The Reason Young People Can’t Afford a Home | Hacker News Reader

The Reason Young People Can’t Afford a Home

fee.org

12 pointspaulpauper18 comments

Just gloss right over the fact that corporations are buying homes at scale for various reasons for the first time in history.

This is why people in economics shouldn't have anything to do with the housing market.

Human beings need to live in houses. The price is so high because demand coming from corporations is off the charts.

How is any individual or family supposed to compete with corporations and economists racing to the top of the real estate market?

That's the REAL problem. Real estate people profiteering the shit out of a market that regular people used to buy houses on to live in.

And some (see Zillow) have lost a lot of money. You are describing a secondary effect that most likely wouldn't have happened without the factors discussed in the article. When a run starts on a scarce commodity it only reinforces itself. See the Covid-T.P. chapter.

I don't fault the article for staying focused.

This is correct. The population is growing faster than new homes are being built, especially in hot economic regions that people are migrating to for the promise of a better job (CA, NYC, Seattle, Denver). It's always implied that this is a problem, but renting is fine. Home ownership is just a form of renting where you stop paying the mortgage at some point, and keep having to pay the property tax and HOA dues. Some people seem to think that passing a home down to their children is better than passing money down, but I don't see how that makes any sense.

100% agree.. Home ownership sort of sucks in some ways..

I like to go home and not worry about the plumbing, or grass, or if the rain was going to impact the solar panels.

Now when I owned my first place, I spent my weekends putting in new floors. I painted every room, and helped redo the plumbing. Months of lost weekends, and about 15k...

So when we sold I was rather happy. We got 30k over what we paid. Then the agent after 2 days work took his 17k slice off the price. And so now that 30k was down to 13. So weeks and months of work and net profit - 2k.

It used to be understood that homes were places for people to live in. They were pretty much hands-off. About 30 years ago, late-night cable-TV advertising started encouraging people to buy another home to flip or rent.

IMO that started the ball rolling; houses started to be seen as gambling chips for investors with TMM, not homes. (See:Vancouver) That led to high-leveraging credit-default-swaps, then the Great Recession. Noone went to jail. No reset. Game over for most of us.

So what?? I could not afford to buy a home until I was 40. Young people need to save before they can downpay. BTW I live in the Bay Area.

Pretty much my story too - partner & I saved for almost 10 yrs and even then neither of us could have done it individually - that was 25+ yrs ago. I see more similarity with the past than I do differences.

47 here

My grandparents paid 20% interest.

My Parents were also in 50's.

Wasn't too impressed as the article starts as it is reiterating the obvious. But I thought the end was quite good at illustrating the tug-of-war between the various issues.

One thing I'd bring up is that conclusion of "most people" not wanting to make any sacrifices should be heavily weighted towards existing homeowners. These are the folks that vote at the highest percentage as well.

One reason there might be high demand is that people are not getting married as much or as early as they used to. So two people need housing rather than one.

Possibly, combined with smaller apartment construction being effectively outlawed.

Or could it be the lack of housing pushing people to focus more on their career?

This is some real libertarian propaganda, blaming the environmentalists and building codes for limiting the housing supply.

I did find the choice of folks to quote interesting. But didn't read anything known to be false. So wouldn't agree this is an accurate take. This snippet might be useful to read again:

But “facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored,” Aldous Huxley reminds us. “You can avoid reality,” Ayn Rand says, “but you can’t avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”

Good propaganda relies on emphasis, not falsehoods. It's not about telling lies, it's about telling only the truths that back up your point of view.

Interesting point.

Ok, well the article listed a much larger number of "truths." Looks like this poster got bent out of shape because the author mentioned two of suyos favoritos.

It’s the biggest problem in California

The biggest problem is too many people in one spot. Endless growth is not a guaranteed right, nor is it a law of nature.

Zoning..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com