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The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

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Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#651

Post by pnutjam »

compiler-guy wrote: post #616
watwut wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people can not buy theoretical smaller cheaper house with no AC if that one is not on sale.

But given the choice between smaller and cheaper houses and larger and more expensive ones, they almost always choose the larger, more expensive ones. The university in town is over a hundred years old, and many of the dorms are that old too. Most have no air conditioning, and have insufficient power for a resident to add a window air conditioner without special approval. And the parents and students describe them as…

50 years ago it was cooler and everyone grew up without AC, they were used to it. That's not the case today. It's hotter and people grow up with AC and are not accustomed to living without it. The bar has moved.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#652

Post by tstewart161 »

ng12 wrote: post #419
ballenf wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok so the change from a decade or two ago is that young people want to live in places they can't afford. In the past they were evidently more content to live in places they could afford. Doesn't really feel like cost of housing is what's changed.

I grew up in a small rust belt city. 40 years ago there were reasons to live there: factories with union jobs and an entire local economy built upon them (financial services, a hospital, bustling main street, etc). All that's gone now. It's not that I wouldn't be content like my parents were, it's that it's fundamentally not the same city it was back then.

It’s not like the dichotomy is so stark. Like the parent comment said: Raleigh is cheap but still bustling with plenty to do, Richmond, Baltimore, Atlanta, and so on are bustling but not stupid expensive. It’s not just “ghosts town” vs “expensive modern city”

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#653

Post by watwut »

compiler-guy wrote: post #616
watwut wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people can not buy theoretical smaller cheaper house with no AC if that one is not on sale.

But given the choice between smaller and cheaper houses and larger and more expensive ones, they almost always choose the larger, more expensive ones. The university in town is over a hundred years old, and many of the dorms are that old too. Most have no air conditioning, and have insufficient power for a resident to add a window air conditioner without special approval. And the parents and students describe them as…

I worked in office without AC under roof in summer and it was not just less comfortable, but productivity really went down measurably. I dont know how hot it gets there, but it can be so hot they are at disadvantage against students who dont live there.

I also stayed in house with bad insulation and it affected my health. 100 years ago, my health would be affected the same way whether better house would be available or not.

Maybe they are all irrational. Or maybe those dorms are really in bad shape.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#654

Post by neilparikh »

dcolkitt wrote: post #246

> Housing is more expensive for them than prior generations I harp on this constantly. But housing is not more expensive in the majority of American metros. Adjusted for inflation the median cost per square foot of new housing is almost exactly the same as it was in 1990. (This doesn't even take into account that mortgage rates are drastically lower since then.) We get skewed on this for two reasons. One is because h…

> But unless you have the potential to become an L8 at Google (or equivalent), it makes no financial sense to choose to live in the Bay Area instead of Raleigh. It's like somebody who works as a back office bookkeeper insisting on buying custom tailored Seville Row suits for his work attire, then complaining that the costs of clothes has gotten out of hand.

Buying a custom tailored suit requires extra/better labour and materials, so it makes sense that the costs associated with it would be higher.

For this analogy to apply to housing, the cost of constructing and maintaining housing should be higher in the Bay Area too. However, almost all the increases to rent in urban areas has come from increased land values. This isn't a result of the landowner putting in "extra work" to make it better; they get to extract the added land value that the community created while putting in no extra labour or capital.

The fact that private landowners capture all this extra value the community created is not inevitable! It's entirely a result of the economic system we've chosen to stick with. There are solutions that are both more fair, and economically efficient [0].

[0] - See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#655

Post by tstewart161 »

confidantlake wrote: post #497
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And it's simply not feasible for the vast majority of people living paycheck to paycheck to just up and leave to Raleigh like you imply. There was a time where people would move countries with nothing but what they can carry at a chance of improving their life. At a time where the only way to travel was by boat for weeks and the only way to communicate to relatives was by mail. Now we balk at the idea of moving citi…

But the economic opportunities are much greater in the DC area than Richmond.

But clearly not if you can’t even afford a place to live. Richmond and plenty other cities have TONS of economic opportunities, but not as many as NYC or SF - they’re also much cheaper. Clearly there’s a balance here so the answer isn’t so obviously “there’s a housing crisis because I can’t afford to live in SF”

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#656

Post by scsilver »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #439
computerphage wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just a regional problem if it's happening in every region.

