New US homeownership measure puts people first • Hacker News Board

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#61

Post by sarchertech » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #45

GodelNumbering wrote: post #33

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…

Singapore is surveyed as either the happiest or second-happiest country in Asia (IIRC), with at one point a >95% homeownership rate due to government policy (although I believe that's now closer to 90%, in part due to foreign immigration?). It seems self-evident that having a home is somewhere on the order of 1000000x more important than being able to buy lots of cheap junk that barely matters.

A lot of that cheap junk is clothing and food, which now both make up a much lower percentage of total income than they did 100 years ago.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#62

Post by alistairSH » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:22 PM UTC

idbnstra wrote: post #58

xyzelement wrote: post #40

Perhaps this measure is useful to something but I find it directionally annoying as I don't think "higher is better" as it would be with the more traditional metric. Here's an example from the page - a couple and the wife's parents - a couple and their college grad son In this example the two couples (4 people) are counted as home owners and the 3 others (wife's parents, the son) as non owners - so the ownership rate…

i think it would be best just to do a survey asking what housing situation they are in and if that's what they want. do you really think that every single renter wants to be a renter?

Of course not, but many do - it generally doesn't make sense to buy if you won't stay for a longer period of time (used to be ~7 years, not sure if that's shifted) due to closing costs, interest on loans, etc.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#63

Post by swiftcoder » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

smaudet wrote: post #49

GodelNumbering wrote: post #33

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…

What crack was the YTber on? Income has only raised ~15% (on average), while inflation has been at 30%... meanwhile in the past century, money has lost 96% of its value... Not sure how that translates at all into "stuff" being more affordable...

> Not sure how that translates at all into "stuff" being more affordable...

I'm pretty sure "stuff" in this context is mostly manufactured goods, and those have fallen in absolute price. Examples abound in the tech sector: even adjusted for inflation, a MacBook Neo is the cheapest Mac ever released, and so on...

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#64

Post by rayiner » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

smallmancontrov wrote: post #50

GodelNumbering wrote: post #33

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…

Health care, housing, and education are the big three drivers of mandatory expenses in most peoples' lives. It's undeniably a little cool that luxuries got cheap, but it's severely un-cool that necessities got expensive. I'm glad to see a focus on pushing statistics to do a better job of reflecting that, but yeah, this is all downstream of structural incentives so fixes are only going to happen through legislative ch…

> Health care, housing, and education are the big three drivers of mandatory expenses in most peoples' lives.

BLS says housing, transportation, and food are the top 3. Insurance/pensions is #4, but that also includes car and homeowners insurance and retirement contributions.

Over the past 50 years, both transportation and food got cheaper. Moreover, clothing actually used to be one of the top categories, but that’s fallen off completely.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#65

Post by Zigurd » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:24 PM UTC

GodelNumbering wrote: post #33

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…

Making the concept a little more abstract can help: if you have personal access to capital because you've got collateral, that has numerous beneficial effects, as some of the other commenters here have pointed out. This effect might be less strong in the US because we have relatively well run capital markets that you can invest in. This would be a book length post to dive into all of the details of it but the net effect is plain to see. It's one of those things that looks a little irrational but in practical terms it's a proven benefit.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#66

Post by ch4s3 » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:25 PM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #52

GodelNumbering wrote: post #33

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…

Owning a home creates a stable, personal nexus with a set of vital institutions: Family, community, local economy, government, … As a driver and measure of well-being, it’s probably at least 10,000 years old, since agriculture made migratory hunter-gatherer societies obsolete.

> 10,000 years old, since agriculture made migratory hunter-gatherer societies obsolete.

This isn't really how the transition to agriculture worked. Historically agricultural elites captured lands with conscripted armies and forced people to farm. There are plenty of examples where central authority collapsed and the archeological evidence shows us that people largely stopped farming.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#67

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #57

smallmancontrov wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health care, housing, and education are the big three drivers of mandatory expenses in most peoples' lives. It's undeniably a little cool that luxuries got cheap, but it's severely un-cool that necessities got expensive. I'm glad to see a focus on pushing statistics to do a better job of reflecting that, but yeah, this is all downstream of structural incentives so fixes are only going to happen through legislative ch…

>this is all downstream of structural incentives You are mostly right and the structural incentives are more related at root to unsustainable national debt than any legislative choice (unless that's what you were referring to)

Nothing to do with poisoning the non-AI parts of the economy to drive investment in AI? Its not like this bubble was gonna blow itself.

It's clear that there's plenty of money to go around. It's just that none of it is being spent on things that improve people's lives, mostly due to corruption.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#68

Post by throw0101d » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

GodelNumbering wrote: post #33

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…

> It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours […]

Do a search for "the housing theory of everything".

It has been an idea growing in popularity over the last few years, especially in the Anglo-sphere where housing/shelter costs seem to be worse than other places. (One hypothesis I've seen for this is because of Common law, which can give NIMBYs more power to challenge (new) things.)

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#69

Post by Zigurd » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

eagerpace wrote: post #56

GodelNumbering wrote: post #33

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…

I love to see metrics that evolve over time. Land is a finite resources, as such it inevitably trends up as the best and easiest locations are consumed. So I think the correlation here has to be understood from that baseline.

Land as a finite resource only affects first tier real estate market markets. You can see this vividly in China where there's a housing glut on aggregate, but not in first tier cities.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#70

Post by ryukoposting » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

redwood wrote: post #34

Everything in the study makes perfect sense. However one thing that's not discussed is change in culture and expectations. For example the United States is probably the only country where there's a general expectation that grandparents parents and adult children all live in separate homes... and most other countries multi-generation living is the norm. And perhaps some of those norms are starting to float into the Un…

I think you have some valid criticisms, but we have to take baby steps here.

As you mentioned, multi-generation homes are not the norm in the US. If there is a change in that norm, it's worth investigating why that's happening, before we conclude that we need to adjust metrics around it.

Purely anecdotal, but every multi-generation home in my (American) family is the result of disability or student loan debt - multiple generations live together, but that doesn't mean they want to.

Also remember that this new metric is meant to be more informative on wealth, generally. Those other generations living in the home don't typically share in the wealth the home confers, not until someone dies at least.