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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

#381

> 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 in places like Tampa, Omaha, Cincinnati, and Phoenix the cost of housing (per square foot) has barely gone up at all. Maybe if you stop looking at like 2018. But my on-the-ground analysis living on one of these cities is cost of housing has fucking exploooded. I built a house just two years ago, which I thought was incredibly expensive at 2 times the median home price in the area. I had it in the back of my hea…

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 housing markets. Since 2014, median listing prices have gone up 57%.[1] Adjusted for inflation[2], that's 49% real price growth.

But over the same period, average mortgage rates have fallen from 4.49% to 2.95%[3]. Meaning for the same house cost, the monthly payment on a 30-year fixed mortgage has fallen by 18%. In addition national median incomes have gone up over the period by 10.5%[4]. (And almost certainly more in Tampa specifically.)

Therefore housing affordability has only declined by about 14% for the median household in Tampa. All during an extremely hot housing market. Again, that's still indicative of some recent bad NIMBY policies. If housing supply was perfectly elastic, things like lower mortgage rates and higher wages would benefit consumers instead of inflating property prices.

But there's no indication that housing has become drastically more expensive in "flyover country". This conclusion can be spot checked by comparing national consumer expenditure surveys over time. The percent of after-tax income spent on shelter has actually slightly declined from 17.8% to 17.0% during the 2013-2019 period.[5]

[1] https://www.zillow.com/tampa-fl/home-values/ [2] https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm [3] http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/pmms30.html [4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N [5] https://www.bls.gov/cex/2019/standard/multiyr.pdf

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

#382

Those parents often shout about "greedy developers" (or, if pressed, "parking and neighbourhood character") when, heaven forfend, someone tries to build new homes near them. Treating homes an investment was one of the worst mistakes of the 20th century.

forfend?

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

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have noticed that most millenials seem to have completely forgotten the concept of "starter home" and assume that as soon as you turn 25 you should be entitled to a 4 bedroom house with a pool, huge yard, wonderful neighborhood, three-car garage, etc I don't know where you live but I almost find this insulting. I'm from Amsterdam my self and friends of my are being forced out the city because of the high rent pri…

Housing in the Netherlands is really awful, in the '90 the boomers have build smaller apartments for their parents to move in and actually profit in an illicit way 2x of their real estate gains of sometimes 6x. No boomer is living smaller to make room for the next generation. I think the best way to combat current shortage in housing is putting up a limit on m2 that an individual could claim. 300m2 for a single perso…

Not sustainable for whom? If their pension covers the taxes and they can support themselves so they are not a burden on social services or something else what do you care?

No country for old men indeed.

BTW, I'm mentioning social services because here we do have some complain how hard life is with their meagre pension... all the while living in a 3 room flat in the middle of the city. I find those people unreasonable and I believe if they would sell / rent that property and downsize they would have a much better quality of living.

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

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is having a handful of new cases? No, that isn’t true. Spain is reporting more than 10,000 new cases a day.

I did not specifically mention Spain, I was thinking of the other things on your list that are actually countries–as far as I am aware, cases in Australia are still going down, in China they are a negligible number, in New Zealand they had a couple dozen that they immediately locked down over and will likely stop the spread of. But since you brought it up, let's look at Spain–why does it have so many new cases every…

Yes, that is exactly my point.

> It doesn't seem possible to permanently stop outbreaks without having either reached 20-25% of the population infected, or locking down until a cure or vaccine is discovered.

You can't magically make yourself immune to future outbreaks by locking down - the only way to avoid outbreaks in the absence of widespread immunity is to maintain the lockdown indefinitely, until a cure or vaccine is discovered and widely distributed.

So, it's not true that we could have eliminated the virus and been happily back to normal in the US if we had just locked down harder/better/longer. We would either still be locked down with no end in sight, or have opened back up and now be experiencing another outbreak.

Not sure about China, but FWIW Australia and NZ are still quite locked down.

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

#385
post #380

> 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…

I'm not sure what you're arguing here. The simple fact is the amount people pay for housing is up since the 1990s. You can find this data on the BLS web site: https://www.bls.gov/cex/csxmulti.htm Here is the data adjusted for constant 2020 dollars: 1992 $9,799.06 1993 $9,543.99 1994 $9,760.55 1995 $9,924.05 1996 $9,825.29 1997 $10,106.90 1998 $10,473.38 1999 $10,712.59 2000 $10,506.40 2001 $11,055.55 2002 $11,121.33…

I think the parent is arguing that those numbers are (only slowly) increasing because:

1) They are skewed by a few 'elite' metro areas (which are best avoided by those without very high-paying jobs).

