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Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

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Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#71

Post by timthelion »

mythrwy wrote: post #51
omegaham wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Leave wealth building for bitcoin and Apple stock and companies that make mascara. The flip side of this - people then complain that we have 25 different high-tech varieties of boner pills while the developing world is dealing with antibiotic-resistant infections and malaria. Despite the SV Founder Changing The World rhetoric, most people are in business to get paid. People go where the money is. If you declare tha…

Yup. That is the problem right here in the real world. Don't disagree a bit. We've seen what happens with price controls, rent controls, government subsidies and mandates. That's why I say I see the problem, not the answer. But I'm pretty sure we can do better than we are right now. Policies discouraging wealth accumulation through living quarters might be a good start.

You don't necessarily need price controls or rent controls. You could put a special tax on second homes which would make renting and investing economically unfeasible. You could even make it so that speculation was enabled by allowing the sale of derivative housing futures (a young person would buy a house at a reduced price, and then have to pay the investor every time the house's price increased over the next 10 years). That would allow both investors to speculate and young people to buy.

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#72

Post by Gibbon1 »

randomdata wrote: post #37
jmclnx wrote: post #27

Not really the Baby Boomers fault, but bad decisions made over the past 30/40 years are coming to fruit. Right now only a hand full of cities have 'real' jobs and those cities have strict zoning laws (and NIMBY). So young people in the US, if they want to make any real $ need to move to those cities, otherwise all they will have are 'mcjobs'. I would not be surprised to see slums like the type seen in many poor count…

> if they want to make any real $ need to move to those cities This is the crux of the matter. The market always seeks equilibrium. If there is an income advantage in one location, people will move there, driving up costs in the process, until the point that there is no longer an advantage. Certain cities have held an advantage in earning ability for quite some time and the market is attempting to correct that dispar…

The income advantage is due to concentrated wealth and income inequality. What you see is a few industries and the people that run them receive the bulk of the excess capital. That results in a firehose of money pointed at a couple of cities where the golden industries leaders all live.

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#73

Post by alpha_squared »

coolspot wrote: post #61
kevinburke wrote: post #23

I'm going to sound like a broken record here but there are policy and other decisions being made in the Bay Area that are restricting the housing supply and driving up the price of existing housing. You don't have to be a bystander in this process, you can help lobby for more supply. A list of propositions and legislation to support (SF, Brisbane, Mountain View, the CA state legislature) can be found here: https://ne…

Not all cities must be made into overpopulated ant colonies. People love SF as it is, and if you increase density it would be not SF, it would be something else. If you like dense cities - there are plenty of them - LA, SD, NY...

> People love SF as it is

I'm sure people loved SF in the '70s, too. I'm sure people loved SF in the '80s, too. I'm sure people loved SF in the '90s, too.

SF has been changing for a while, most American metropolitan cities have. I always find the argument, "I love ____ as it is now" a little amusing, implying that it was either always that way or that it's finally a way that the person wants it to be.

Honestly, I miss the SF of the '90s and early 2000s, which is probably not the same SF that "people [of today who] love SF as it is."

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#74

Post by alpha_squared »

sintaxi wrote: post #67
xxSparkleSxx wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, I live in SD and many say the same thing. "We don't want to increase density, we like that it feels like a small city. It's a privilege to live here, if you can't afford it too bad." Something's got to give somewhere.

A city is not obligated to densify. The give is that people start to move to places they can afford to live instead of complaining about what hasn't been handed to them.

> instead of complaining about what hasn't been handed to them

While I understand this sentiment, it's certainly glossing over the opposing view of people being kicked out of the homes/neighborhoods they grew up in.

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#75

Post by sintaxi »

alpha_squared wrote: post #74
sintaxi wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A city is not obligated to densify. The give is that people start to move to places they can afford to live instead of complaining about what hasn't been handed to them.

> instead of complaining about what hasn't been handed to them While I understand this sentiment, it's certainly glossing over the opposing view of people being kicked out of the homes/neighborhoods they grew up in.

Except they are not. Anyone is free to purchase any property that someone else is willing to sell. If you don't own the property you live in then you may not always be able to live there. Its pretty simple. If you want guarantees own the things you use.

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#76

Post by alpha_squared »

xxSparkleSxx wrote: post #62
coolspot wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all cities must be made into overpopulated ant colonies. People love SF as it is, and if you increase density it would be not SF, it would be something else. If you like dense cities - there are plenty of them - LA, SD, NY...

It's funny, I live in SD and many say the same thing. "We don't want to increase density, we like that it feels like a small city. It's a privilege to live here, if you can't afford it too bad." Something's got to give somewhere.

> It's a privilege to live here, if you can't afford it too bad.

From my brief stint in SD, I thought that sentiment was interesting. Especially considering that the housing market is very heavily tied into the military stipend provided for active members. There is a noticeable shift on a nearly annual basis where rental prices shift across the board all together and it doesn't have much to do with influx of residents/demand, but with the stipend increasing for active members. I don't know if this stretches to home-buying as well, but it's almost as if there's this strange symbiotic relationship between the city and military (government) and everyone else is just expected to keep up.

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#77

Post by alpha_squared »

sintaxi wrote: post #75
alpha_squared wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> instead of complaining about what hasn't been handed to them While I understand this sentiment, it's certainly glossing over the opposing view of people being kicked out of the homes/neighborhoods they grew up in.

Except they are not. Anyone is free to purchase any property that someone else is willing to sell. If you don't own the property you live in then you may not always be able to live there. Its pretty simple. If you want guarantees own the things you use.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but your statements are coming off awfully privileged. From the idea that people need to "earn" things, a strangely unique American perspective that you "earn" anything at all (completely pretending that you didn't start off ahead in a lot of ways anyway). To the idea that "its pretty simple" [sic] and that the blindingly obvious solution is to just "own the things you use" - a luxury that not many people can do.

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#78

Post by eecc »

sintaxi wrote: post #75
alpha_squared wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> instead of complaining about what hasn't been handed to them While I understand this sentiment, it's certainly glossing over the opposing view of people being kicked out of the homes/neighborhoods they grew up in.

Except they are not. Anyone is free to purchase any property that someone else is willing to sell. If you don't own the property you live in then you may not always be able to live there. Its pretty simple. If you want guarantees own the things you use.

Ah the same old: "it's your fault if you're poor" argument. What's the next one, "poor life choices"?

Re: Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes

#80

Post by ericd »

mythrwy wrote: post #15
obstinate wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The millennials we are talking about are not, for the most part, going without shelter. They are living in smaller, less nice place than they would otherwise, and/or renting. Homelessness is a qualitatively different problem than middle class millennials competing with boomers for houses.

True, but using homes as a wealth building instrument is (one of) the root problems in both the case of people not being able to own homes and homelessness. I rant because, well, its just plain nuts, but I don't have answers. I do think we need a paradigm shift in this regard though and I think it's inevitable, just a matter of how much pain it causes.

Very high property taxes with homestead exemptions (reductions when you live in the house as a primary residence) might be part of the solution.

But the biggest one is letting property developers go wild. SF and the south bay have been doing very much the opposite for a very long time.

Also, Prop 13 needs to be phased out. It's completely killing liquidity in the market, and removes any incentive for homeowners to not want rampant home value increases, which encourages them to prevent property developers from doing their thing.

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