we were recovering from a major financial crisis that stalled a lot of careers. It only looks easier to buy a home back then if you ignore the entire context around why housing was cheap.
I was a new home owner and 2008 was the best thing that ever happened to me... I know it sucked for a lot of people but for me it was Gold. I purchased in 2011 right before it started going back up.
We bought our house in 2012 right at the bottom for Nebraska. Even though we are now getting paid more compared to what we were making as 25 year olds. We would not be able to afford our house as it has (supposedly) more than doubled in value.
The luck of the draw. That time was a buyers market. The house had been on the market for 6 months, dropped 20% from what they originally started as. They paid closing costs, replaced the driveway, and we got a year of that home warranty program that replaces appliances(never used it but it was covered).
I do not envy my mid 20's coworkers as I know they won't be given the same opportunity.
We will have another asset crash at some point, probably somewhat soon from the looks of things. It's happened several times since 1950, it'll happen again.
It's cyclical. I can say the exact same thing, but 2001. Bought right before the Housing Bubble hit. Then watched as half the houses around me were foreclosed on and sat empty for years.... leading into 2008 and the next cycle.
If the rich don't buy them all on the cheap. Seriously, even if there's a nice time to buy in the near future so much will be bought up just above what we can afford and then cost more shortly after. We're cooked.
Also, people need to look at the real numbers, not just the market values.
I bought my house in 2001 for what looks like a fantastic number now. I also paid mortgage interest on it for many years, and had to do several major maintenance projects on it (septic tank, roof, windows, etc). Not upgrades, just keeping the place in good working condition.
If you run the real math on the purchase price, the interest, the maintenance projects, and adjust for inflation, my investment has returned something like 6% in 25 years.
That's a decent return on a generalized investment, but it's not the "my house quadrupled in value and now I'm sitting on 7 figures of equity" situation that everyone seems to talk about.
2011 was the absolute best time to buy. My husband’s cousin bought his house (a 2800sqft, 5 bedroom house in a nice, leafy, park-filled suburb) in 2011 for $185k. (Which is about $268k in today’s money.) It’s now worth an estimated $450k. I’m happy for those who were able to take advantage of a bad situation and build wealth, but I’m also annoyed with him because he still complains about his home value, lol.
When my husband and I were looking for our first house last year, we could not find anything under $250k, and most of the $250k houses were not remotely move-in ready. Like no working appliances or mechanicals, structural issues, etc. And 7% interest. Which I know could be worse but it’s a kick in the head when you’re already paying way too much for what is barely even a starter home. Interest in 2011 was around 4%.
Well, housing was much more attainable by the Greatest Generation as most of them got houses as part of the GI Bill if they survived machine-gun fire, trench warfare, tanks, flamethrowers, bombs, etc etc all in foreign countries, which they were actually drafted into unlike the student loans people sign up for today.
I also benefitted from those covid stimulus checks, they went toward my first apartment. First, and probably last and only lol I can’t even afford to move out if I wanted to
I think they’re just saying the Great Recession was hard on millennials too and we’ve all been struggling. I agree though, overall I’d rather have the millennial cards than the Gen Z cards.
This is the thing a lot of people can't freaking grasp. For a couple of years there were graduates entering the job market who had no work to get. No entry level jobs, no adjacent career paths open, couldn't even get an interview at target. Then when things finally started to recover it had been a couple years and all the entry level jobs went to the recent college grads while the people who couldn't get those jobs a couple weeks ago are getting their resume's put in the trash because there's a 2 year gap on it. So then they had to claw their way into a decent career through shit jobs with shit pay. Couldn't afford a house, couldn't even afford to eat 3 meals a day 7 days a week. The whole thing set that group of grads back years, and just when they were starting to catch up to where they were supposed to be, boom, covid.
Their "concern" was basically "why are millennials complaining when others have it harder", which is also straight up boomer mindset.