2) The houses are nicer and have more 'features', which cost money.

And that if you remove the high COL areas, and control for the amenities, you will find costs are flat or decreasing.

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

#386

> 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 housing is not more expensive in the majority American metros My parents bought their NYC home in 1976 for $76,000. Adjusted for inflation brings that to around $350,000 in 2020 dollars. The house is currently valued at $800,000.

Now repeat the calculation for a similar home in Toledo or Detroit.

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

#387

> 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…

>One is because homes today are substantially larger and have more amenities than they did in previous generations. I have noticed that most of my fellow millennials seem to have completely forgotten the concept of "starter home" and assume that as soon as you turn 25 you should be entitled to a 4 bedroom house with a pool, huge yard, wonderful neighborhood, three-car garage, etc. Among my friends that have bought ho…

> Among my friends that have bought houses, many of them have gone into significant debt just to buy a 3-4 bedroom house, even though they have no kids and only use one of the bedrooms, because they think that at some point in their life they will put them to use.

I was one of these people who was conservative and bought a small cheap apt starter home instead of a 3-4 bedroom house. 10 years later I can't afford a 3-4 bedroom house because they've gone up in value so much so I'm still in my apt and its crowded.

Looking back and what would have been optimal I should have bought a huge house as soon as possible, probably a couple of them. That way I could retire by now.

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

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One is because homes today are substantially larger and have more amenities than they did in previous generations. I have noticed that most of my fellow millennials seem to have completely forgotten the concept of "starter home" and assume that as soon as you turn 25 you should be entitled to a 4 bedroom house with a pool, huge yard, wonderful neighborhood, three-car garage, etc. Among my friends that have bought ho…

> I have noticed that most millenials seem to have completely forgotten the concept of "starter home" and assume that as soon as you turn 25 you should be entitled to a 4 bedroom house with a pool, huge yard, wonderful neighborhood, three-car garage, etc I don't know where you live but I almost find this insulting. I'm from Amsterdam my self and friends of my are being forced out the city because of the high rent pri…

As I mentioned in my comment, there clearly are actual real estate issues in some metros, and Amsterdam may be one of them. But your situation is often conflated with the issue I am describing in my comment.

I live in DFW, and there is an abundance of middle income places to rent and even buy. The problem, as described in my previous comment, is that those middle income places are in older buildings, or have older appliances, or aren't within walking distance to the hip nightclub area, or have a 10 minute longer commute, and thus my fellow millennials seem to deem them unacceptable places to live. These are the same people who have complained to me that their high-rise condo downtown across the street from the nicest steakhouse in the city is driving them into debt, or have complained that they're depressed that they will never be able to afford a home while linking me a Zillow page of a $1.5m newly renovated house in the premiere neighborhood in Dallas.

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

#389
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We might be talking about different budget levels, but to normal people (people who don't have the word 'software' in their job title), 200k in retirement is a lot. Actually the median 401k balance at retirement is only around 60k, so that alone would quadruple their retirement savings.

>> Actually the median 401k balance at retirement is only around 60k, so that alone would quadruple their retirement savings. You are comparing apples and oranges. You are comparing today's values at retirement to future values at retirement. It is almost certain that $200k 40yrs from now will not be worth $200k in today's dollars. Inflation accrued over 40yrs -- however low and however faked -- is absolutely going t…

I got the $200k figure assuming a 6% rate of return, which is basically the inflation-adjusted rate of return for the S&P 500. both the $200k and $60k are 2020 dollars.

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

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But in places like Tampa, Omaha, Cincinnati, and Phoenix the cost of housing (per square foot) has barely gone up at all. Maybe if you stop looking at like 2018. But my on-the-ground analysis living on one of these cities is cost of housing has fucking exploooded. I built a house just two years ago, which I thought was incredibly expensive at 2 times the median home price in the area. I had it in the back of my hea…

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…

Economic opportunity is a big part of deciding where to live. Just like people migrate to America because there is a higher probability of securing security and economic advancement for their descendants, people do the same within the US.

In decades past, this might not have been so evident because the entire US was growing and opportunities were available everywhere, but as the disparity of economic growth between regions of the US diverges, it makes sense for people to value real estate in those regions more. And if you think the disparity is going to grow in the future, then you might be willing to risk even more to buy in.

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