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Comment by rmah | Hacker News Reader

People have been complaining on HN that "houses are too expensive to buy" almost since it started 15 years ago. Yet 65% of Americans currently own their own homes. This is not as high as the peak in 2005 of 69%, but higher than the low in 2016 of 63% [1]. And IIRC, home ownership rates are near historical highs. Home ownership rate was almost always below 50% before ww2 and rarely exceeded 65% until the housing bubble of 2000-2010 [2].

The simple fact, as unpalatable as it may be, is that buying a home is always "expensive". In the US anyway, the price seems to be set by people's income. That is, their ability to pay. What does change is the size and quality of the homes.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

[2] https://www.getrichslowly.org/homeownership/

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From Census.gov:

> Renter-occupied housing units increased at over twice the rate of owner-occupied housing units.

> Between 2010 and 2020, renter-occupied units grew from 40.7 million units to 46.8 million units, a growth rate of 14.8 percent. Over the same period, owner-occupied units increased 5.4 percent, from 76.0 million owner-occupied units to 80.1 million units.

> Renter-occupied housing units also increased at a faster rate than owner-occupied units between 2000 and 2010,when the nation experienced a 14.2 percent increase in rental units and an 8.8 percent increase in owner-occupied units.

> Since 2000, renter-occupied units increased 31.1 percent, while owner-occupied units increased 14.7 percent.

> The 2020 homeownership rate [63.1%] was the lowest it has been since 1970.

Source: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/2020/...

> People have been complaining on HN that "houses are too expensive to buy" almost since it started 15 years ago.

15 years ago was the height of the housing bubble. They were right.

Two years later, housing prices were sharply lower and so was the level of complaining.

More recently, people with money in the bank found themselves homeless and we had complaining again. Because being homeless sucks.

The percentage of home ownership by age group is important to understand. Far fewer younger people are purchasing homes now compared to ten years ago, 20 years ago.

>People have been complaining on HN that "houses are too expensive to buy" almost since it started 15 years ago. Yet 65% of Americans currently own their own homes.

Yes, because the current set of of homeowners includes people from many different years and therefore hole buying difficulties. It’s not very relevant to compare it to a figure for how currently difficult it is to buy a home.

Ownership? As in they hold the title? Or they are in a rent-to-own relationship with lenders?

Hasn't the rise in price greatly exceeded the rise in income? If so, sure they're always expensive in an absolute sense being of multiple years' pay, but enormously more so now. Since shelter is more important than other things, the rate of ownership really depends on how much is taken out for rentals or left empty. The money/capital remaining for anything else is smaller.

Size and quality don't change for pre-existing stock. There are a lot of crappy ranch houses that cost 1.3-1.8 MM now.

You must have failed stats class.

The cohorts are all that matter here... so do the incoming cohorts own less than the older cohorts at their age. The answer is YES by a great deal!

Fwiw the St Louis Fed data doesn't show much widening of the gap: [https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf]

I'd like to find the definition of the measure, it may or may not be commonsense. For example, the unemployment rate does not track the count of unemployed people.

That chart clusters under 35 into a single group, which isn't helpful here. The closest actual range, of 35-45 has dropped a bit under 10% percent in that timeframe. Additionally, 35-45 has flipped from being a higher percent over the overall US to lower starting in the late 90s.

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