Baby boomers are making it harder for millennials to buy homes
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A list of propositions and legislation to support (SF, Brisbane, Mountain View, the CA state legislature) can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14195301
Not saying that the housing supply isn't excessively restricted, but how much can restrictions be decreased and how much difference would it make?
An analogy is building freeways to relieve traffic congestion. What regularly happens is that additional roads or adding lanes to existing roads provides temporary respite from traffic jams. But before too long the roads are jam-packed again, the problem isn't solved, just have more cars clogging traffic.
I suspect adding more housing won't lower housing prices, just bring some more people into the area. BTW this is what's happening here in Portland OR, where a building boom has been going on for years. The area population has increased, housing prices are still out of range for many people.
Yes, it can; SF built 5,000 units last year, a record, and rents and owner move-in evictions finally declined. At the very least, building more housing can prevent further large price rises.
> BTW this is what's happening here in Portland OR, where a building boom has been going on for years. The area population has increased, housing prices are still out of range for many people.
The question is what would happen if you didn't build the housing. I contend that the people moving in would outbid everyone for the existing housing stock, which would drive rent increases even more than rents are currently going up. It may be that the new housing is just keeping things at a base level.
Flipped on its head the logic here doesn't really make sense; destroying existing housing stock would be disastrous for rents and prices, it makes sense that building more would help prevent increases.
A lot of them are now being torn down.
I'm not an authority on why, but I believe they tended to be crime and drug hot spots. I have also read of various health problems being associated with them (both physical + mental).
From the photos alone I can smell the odor of alcohol and feel the depression and suicide looming in the air.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
I think an issue is building new housing attracts an influx of population up to the point that housing is not too expensive, keeping the average price point about the same. Conversely, outflux of population would cause prices to plummet, which has happened in the past during recessions and high unemployment. In effect, housing stocks then are reduced by being removed from the market, but that's not exactly healthy for the community either.
> I contend that the people moving in would outbid everyone for the existing housing stock, which would drive rent increases even more than rents are currently going up.
That's possible, but unless people moving in are much wealthier than the people already there, the price could only rise a certain amount before no one could afford it and sales would fall off. That's similar to certain (expensive) condo prices around here, but still seems there's a ceiling effect.
Your comment inspires me to talk with some real estate folks I know, it's been a while since getting their perspective on the market.
You got this backwards: we build housing for the influx of population. People don't move to new places just to get a new house. They move for economic reasons, like they got a $150k software dev job in SF & don't want to commute 90 minutes each way, or they got evicted so the landlord could double/triple the rent.
Regardless of whether SF builds now housing stock or not, the population influx is already happening and has been happening for the last 10 years. The issue is, new, wealthier residents are pulling the market up and forcing existing, lower-income residents out to the periphery of the Bay Area.
but this should drive those who receive low income out of state, and thus lower the amount of worker available for low-income jobs, which in turn should drive up the wage?
On another note, I (as a visitor) always figured the most visible effect of the dearth of affordable housing was the ridiculously early time the city shuts down. Madrid is the city I've spent the most time in, and there SF shutdown time would be right in the middle of, or before, dinner! I just figured that the early closing time facilitates closing up, cleaning, and getting home before the transit shuts down since no one working in restaurants or nightlife could afford to live in the city. I'm sure I'm not the first one to suggest that: is that theory generally discounted/disproven?
As a counter-example, Manhattan is an atypically late night city for the US [that also has very high housing prices]. You could argue that it also has 24 hour mass transit to cheaper areas. But, in general, tons of US cities that shutdown fairly early have low housing prices.
With the same situation, but a 30 minute commute and a 24h transport system and staff happy to get home around the same time, you could set the closing time at 10:30-11pm.
> tons of US cities that shutdown fairly early have low housing prices
Ah, are they low-density? I have lived places with very fast commutes and low property prices that would shut down by 7pm, since it was deep in the country and thus there was stuff-all foot traffic once people stopped working.
I can't substantiate this, but it seems that there is a small number of US cities where it is difficult to have cars, and easy enough to use transit, that driving is prohibitive for people in these low-paying jobs. I say this having grown up in a rural area where having many cars around a home was a reliable sign of poverty, not wealth. In most US cities the amount of cheap or free parking is staggering.