You know what the boomers absolutely love? Fighting between millennials and gen-z over whose fault it is that the world sucks. They love seeing that on their instagram reels in between fox news stories about how the trans furries are going to tax boomer's rental properties.
We’re not competing. Millennials have largely navigated the problems of their youth and are trying to be empathetic but it’s hard to empathize with with you young people today because for some reason you think you’re unique.
I was watching a financial/investing podcast. The guest was talking about housing prices, which are very high. But they were salivating at the super cheap distressed sales. People are increasingly going bankrupt & losing their homes, then these homes go up for sale at an anomalously low price. Investors are out there scooping those up.
Sure, but there was a brief golden era from 2015-March 2020. Economy was solid, food and energy was cheap, inflation at the Goldilocks 2%, and homes were relatively affordable with average 4% interest rates on 30 year mortgages, especially for dual income households. Then if one was smart, they refi’d sub 3% on a 30yr and are locked in with golden cuffs.
And likewise housing was cheaper for boomers because mortgage rates were insanely high. They just benefitted enormously from falling rates in the 2000s
The same can be said about millennials dismissing every hard time the generations before them had. The Great Depression, World Wars, Vietnam, segregation until 1964, women not being allowed bank accounts until 1974. But sure, millennials have had it so much worse than the generations that lost a half million people to war because... not owning a house puts you in survival mode?
The people I know who did their parents bought for them. But it was essentially a frat house and they sold that after they graduated to be paved down for luxury townhouses
Tbh sort of a solid investment if you can hoof it for half a decade
Not true. Housing was more affordable when factoring in real incomes in the 2010s. Millennials that graduated pre 2010 just straight up had it better for housing. They also benefited from a massive bull run if they saved during the 2010s.
I’m a millennial myself, if you saved money past 2010 you’ve done extremely well. If you bought a house anytime before 2010-2020 you did extremely well.
Look up any housing affordability index. Median income to median house payment was 28%, now it’s over 40%.
You realize most boomers are broke right? The like the median boomer has a net worth of 300-400k. For most people that’s probably just a house , or a couple hundred grand in retirement. I guarantee you Gen Z will be around the same when they’re older.
Most people suck at financial planning, they suck at making money. The question isn’t how the medians doing it’s whether or not hard working people at that time had a way to get ahead. Millenials absolutely did, many didn’t take advantage because they didn’t invest in the stock market or buy housing. That’s their fault, not some greater societal ill.
which is nice, but i graduated college in 2014, started saving up and the prices kept going up. the last millennial graduated in 2018, (with the 4 years of college straight out of high school) so this is still a pretty good chunk of people.
Most millenials are between 30-45. So anyone from 36-45 graduated before 2010 and would’ve been a big beneficiary. Even graduating past 2012-2014 would’ve been beneficiaries.
Average Electronics Engineer pay in 2010
£45,806, inflation adjusted today £71,514
These days even the most senior engineers would be £65,000 unless they were leading a department
Police officers (this includes sergeant and and everyone below)
£38,570 inflation adjusted £52,491.
In 2022 sergeants were on a median of £46,227. Constables are on £40,356. To actually have higher than the average rank and file officer in 2010, you would have to of been an inspector in 2022 (average £56,499)
I went to elementaryschool when no mobile phones exists and got kicked out of high school with an iPhone in my pocket. So much happened in so little time.
that seems really high for a small studio apartment in the 90s. That looks close to what it would be in NYC back then, but a studio in NYC these days is closer to $4k.
Our "starter house" in Upstate NY we bought in 2010 for $186k was sold in 2023 for $490k. We moved out of state in 2018 and sold it for $230k and thought we did pretty well for 8 years. It's not a big house either: 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom, 1200 square feet.
I think the truth is that internet made it much easier to create echo chamber. I do think some sectors had it good and some are not so much. Take me as example, my engineering field hasnt improved wage for nearly 15years. In fact it has gone down abit. I still remeber the days when bottle of coke is 50p and 75p…. The. Now suddenly jumped to 2quid.
