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Comment by mobilio | Hacker News Reader

I wondering isn't possible for that person to move temporarily to his parent's home?

Before attacking me - i live in Southern Europe and most of children's here still living with parents or grandparents. I even know a house nearby where there are living 4 generations in one house.

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"...and my parents, who live nearby, would have gladly taken me in. But I wanted to treat this period as a challenge, to prove to myself that I could accomplish hard things. Around that time, I was following a YouTuber.."

He artificially induced the situation.

Yup, as a sort of social media/TikTok experiment.

I understand that experiment... but just wondering.

For example - we live 100 km. from mine parents, wife parents are 200 km from us. Mine brother live with parents. Wife brother live near their parents - 10 km. and visit them almost daily.

In Southern Europe - it's OK. For Northern Europe it's not normal - there children leave home early.

An "influencer" inspired him to do something he could write about.

> and my parents, who live nearby, would have gladly taken me in.

> Around that time, I was following a YouTuber named Michael Hickey, who made videos showing how he lived frugally out of his car. I decided to do the same thing.

Moving in with your parents post college shouldn't be a badge of shame in this era of real estate shortage/inflation, college superinflation, health care costs, decades of wage suppression, lack of college-education jobs.

Europe is ahead of the US in terms of urbanization and postindustrial economic structures, where real estate has long been totally owned by the elites. The US is moving towards a similar state with the arrival of massive private equity buyups of real estate.

> The US is moving towards a similar state with the arrival of massive private equity buyups of real estate.

This feels a little untruthful. PE and other investment vehicles are of course investing in multi-unit buildings (apartments) and have been part of some of the new rental communities that have been built out but they represent a small blip in the SFH side of real estate. The biggest shift in my opinion has been the creation of rental SFH communities backed by investment vehicles but again these are being newly built so at worst they have possible short-term impact on builder supply. I am not sure how that impacts the landscape though, new builds are adding to the rental stock.

Private equity is a total red herring. Their impact is virtually zero. The issue here is that we restrict new housing from being built in thousands of ways - meaning the people who would be buying that housing (the ones buying houses today, to live in) are buying old stock instead, driving up the price of a supply constrained good.

This is entirely the fault of land use codes - setbacks, parking minimums, FAR limits, design review, height limits, years long permitting processes... we created this in our local governments.

> This is entirely the fault of land use codes - setbacks, parking minimums, FAR limits, design review, height limits, years long permitting processes... we created this in our local governments.

Yes. This and the massive switch to single-person households (Single Income No Kids).

That and Zoning are the 2 main reasons housing is expensive. Anything else is a rounding error.

Tell me more about this massive switch to single income no kids! I haven't heard about this, I thought it was always a generational change and tends to work itself out.

Agree but unfortunately when you point this out usually you get downvoted to oblivion.

It is a supply demand problem and I would even add to the point that the financial crisis helped set us up for the current environment we are in. We are still not even close to the historical level of housing starts pre 2007-08. We lost a number of builders in that process.

Even in places where home building is permissive, you never see a newly built home that is cheaper than the surrounding area's prices. I wouldn't chalk it up to a 100% supply issue. Nobody builds inexpensive apartments or small 1950's era single family homes. Every new home start is the same "luxury townhome" that's going to sell at or above prevailing home prices.

You're right that that is what gets built. And that's completely OK. Imagine one of those new big houses gets built. Someone buys it, they have the money to afford it. If you don't build that house, that person with their money still exists. But instead, they outbid you for one of the units that should be less expensive. That raises the price of existing housing and keeps you from buying something. That's the process that is the problem when you don't add new supply.

Hmmm not sure how to digest that comment. I absolutely see a lot more volume of "patio" homes with the total house ~800-1k sqft. Home builders are a bit of a laggard to demand but they are adapting to the new environment and smaller homes are in pretty significant volumes. This is happening in multiple states/markets. They very bare bones homes, sometimes a small backyard, sometimes just a patio. But they are incredibly cheap, you will get a 1,100 sqft 3bdr home for ~$200-220k. Thats a DFW price.

So I cannot take your story as face value.

It shouldn’t be a badge of shame at all. Family is the closest circle you’ll ever have, even your SO doesn’t count as much until proven through years. Living apart only makes sense if the conditions are too scarce or characters too incompatible.

This ignores broken families ofc, but atomized living probably correlates with that.

Sadly we often start really valuing the family only after it thins out substantially.

This is addressed in the article

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