It's more likely that they would move to unregulated housing or live on the streets.
> If you merely let them, they'll build until they can't cover their costs.
The problem in the building industry is that financial commitments are made years in advance, meaning even if things are in a slump, units may be built anyway because the project was on track to happen well before the slump came about. It's also occurred that units are constructed just before a slump hits and as a result the completed units sit empty, the developer goes bankrupt, etc. Overbuilding can and does happen and it can take many years, even decades for a property to finally break even.
>Overbuilding can and does happen and it can take many years, even decades for a property to finally break even.
And in that, the building industry is no different from airlines, oil refineries, auto makers, chip fabs or any other capital intensive industry. Why should we privilege the building industry over the others?
Not sure why you think historical prices matter one bit. Seattle is proof that you don't need San Francisco prices to continue building. Developers from LA and SF can and regularly do build in Seattle where prices are lower but regulation is less obtuse, and many times they end up using Californian general contractors who prefer higher utilization over higher rates with more downtime.
> The problem in the building industry is that financial commitments are made years in advance, meaning even if things are in a slump, units may be built anyway because the project was on track to happen well before the slump came about. It's also occurred that units are constructed just before a slump hits and as a result the completed units sit empty, the developer goes bankrupt, etc. Overbuilding can and does happen and it can take many years, even decades for a property to finally break even.
Overbuilding may occur, but units don't sit empty. They always end up renting out, until the rent is so low that they can't cover variable costs like maintenance. If the rents aren't high enough to cover debt servicing, they'll still rent out...the owner will go bankrupt, they'll lose the property and the lender will take a loss, but the property will be sold by the courts at a price where someone can make money off the current rents.
Despite what you may think, developers will continue developing if prices move downward. Downward price movements primarily impact landowners and lenders, not developers. If developers see downward price movements, they start bidding less on land.
I'm curious about this - do you have some data? Not that I doubt it's true, I'm simply interested in how one would quantify this kinda thing.
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattles-re...
Though admittedly Seattle is smaller than Amsterdam. I expected it to be bigger (because Amsterdam isn't all that big).
The solution IMO is a "trigger" law that will increase zoning heights in a suburb when the nearby suburbs pass similar laws. This prevents any one town from becoming gentrified if they raise their growth rate above the regional norm.
As an example, Habitat for Humanity wants to build 6 stories of below-market-rate condos in Redwood City, which complies with zoning codes, but are being opposed by a lawyer who lives on the block, because it's "out of character" with the other buildings in the neighborhood.
It's a byzantine approval process that includes City Councils who are 100% responsible for local housing decisions, and are elected and responsible only to current city residents. Zealous Planning Commission boards who consider things like shadows and wind when making decisions, EIR (environmental impact report) appeals, CEQA lawsuits, a constitutional housing amendment (Prop 13) that incentivizes existing homeowners to oppose new development, and more...
(It help if more areas were upzoned, but it's not the reason by any stretch)
On the other hand, you don't want to end up with this[1], so considering things like shadows and/or view obstruction has some merits.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Coking#/media/File:View_o...
I haven't checked housing costs recently, but anecdotal data (from people looking for apartments, etc.) is that prices are still through the roof (so to speak). It could be prices will decline later this year or into next year, but pretty soon the supply of new housing will cease to increase so rapidly.
It remains to be seen what happens to housing costs. I could be all wrong, but I'll predict there won't be a significant decrease despite the rapid pace of development.
I had a friend a few years ago who -- unemployed -- drove across the country to Portland, took a job fixing inventory at a music store, and got a room within walking distance of the train. Try pulling that off in the Bay Area!
Isn't that a good thing, indicating greater economic activity?
The argument is, if the traffic is just going to expand to fill the new roads we build, then why not build more densely instead and help people have shorter commutes. Also some arguments around vicious cycles of building more roads, leading to more traffic, leading to demand for more, bigger roads, etc, vs. supporting biking/walking/public transit
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/08/lai...