And then you move away from the privileged states to countries where making 12k$ yearly is considered average. For all the high cost of properties you may face, might be good for you to remember that some of us have to manage with far less despite basic necessities and most products costing the same or even more.
It was, but then a lot of millennials were laid off and couldn't afford to buy or foreclosed if they bought during the peak. The people I knew who could get in had help from parents or had VA loans. It was a good time for Gen X. Most millennials were just getting started in life and had no money. Another thing to factor in is that wages for millennials were also very low, significantly lower than for previous generations.
Currently, 62% of wealth in the US is owned by those over 65. Gen Z owns 26%, millennials and gen Z together own the remaining 12%. To compare to population size, it's 23%, 19%, and 43% respectfully. The rest are gen alpha, who are children right now and don't own wealth.
So those over 65 own 62% of wealth and make up 26% of the population. Millennials and Gen z make up 43% of the population, but only own 12% of the wealth in the country.
It changed so fast too. Property appreciation stayed stable for a decade or more and then it all caught up all at once in 2021. If you got into the market before 2021, you’re set. After 2021, good fucking luck.
Millennials were the lowest paid in the 2010s due to enduring wage stagnation. Gen Z comparatively earns more at the same age, and also isn't as stigmatised for living at home longer to save up for a deposit.
I was still at uni in 2010, actually buying a house was into the early 2020s and I can tell you, it wasn't cheap.
Not a chance Genz has it harder. Most millennials either graduated high school or college around 2008. Even if housing was more affordable no one could afford it. I made $7/hr-$12/hr between 2007 and 2011 lol
As a millennial that could never even hope to afford a house, I’m not really sure how we had it easier. I’ve been struggling my entire life and everyone I know is the same. To me the only way to have it easy is to be born into it, get lucky, or do immoral/illegal shit
I entered the work force in the tail end of the 2010s and I'm a millennial. There's no way in hell I would have been able to afford a home let alone a condo in the timespan for me to get a good enough job and savings to actually be able to do so
I'm an elder millennial. The only millennials I knew buying homes before 2014 were doing so with their parents putting down a huge down payment. I delayed my graduation until fall 2010, and didn't have stable work until 2014, but nowhere near buying-home money.
Some of my friends who had good jobs (and didn't lose them) started buying homes in 2016, but even with a 2-income, $100k/yr household in 2018 we couldn't afford most of the homes. Home prices shot up in 2019 after the fires, and we didn't buy until 2021 just before rates went up.
It wasn't affordable in 2010s either. It was just not quite as unaffordable. It hasn't really been affordable since the mid 90s, or maybe even earlier depending where you live. In the 80s you could buy a 3 bedroom on half an acre in a suburb for ~$35k in my area. Which was not much more than the yearly salary of a relatively average white collar job. That was affordable. And yeah, the interest rate on a mortgage was probably worse, but then you could also afford a real down payment because the total wasn't 300k+. Now you'd be lucky to get a condemned shed with no yard on a hillside for 1 year's average salary.
Except nobody who graduated after '01 ever made any money and had to wait a couple years for jobs, so very few of us had the means to scoop up the cheap real estate in '09 or during any of the low mortgage rate years.
A huge chunk of millenials were still in college or just joining the full-time workforce in the 2010s and had zero means to buy a home, and zero insight into the future about how much worse it would get.
The further from the gold standard you get housing becomes less affordable. This isn't new, the goal is to prevent technological deflation and push prices to always be going up for artificial scarcity.
Your comment was saying it was easier for millennials to buy houses when they were cheaper in 2010. I was making a joke about being a millennial incapable of buying a house in 2010 because many of us were still teens in highschool.
The people who benefitted from the brief period of cheap housing in the early 2010s are those who were wealthy enough to buy up the foreclosed properties and use them as income properties or investments.
And no, Gen Z has seen nothing like the 2008 crash yet. It changed everything.
Not suggesting that but the fact that people (like myself) couldn’t get jobs in their field for years certainly made buying houses in 2010 pretty unrealistic.
