A deep dive into housing affordability yields a conclusion that the younger generations aren’t as bad off as is often claimed. However, affordability depends crucially on interest rates, and those have nowhere to go but up. From el gato malo at boriquagato.substack.com:
assessing gens Y and Z and their claims to have it tougher than those before
the matter of gen Y (the millennials 1981-96) and gen Z (1997-2012) and their sense of disenfranchisement from economic opportunity seems to be the driving narrative of the moment, and honestly, the whole thing has struck me as a little too pat and precious to take at face value.
i started niggling at this the other day when looking at home affordability and rapidly discovered that, as recently as 2021-2022, homes were at generational levels of maximum affordability. it’s only in the last couple years that this changed. this punches a meaningful hole in the “our generation has never had a shot to buy a home” narrative. mostly, they did and likely they will soon be able to do so again.
but what of the rest of it? what about the “you used to be able to have one earner and raise a family and we don’t earn anything like what our parents and grandparents did, it’s so much harder now, so expensive, you guys have no idea what it’s like!” refrain that has become so common? is this real or just another example of “how we know what isn’t so”?
it seems a matter worth getting to the bottom of, because it’s certainly gaining common currency and it’s being used to drive a generation to socialism and to stir up distrust and antipathy toward free markets and capitalism.
I told Harold the Brain about the 50 year mortgage and he said can you imagine the interest.
He was mad because he is within a few feet of the last intersection of a nearby town and gets taxed extra while getting no services from said town.