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-nimby-challen...
I've never seen proof of this, do you have any studies?
I know it's blah blahs law which I can't remember but outside of academia I never see a real world case.
If you just mean they fill again from growth well that makes sense. Without building them they would be even worse.
I've never see a cited case where improving infrastructure makes everyone worse off.
I find the examples on wiki a little sketchy and some are flat out anecdotal.
I do agree it will increase the total traffic as you improve the system but the concept it can ever make it worse or the same in the entire system doesn't make sense.
Peoples need to travel by car is not totally fluid. Jobs stay the same and many people catch public transport for reasons other than convenience.
It's sort of another version of the "work expands to fill the time allotted to it" maxim.
And if it's not commuting we're talking about, some people will just choose not to drive into a city for dinner, etc. because it's too much of a hassle.
OTOH, many people here are not US citizens, so they cannot really do much about any of this.
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."
> LA
what
> SD
wut
Until jobs start spreading out & not get concentrated in small geographic areas, we are doomed to support the high-density metropolis or urban-sprawl-commute-hell.
Something's got to give somewhere.
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.
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.
The problem from my perspective is that land taxes aren't sufficiently high. Land should not be an easy, safe long term investment. Land should be something you gain title to in order to put to a highly productive use, i.e. live in. A lot of property in growing cities is owned by foreign investors who rarely (if ever) occupy it. If land was no longer a good investment, this would instantly liberate a lot of housing to be used by people who need it.
I wish my account would let me downvote this
the modern day of today doesn't mean that changes. not until there's unlimited frer resources.
But, one thing we have to be careful of: If you place constraints on builders: such as requiring affordable housing, it reduces the amount of supply thus making the problem worse for everyone.
What we really need, is more supply. Lots of deregulation to encourage as much building as we can possibly get
Wealth concentrates, virtually without exception.
...then there is reverse mortgage - pay off the mortgage for decades, and then return the property to another financial institution in exchange for better pension.
I don't know what it will look like. Maybe being bussed to work every day from the retirement home. But for now, our bodies are most likely going to need them.
First things first, you have actual nursing homes. Folks generally aren't living there by choice: They are there because they need a good amount of medical care. Some would be better off with assisted living (which is too expensive for most folks) or a nurse visiting a home a few times a day (which isn't nearly as common in the US).
Those last options will still exist for folks that have money: I think the home nurse will become more common if the US winds up going toward single-payer healthcare. Again, though, these are in place for folk's medical needs. Our generation might not be able to retire for leisure, but we'll still get sick.
The very last sort of retirement community is the non-medical sort. Many of these are simply apartments that cater towards older folks, though a few likely have a kitchen and/or activity areas. In indiana, these generally offered quiet spaces (no children) and discounted apartments if you met the age requirements. I truly don't see these sorts of things going out of style, even if folks are working instead of being in retirement.
The difference is 1%, though. Millions of people isn't a small amount, but considering how the country had to adapt before to growing and shrinking classes of population before it isn't going to be catastrophic, and like I said, it is likely the current 40-50 year olds will live longer and fill out the healthcare market for current boomers.
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 disparity by increasing costs.
People complain about how expensive these homes are, but in reality they are the cheap ones! The low dollar value homes out in the middle of nowhere are truly the expensive ones. Like you mention, the profitability in a high cost city outpaces the profitability elsewhere, even after you consider that your costs are lower. If the lower paying job, but also the lower expenditures, provided a higher income there would be absolutely no hesitation to take a 'mcjob'.
The question is: At what point does the 'mcjob', where housing is low cost, actually provide – after accounting for costs – a higher income and become the more desirable type of work? That is when housing in the high-priced cities will stabilize, as there is no longer the financial advantage to live there. Until then, expect price to continue upward.
1. Community A provides revenues of $30,000 per year, and expenses of $20,000 per year, with an income of $10,000 per year.
2. Community B provides revenues of $100,000 per year, and expenses of $50,000 per year, with an income of $50,000 per year.