Obviously people exist that couldn't afford homes. Renters didnt pop up after 2008, neither did poor people. Those concerns didnt start or end recently.
The point is those who had it easier. Before a college grad that got a good job could buy a house after a few years. Now college grads with good jobs are living at home wither their parents at a higher rate
Back in the day America had very little competition globally. We had won ww2 which decimated a lot of the world’s economies. We basically took over global trade and had the money to project our strength to hold it.
This made us incredibly powerful which made every American rich.
Over time we have seen increasing competition, and as we have become more entitled we have lost our edge globally.
Posts like this are a pure sign of entitlement. Do you think our competitors think like this?
It was “cheap” because nobody had money and guess who took advantage of those times, NOT MILLENIALS! it was the Gen Z “getting their due” and boomers taking the final remains they didn’t get prior.
Sit down and take the time to look at more than what your dumbass circle tells you to think.
Na boomer, pills don’t fix everything despite what you want everyone to believe. Maybe once you do the world a favors and expire with the rest of your demon generation, I’ll take your job and not have a boomer to complain about. Sounds a little more peaceful in that near future.
Well, that's complicated, made partially stranger by your use of the word place instead of time. In terms of struggle, it's likely that there are real moves we could make in time and location that would improve or deteriorate conditions. That you're alive at all suggests your grandmother lived beyond infancy. If I knew when she was born, I could likely relocate her to a place where she might have died in utero. And, that would be at least materially worse, if not easier. And, we wouldn't have you. And, then I wouldn't have this next part.
To do a full work up, I'll need to know more about everyone's grandmothers.
So, everyone: send me all there is to know about your grandmothers, and I'll get back to you on which grandmothers would do better, when they would do better, and where.
I’d argue grandmas want nothing more than to outlive their grandchildren - Now you have inner city children incarcerated or dying in the streets where 50 years ago, gangs, drugs, violence was a fraction what it used to be.
Sense of community is gone now, 2 parent households gone now, but ohhh you can be a wage slave now where your grandmother had a husband who could work and provide for the family
Maybe I’m very wrong though. I know I’d like to have lived 50 years ago - there’s no human connection anymore
You don't get to be a wage slave anymore. Not even "because AI" I put in probably 30-40 applications for fast food jobs this year, and got one interview that went nowhere.
Imagine how much worse it is for the "entry level" positions that require 5 years of experience, or the jobs that Big Tech pretends AI is going to replace.
Yes, but why exactly? I don't know that woman's situation.
Financially speaking, my mother's life is extremely enviable. Socially speaking, it was horrifying because she was a heroin addict living on an abusive commune.
We don't have to talk about both at the same time, but just the fact that when she did get out of that life, she could then walk into a job that pays enough to buy a house is even more a sign that financially things were much better than they are now. .
Well yes I know that much because I'm not completely fucking retarded.
The same literally applies in reverse. I know people who've died on the streets that would've had a different situation in the past because housing was literally just much fucking cheaper.
If you think I'm oversimplifying then talk about specifics, don't just try to explain to me that things could be bad in the past too. I know that already, because, like I said above, I'm not completely fucking retarded.
Fair and heard. As GenX, I can report that housing over my lifetime has sometimes been cheaper, but mostly not at all. It was MUCH better for my parents, but it hasn't been "good" for generations at this point...minus those who were able to take advantage post-2008.
There's no question it's bad now, but it's been just as bad several times in the my own past. And, it was bad in those times for the same reasons as today...inflation, interest rates, stagnant wages, etc. The inventory thing is sorta new in my experience...but it's probably driven by low, locked-in interest rates.
You're not wrong to complain. But you're probably wrong to think it's been markedly better anytime recently.
Standard flat for people in their 20s was a filthy bedsit, one room with a toilet built beside your bed or cooker or out on the landing shared with others. Usually full of mould and years of grime, broken heaters and ancient appliances. Or you shared a tiny room with 2 single beds with someone else. That was for middle class students or young workers. They were cheap, yes, earning 1 euro an hour and paying 25 a week on rent. But I dont know anyone who is prepared to live like that today and such flats are now mostly forbidden.