The rust belt cities don't have skyrocketing housing prices if you're willing to buy non-McMansion older stock.

And can you get the same services, community (people of similar circumstances/values as you moving there), opportunities, schools, safety that these in demand areas provide? Travelling around only reinforces my desire to buy in an in demand area. I cant just shop at panera, five guys, and walmart for the rest of my life.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#657

Post by user5994461 »

iso1631 wrote: post #50
collyw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will probably be going against the grain here, but I managed to rent a flat by myself while in university years ago with a part time job in a supermarket at weekends and applying for some hardship funds and other money available at the time. Rents have risen a lot since then, but is it really impossible for someone in work to be able to afford rent? Or are they insisting on living in a fashionable part of town? (Fo…

I started as a trainee broadcast engineer in London on £17,800 a year in 2003. This left me with £1,082 a month (back then student loan payments were far higher than now). Rent for a tiny bedsit with a shared bathroom was £520 a month, 2 mile walk from work. I could live further out, but commuting costs outweighed any savings. That's the equivalent of £828 a month now. Bills were included. You can actually pick up a…

There aren't studio or one bedroom below about £1200 a month in London, closer to £1500 toward the center.

You're talking about Kensington in London? That's the center and one of the most expensive location in the city.

Where the fuck do you see a place for £737 in there?

Either it's a flatshare (that's a bit low, must be 6+ people) or you confused 737 per month with 737 per week (that'd be £3000 a month, possible for a luxury 1 bedroom in that area the size of what people consider a 2 bedroom, typical ads that come at the top of rightmove).

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#658

Post by TuringNYC »

leetcrew wrote: post #647
TuringNYC wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> both the $200k and $60k are 2020 dollars. This is the problem. $200k in 2020 dollars wont mean much 40yrs from now. Similarly, $60k sounded like a huge figure in 1980 for retirees planning for 2020. For a proper comparison, you'd need to compare purchasing power of $60k to a retiree today vs $200k to a retiree in 2060 -- i'll bet it is about the same!!! Inflation is a huge unknown here. My parents' home in 1981 wa…

I hope this doesn't come off as condescending, but I think you are missing the distinction between real and nominal value. if I just say "$200k" without qualification, that is a nominal value. if I associate that nominal value with an instant in time (a whole year can be a narrow enough window when inflation is reasonably low), it becomes a real value. when I say you would have $200k in 2020 dollars in forty years, i…

Fair, but i'd say the 6% assumption is suspiciously high in that case. I think you might be doing something like ({mean SPY return} - CPI)

Except that CPI is a deviously misleading number. I wonder if the same approach applied in 1980 would come close to aligning with 2020 numbers (including healthcare, college, rent, energy, etc.)

Please be brutal in your response, I want to understand if my understanding of this is all wrong!

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#659

Post by pgwhalen »

scarmig wrote: post #426
pgwhalen wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are too afraid about getting sick and dying to go outside This is still a response to the pandemic, just a non-governmental one. I'm not saying such a response isn't justified, but it is not directly attributable to the disease.

If a hurricane came and destroyed a bunch of people's homes and businesses and people stopped working, it would be more reasonable to say that "the hurricane caused mass unemployment" than it would be to say "the hurricane didn't cause unemployment, it was just people's individual decisions to not work out of a pile of flooded rubble that's causing the unemployment."

This doesn't seem like a fair analogy for a number of reasons. But mostly just that COVID itself is not destroying businesses, whereas a hurricane literally is.

Re: The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents

#660

Post by tstewart161 »

Nasrudith wrote: post #633
dcolkitt wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you in principle. Since the 2008 crisis, previously developer-friendly mid-sized Sunbelt metros have adopted some NIMBY building restriction policies that would make even coastal California blush. But so far, that hasn't really created a housing affordability crisis... yet. A lot of the impact has been mitigated by falling mortgage rates and rising wages. Let's just take Tampa, as one of the hotter housi…

Really cost of housing alone doesn't tell the full story without considering the jobs/income sources in the area. I have noticed an irony that if housing in an area is really cheap you probably won't be able to afford to live there unless you are already a retiree who doesn't care about long emergency response time - because the highest paying job in the area is say a resturant manager at the local diner. Before the…

You need to keep looking then. Plenty of cities have great job opportunities while still having inexpensive and great houses
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