Naturally Community B is going to be the more appealing option. But if housing costs (among others, but housing is the topic at hand) keep increasing in Community B, at some point you might find your expenses at $90,000 per year, leaving an income of $10,000 per year. Exactly the same as in Community A. At this point there is no income advantage in either location.
Assuming you live in Community B, until your income is reduced to that of Community A it is worthwhile for you to spend more and more of your revenues on housing to keep a good thing going. Even if your expenses rise to $80,000/year in order to stay in Community B, it is still a good deal. Your income is still double that of Community A.
But the market always seeks equilibrium. While corrections take time, eventually your Community B income will have to fall to the same level as Community A to eliminate the income advantage. As we discussed earlier, as long as one place has an advantage, people will move there and compete for resources (i.e. drive up costs) in the process until the advantage no longer exists.
And this is why certain markets are seeing incredible housing price growth. The market is correcting such that your your six figure developer salary in San Francisco provides the same income as working at McDonalds in Detroit.
Eh... when the housing market corrected in 2008, it could have settled at a lower baseline but it was politically urgent to make sure that baby boomers could still on their houses as profitable investments.
I think they kind of can be largely blamed, but probably not for the reasons most people would think of.
Strict zoning laws is not an issue, shit zoning laws is, especially exclusive ones (though I have no idea what zoning laws the bay uses). Zoning laws are just a way to define what can be mixed in areas, the US have notoriously garbage ones (often exclusive, overly complex and hyperlocal) but it doesn't have to be that way: http://urbankchoze.blogspot.be/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html
That's a pretty broad brush. The world really doesn't revolve around a few coastal US cities.
No shit. This article is the 1% dodging pitchforks.
I don't understand this. What's the advantage of holding off when you have multiple people willing to bid on your house, including above asking?
Most people still have to live somewhere. If a market is so hot that every single property is in a hyper-competitive bidding war, and a person in that market sells their house, how are they going to find a new place to live in there?
This is where you get people taking out second mortgages. It be a great idea today but horrible 5-10 years out. Once valuations correct many people will be under water and looking at defaults.
Real estate is not where you want overvaluations and (huge) inefficiencies.
That being said, there are basic human needs that should be met by any civilization of note. And if a civilization doesn't then it is failing. These needs include the the opportunity to obtain food and water (or food and water itself), basic physical security (for the most part), and in respect to the topic, a place to lay ones head.
Home speculation never should have been allowed to grow to the monster it has become. Ever. Not just because it's morally wrong, but because it is destabilizing. As we found out before and will again.
When you have people sitting on three vacant homes in hopes they will appreciate while others are shitting in the streets and sleeping on sidewalks it's absolute lunacy. We all are entitled by birthright to a little piece of earth. It's our heritage. The current situation is just objectively nuts and will be corrected. Sure as gravity or the sun rising in the morning.
Now, I'm not suggesting to take everything from the rich and give to the poor. I know that doesn't really work sustainability. I also know everyone in the world can't live in the most desirable places. So I'm not making any concrete suggestions at all because I don't have the answers. But what we have going on now is both horrible and crazy.
I do agree that speculation has driven to some crazy things in the US housing market. Though I'm not against speculation in any market per se, when we see what banks, businesses, and otherwise shady actors were/are doing to manipulate things in their favor when we're talking about something as important as housing, it gets quite frustrating.
I say this as a guy who had absolutely no issues with purchasing my own home a year ago in a hot market (Portland, OR), moving from another hot market (Seattle). I've got no sour grapes, I got the house I wanted and never had to worry about where I was going to live with my family if the house I was renting would be sold to someone else and the rent skyrocketed. But I have seen first hand the real nightmare that the rapid turnover of properties does to the people that ACTUALLY live in them when the owners treat the property as a line item rather than someone's house.
It's a double edged sword: tighten financing rules and regulation and you make it hard for people to 'move up'. Make them overly loose and you get 2008 all over again. Then again, maybe if it was harder to get jumbo mortgages it would apply a pressure against unfettered growth of housing prices, reducing the expected outcomes from speculation. Or it'll just create some other unintended consequence...
Side note: Having your 9 month pregnant wife watch The Big Short while going through the mortgage process and being one of 11-15 offers on the first few houses you looked at is a really stupid idea. So. Many. Tears.