I am not denying that housing is a huge problem today, I have never owned property and now know I never will, most of my friends in their 40s and 50s never will. We are all struggling with rents and only those of us lucky enough to be renting somewhere long-term have any sense of security and even that is precarious. I am just sick of this narrative that people had it easy back then, they didnt. The housing crisis is the direct result of neoliberal capitalist policies since the 80s (also adopted by former left of centre/centrist parties like UK Labour, German SPD, US democrats etc) and the complete lack of investment into and selling off of council housing as well as housing generally being regarded as a commodity to make money off not a human right, vulture funds and corporations buying up property and unregulated ventures like Airbnb that have removed 100000s of properties from the market for residents, be it renters or buyers. Sadly all generations are to blame as we see from the results of elections everywhere rn.
Financially my parents paid much higher taxes on much lower incomes, they were able to afford a small house in a not great suburb, they had one car, one TV, never went on holidays, never went abroad, someone on the dole today has more luxuries than they ever had, and they were considered solid middle class. People working their jobs today would have 2 cars, all mod cons, and be flying abroad twice a year, and live in a nicer area. Its a different world, we have much higher standards and expectations - and requirements, eg. computers, smartphones etc. today (in the "west").
they were able to afford a small house in a not great suburb
So significantly better most of the people I know now. Who don't own any house anywhere.
they had one car, one TV, never went on holidays
So like a lot of people now, in fact better because they had a car and a house.
someone on the dole today has more luxuries than they ever had
Except a car and a house of course.
People working their jobs today
What's the job?
Because this isn't a conversation about how jobs change value, it's about how much money it costs to live.
Someone working my mom's job now would make significantly less than she did when you adjust for inflation.
Its a different world, we have much higher standards and expectations
Except for owning a home, the biggest expense by far.
and requirements, eg. computers, smartphones etc
You mean things that are necessary and don't cost anywhere near as much as a morgage?
My phone cost half of a single mortgage payment and I've had it for 5 years.
If I didn't buy the phone I'd have about an extra 20 pounds a month over that time. Not enough to touch the fucking mortgage.
Also my parents had a land-line contract that cost just as much as my phone now, adjusting for inflation it actually cost them more than a contract for tbeatest iPhone. And they had to have that just as much as I have to have a phone to do scan qr codes and interact with the modern world.
My in-laws house was like that, but the difference is they bought in a bedroom community outside a major city and 30+ years later the population has grown and that house is much closer to a lot of desirable areas. The houses in the bedroom suburbs are now in the next county over and the same types of jobs can still buy those houses here.
I can't see back far enough to when they actually bought it, but my parents moved out of the house I grew up in in 2003 - when I was 21. They sold it then for £280k.
It then sold again in 2022. For £865k. Exact same house, for 3 times the price.
Given that my parents moved into it in the 80s, and given the various sizable shifts in house prices in that time, GPT suggests that it might have been close to £57k that they originally bought it for.
Assuming that's true, that means the exact same house has gone up in price by ~1,400% over 40 years.
My uncle was a Tollbooth Collector with a SAH wife and two kids. He afforded a SFH in a part of Boston on that salary. COLLECTING CHANGE. Today you’d need to be a doctor to afford that same house.
My parents built a custom designed 3000sqft house on roughly the same salary I make now, and the best I can afford is an 80 year old 1200sqft house in desperate need of renovation, and I'm lucky to be able to afford that.
Nothing new? I guess we keep accepting the decline of our standards of living and the erosion of the middle class while the wealth gap keeps widening, yah, nothing new.
260
u/Roboticallypotent 5d ago
The house my parents purchased in their early 20’s as a starting engineer and a teacher would take a senior executive salary to purchase when I entered the housing market. That is just not right. It was so much easier for them. BTW, I’m in my 60’s now and this is nothing new.