For most Americans, owning a home is now a distant dream | Hacker News Reader

For most Americans, owning a home is now a distant dream

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31 pointsarcanus15 comments

I feel terrible for the middle class. Even as me being higher income tech individual (six figures) with a spouse who is a teacher in the Midwest, it would be hard for us to buy a comparable or larger house today in the same area if we hadn’t purchased it in 2012.

If you are an investor, an argument can be made that we are in a period of true negative interest rates on homes see: https://www.financialsamurai.com/negative-real-mortgage-rate... ). This further incentives real estate prices to climb.

At least you have a house. I think less people should buy their own house and stay with family unless they can buy cash. Mortgage/debt culture is partly to blame. I think all western countries should ban buying a home for investment reasons. Not unless they have 0 homeless rate for people that don't have mental illness keeping them homeless.

Why not take the last step and go full on commie? The countries should ban home ownership unless there is 0 homeless people, same food production, cars, iPhones, healthcare and more, all taken care by your favorite glorious monopoly.

No, home ownership is fine just not for investment. I agre with the other stuff, hoarding things can get illegal very fast already. Remember when people were hoarding toilet paper and the fbi was raiding them? That's exactly what I am saying. Scalping is already illegal, just not enforced for housing.

Nice flame-bait with the "commie" stuff though

Can the glorious monopoly invest in homes or they get an exception?

What monopoly? Obviously no exceptions. Homes are to live in. If you want to invest buy stocks or derivatives that don't tie up precious land and property while you wait to cash in. What part of this is outlandish or unreasonable?

Government is the glorious monopoly, no other monopoly is glorious. What if government wants to invest in housing? Ban it too? How about if they label it as low cost?

Yes ban it. Government shouldn't be investing in anything, that's a conflict of interest because then they will pass laws or enforce laws in a way that benefits their investment.

The headline seems inflammatory - "most Americans" (65%) live in a home that is owned by someone in their household.[0] The text of the article seems similarly questionable: "That confluence of trends has taken the dream of homeownership well beyond the means of middle-class Americans." Many middle class americans own homes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home-ownership_in_the_United_S...

Maybe this is just the natural consequence of societal development. Throughout human history, people tend to congregate in urban areas which in turn increases land value. This will only accelerate in the coming decades. It's a bit naive to expect wages and *house* prices to move in tandem in perpetuity. Owning a house isn't a right, but I think owning an affordable home (e.g. apartment) should be.

This makes me laugh when the median sales price for homes in the US are $408,100 [1] in Q4'21 and in Canada it's $720,850 [2].

And before you try and convert currencies, Canadians are paid in Canadian dollars and typically have lower wages (dollar for dollar) than Americans.

[1]https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS [2]https://financialpost.com/real-estate/average-home-price-in-...

so because its worse somewhere else, its not an issue?

> so … ?

This is almost always indicative of a negative/aggressive response that isn’t at all fair to the person you’re replying to.

Why would they agree with that question? Why do you assume a simple point of comparison for context (reasonable) is instead a complete dismissal of the question (not reasonable).

Perhaps because op started with “this makes me laugh” and set the tone of the conversation to that level?

i decided to learn to build my own house.

its going well.

bonus points: i can expand my house as i need to, ie start a family, have more children etc.

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