I'm not saying in in the US, nor concretely, but philosophically I think when a person is born they inherit the right to inhabit a piece of earth. You shouldn't arrive in the earth and not be able to sleep on piece of it without paying someone. I guess I feel that land in general belongs to the collective. And philosophically I'd extend that beyond national boundaries. Just because someone before us with a gun and a flag, or else a deed and a banknote did something doesn't mean they increased real estate. It was here before, it will be here after. So that's just theoretical but it seems axiomatic to me.
I own a home as well. I could sell it now and make money on it. Great. But then where would I poop?
I guess point is, it seems to me to be both unjust and destructive to have the essential needs of a place to sleep and raise a family be subject to wild market forces. Plus I think it discourages actual productive economic activity. People have a hard time relocating to where there is need partially because of speculation. So it inhibits the flow of human capital.
I don't disagree at all with your practical analysis of the situation. Admittedly I have no idea how to solve the problem, and it is a hard one, particularly now that so much "wealth" is represented. I just don't think it should have been allowed to get to this point, and I think we need to approach the problem with an entirely different framework. And I'd say part of that is realizing the ability to have a place to live and raise a family is an essential human right and it is sacred and it is many many times more important than the right of people to build or preserve wealth through paper ownership of real estate.
Leave wealth building for bitcoin and Apple stock and companies that make mascara. Or hard work and savings. Not wheat and water and living quarters.
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 that no one should get rich off of bread because it's A Basic Necessity, you're going to find that the bread biz is going to stagnate while endless innovation happens in the Twinkie and tortilla chip biz. Some martyrs who are willing to sacrifice their career prospects to work in bread will stick around and make process, but the legions of people who are just looking for a non-shitty job are going to stay far away.
If you declare that nobody should get rich off there being a shortage of bread because it's a basic necessity, you're not going to stop somebody getting rich from making artisanally crafted locally sourced handcrafted sourdough (or whatever).
This is simply false.
We've declared water A Basic Necessity, such that clean water is piped into everyone's home, by the government, at effectively zero profit.
And yet, there's still over 100 bottled water types and brands, carried at almost every retailer nationwide. There's 6 dozen flavoured water types, there's an entire industry of water pitchers, water purifiers, carbonated water drinks, and much more. Clean Water is now a crazy innovative industry in large part because we made it a covered fundamental human need.
You absolutely can declare housing A Basic Necessity, and it wouldn't hurt any meaningful industries, it wouldn't prevent any innovation, and it would largely improve the finances of most citizens, strengthening the economy at large.
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.
The thing is, supply and demand for all of them is quite unpredictable. Removing market forces leads to imbalances, improper resources allocation, and in the end deficit and even more suffering. So centralized system is clerly not an answer.
Not in relative terms.
Homelessness is a qualitatively different problem than middle class millennials competing with boomers for houses.
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.
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.
The housing market here is insane. We recently bought a house and sold our old one (we haven't moved yet, but remodeling on our new house will start in a couple of days). We sold our house for EUR 100k over what we paid for it in 2008 (just before the mortgage crisis), and 60k over what our neighbours got for their nearly identical house less than a year ago. The seller of our new house got more than 3 times what he paid for it in 1996.
If this isn't another housing bubble, I don't know what it.
This is sort of the problem -- the housing market is insane literally everywhere.
You mention that houses in Amsterdam sell in 2 weeks. Houses in bumblefuck Michigan are selling the same day. It's common here for sellers to do no showings at all, simply throw an open house on Sunday and say "best offer by 9am Monday wins". These houses all have multiple offers, $20k+ over asking prices. We're not London, or NYC, or SF, or Boston, or Paris, or Amsterdam. Bumblefuck Michigan can't even keep their housing market sane.
Pick any city with any half-functional economy. Yes any city. The housing market is insane there. Big city? small city? Popular city? Unknown city? It doesn't matter -- the housing market is insane there too.
Literally everywhere the housing market is broken. Literally everywhere.
The average age of the boomers is an spry 67 with a life expectancy of ~85.
