Few milestones in life mean as much to the American Dream as owning a home. And millennials have encountered the kind of trouble totally befitting their generation, which largely graduated into the teeth of the disastrous post-2008 job market. Just as they entered peak homebuying and household formation age, housing affordability is at 40-year lows, and mortgage rates are near 40-year highs.
The anxiety this generation feels about the prospect of never owning their own home affects their entire perception of their finances and the economy, says Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi.
“If they feel like they’re locked out of owning a home it colors their perceptions about everything else going on in their financial lives,” Zandi says.
Millennials have long been dogged by a brutal housing market. They faced not one, but two, cataclysmic economic events—the Great Financial Crisis in 2008 and the pandemic in 2020. Both of which left them reeling financially and struggling to afford a home. The Great Recession decimated the real estate market as the economy nearly collapsed under the weight of tenuous mortgage backed securities. While the pandemic brought with it a remote work boom that caused millions of citydwellers to flee to the suburbs, sending housing prices soaring.
I loved going to my grandfather’s house as a kid. It wasn’t mine, but it felt like it belonged to all of us. He built it with his own hands. I put my little handprints in the basement. My aunt inherited it when he died. I can go there today and look in the closet where I wrote all of my relative’s phone numbers on the wall for emergencies when I was 5 years old. Every one of his grandkids can go to that house and see their life everywhere. They can feel connected to their family and their memories.
My aunt’s kids have grown up there now, her daughter graduates this year. She’ll be able to have that same experience.
If I ever have grandkids, they’ll have to drive by the shit apartments that I’m stuck in and feel nothing.
Millennials existed in a world where they seen ownership, experienced ownership. Our movies belonged to us. Our games belonged to us. Everything is a service or something we can’t afford.
I love my Steam Deck, but nothing on it belongs to me. That is the world I live in from the top to the bottom.
If I want to remove the ugly 1970s wood paneling and paint my living space to match me as a person, nope. Gotta ask my fucking owner and he’ll say no. He could sell it tomorrow or die, and if they tell me to get lost, I gotta get lost.
I took over payments on my childhood home when I was 21. The roof hadn’t been repaired in my lifetime. When I was a kid I put a tarp over my desk to keep the rain from destroying my computer. When I was 23 I fell through the floor in the bathroom.
If I had known just how hard it would be to obtain a place of my own, I wouldn’t have let that place go. I would have lived in it until it collapsed. If I could go back in time I’d tell younger me to suck whatever dick I had to suck to keep it, right there in that terrible poverty stricken hellhole of an Appalachian neighborhood.
My mom bought that place for 40k. 5 bedrooms. A huge house. We were poor so we couldn’t keep with repairs, but it was ours.
I don’t know. Bums me the fuck out. I’d love to have a home for my children.
Can I ask, how many grandkids in your family? Like same gen as you?
Oh lord, let’s see.
There’s 19 of us. 3 of them have passed away so that brings it down to 16. And for fun, we all have 29 children between us, I have the most biological children at 5, 2 adopted making my total 7. Most of them stopped at 2, but one of my cousins has 3. They all think I’m insane, and they’re not wrong. :p
Damn. We’re a bunch.
Edit:
Why would anyone downvote this? Seriously. It isn’t controversial. Are you mad that I adopted kids? Mad that I’ve been married twice and the second one wanted kids? What?
Best guess is because you have 7 kids and talk about not being able to afford a home.
Having any kids at all is enough to set a certain subsection of social media off lol.
I’m glad for their big happy family if they are. <3
I appreciate that. I’m not raising 7 kids right now though haha. I wouldn’t know where to put that many :p. My son is 26. He’s been smart enough to put off having children and he’s building toward owning a home. He’s buying small worn down places, repairing them, selling them, and then working his way up.
I have so many kids because the first girl who ever lived with me moved in when I was 14. Way before I could even make a responsible decision.
Except that kids probably aren’t the reason for them to not be able to afford home. It sounds reasonable to first establish one’s life and then think about kids, but it might be a bit late for that by that time
I was very very young when my first kid was born. I was 16. The second and third I adopted. I actually raised a few of my son’s friends as well when they were teenagers.
That’s part of the reason I couldn’t afford a home. I had three extra kids living with me at one point because their home life was so bad. Their parents didn’t help, most of them couldn’t.
I came of age right in the middle of the opioid crisis in Appalachia.
Harsh, I wish you all the best, hope that things will get better sometime
Things are great, for real. I get frustrated like anyone else when things seem so out of reach, but I’m happy to be alive and experience the most peace I ever have.
Thank you.
Half of my kids are grown. My son is 26. Trust me, living in rentals is better than the life he would have had. His mother once bragged to me that she consumed more crack in one month than most people could afford in a year.