I mean: >Millennials also make up 42% of all homebuyers overall, first-time or not. And while baby boomers make up a much smaller portion of homebuyers, the two generations may end up competing for the same type of home, despite being in completely different phases of their lives.
WHO (which "group" they belong to) are the remaining 58% buyers? HOW MUCH is "a much smaller portion"? Let's say that the much smaller portion is 25%.
The amount of houses where there is (supposedly) competition between the two groups is then - at the most - 25%.
And since: >"Millennials buy a 1,800-square-foot home on average, and a baby boomer buys a 1,950-square-foot home. The other generations are away from those."
Any home smaller than 1,750-square-foot and any home bigger than 2,000-square-foot should then not be something these two groups compete for.
How many of these "suitabe size" homes are on the market? Do they represent 25% (or less than 25%) of the total amount of homes? So, what happens to the other 75% (or more)?
Still, the article does note that baby boomers are downsizing, whereas millennials are foregoing starter homes. So one could argue that baby boomers are outbidding millennials. But I don't see that point explicitly made.
But: apartments also aren't available! They're just as appealing to the downsizing boomer.
> just build a house for themselves
Where will they work? The places which have cheap land and labor generally are more removed from the economic hotspots. Or do you propose that they should take their job with them?
this is precisely the entitlement I was hinting at - I was raised in an apartment - lots of my friends have been raised in apartments - I do live in an appartment (*1984) and we have many neighboors with children in our apartment building.
It is absolutely possible and also very humane indeed also to raise children in an apartment.
> But: apartments also aren't available! They're just as appealing to the downsizing boomer.
And this is just expressing the sad state of the US. The reason why there aren't enough apartments is not b/c of the babyboomers (also not b/c of migrants and Mexicans) - it's b/c your government fails to build them (I'm from Germany). Now you are stuck with a market in favor of people renting out own flats.
> Where will they work?
Not build at all - just live in an apartment or not move to super-hot-spot areas like LA or NY. If you can afford to build a house you can afford a car and you have to commute.
The thing is, apartments in the US usually have timber floors (since wood is so available and cheap), and little insulation (apartments are usually on the coasts, where the climate is mild).
> It is absolutely possible and also very humane indeed also to raise children in an apartment.
I feel that the social fabric between Europeans is stronger than in the US. Sure, kids will be fine, but property owners in the US are an entitled bunch and may feel like their rights are being violated by the pitter-patter/clonk-bonk of active children. A foot of concrete absorbs a lot more noise than an inch of timber.
> it's b/c your government fails to build them
Most development in the US is done by private companies; very little housing stock is built by government agencies. The biggest constraint is building permits, which is controlled by local government like city councils, which local residents are elected to, who generally are… baby boomers.
> If you can afford to build a house you can afford a car and you have to commute.
I don't understand this comment. If I live in Nebraska/Detroit (where is is extremely easy to afford a house & jobs are scarce), do I commute to the Bay Area? That's days of driving, or getting a pilot's license.
It's the same in Australia: if I can afford to build a house in Bourke, do I commute to my job in Sydney every day? Even Centrelink says that the maximum reasonable commute is 90min each way, which (at worst) would mean getting a place in the Blue Mountains/Wollongong/Gosford.
the problem is not too many baby boomers - the problem is unafordable and unavailable space to live.
also in Germany this is a topic - resurging in regular intervals. the nationalistic perspective is "migrants take our flats" - when in fact its the government failing to either provide flats funded by the state or influencing the market to prevent excessive rents and encourage building of cheap apartments.
it's effectively a more or less intended divide and conquer strategy - have the people fight each other then they won't fight for changes of the status quo.
Of course the competition in the market has nothing to do with the trend the author cites, that Millennials have upset the natural order by skipping the starter home. Nope, just blame the boomers.
For the record, I'm GenX, and like many from my generation, I hope to be a homeowner some day.
"Millennials, on the other hand, tend to overestimate what they can afford in terms of housing."
The reality in the Bay Area is hyper gentrification driven by the currently inflating Silicon Valley Bubble 3.0 (or is it 4.0 now) has deleted low end from the market altogether.