millenials are effectively priced out of most major city housing markets

deradoodledoo wrote:

R1200 wrote:

Boomer here. Simply untrue. I went to school in Boston and could l not afford to live there when I started out late 1970's early 1980's . Worked in Beantown and commuted 1.5 hours each way. Many others did the same. Now its your turn. Stop whining.

Math here. You are simply wrong.

Median House price in Boston:

1983: 82,000 .

2018: 580,000

1983 median house price adjusted for inflation: $207,000

You were only off by about 200%

What, are you 21 years old? There are a lot of nice cities to move to that are under $250k for a home. A mortgage of $225k (10% down) is about $1100 per month.

yes, small metro areas with smaller economies. You either have to commute far (soul-sucking) or accept limited opportunity.

Why not just let cities grow as they need to?

I am almost 40, live in Dallas, and have been priced out of buying a house. I've decided I'm okay with that. I'm single and live alone, so I don't need a house. My small apartment meets my needs.

I accept that in a capitalistic society, there are things I can afford and things I can't. A house is on the list of things I can't.

Besides, my employer could downsize or sell out any time, and who knows where my next job might be? I don't want to be tied down to a house in that case.

And I don't want to spend all weekend mowing, painting, fixing, ect.

Finally, between my job and running, I'm rarely at "home" anyway, so it's just a place to sleep at night.

I'll probably be a renter for life.

Honestly you have to be an idiot to not be able to afford a downpayment. Stock market has done incredibly well so how hard is it to come up with 100k or so? Even if you were laid off in 2009, if you kept 10k in the S&P and didn’t work for years then you’d have enough!

Agree that housing is not necessarily a great investment. Too many Americans have their retirement savings wrapped up in home equity instead of stock investments.

Things should get a little easier soon for millennials as wages tick up as interest rates rise and inflation

If you don’t save & invest though in something (stocks, housing, etc ) you’ll always be poor and screwed

R1200 wrote:

Boomer here. Simply untrue. I went to school in Boston and could l not afford to live there when I started out late 1970's early 1980's . Worked in Beantown and commuted 1.5 hours each way. Many others did the same. Now its your turn. Stop whining.

Yes that is what we are talking about. Millennials are pushed to the edges of the city where they need to commute 1.5 hours each way. Want a 90 minute commute to Boston? Better be willing to pay upwards of 50% of your take home on housing (not including utilities). That's if you get a decent job.

A rundown apt in the Boston area between 60-90 min from downtown Boston is going to run you $1,500 a month/ per bedroom. If you can find 4-5 roommates you can bring that down to $1,200 a month/ per bedroom. Plus utilities.

Hsjsjsjs wrote:

40% of millenials get 2k/month from mommy and daddy

Boomers didn’t have that luxury and you didn’t live with your parents after college

you have some data for that fact you just pulled outta your a**?

.....and don't get me started on college costs now compared to the Leave it to Beaver years.

Dnndndnd wrote:

Honestly you have to be an idiot to not be able to afford a downpayment. Stock market has done incredibly well so how hard is it to come up with 100k or so? Even if you were laid off in 2009, if you kept 10k in the S&P and didn’t work for years then you’d have enough!

Agree that housing is not necessarily a great investment. Too many Americans have their retirement savings wrapped up in home equity instead of stock investments.

Things should get a little easier soon for millennials as wages tick up as interest rates rise and inflation

If you don’t save & invest though in something (stocks, housing, etc ) you’ll always be poor and screwed

But what if you graduated in 2010? or around then?

How are you saving $10k at that moment? Additionally research has proven the wages have lagged WAYYY behind other growth meaning its harder and harder for people to catch up.

Are you insinuating that someone who was in college at the time of the collapse should have saved enough money and not needed to dig into it? Absurd

deradoodledoo wrote:

R1200 wrote:

Boomer here. Simply untrue. I went to school in Boston and could l not afford to live there when I started out late 1970's early 1980's . Worked in Beantown and commuted 1.5 hours each way. Many others did the same. Now its your turn. Stop whining.

Math here. You are simply wrong.

Median House price in Boston:

1983: 82,000 .

2018: 580,000

1983 median house price adjusted for inflation: $207,000

You were only off by about 200%

Being a mathematician, you might want to compare average salaries with average home costs during each time period. When I started I could not buy any house at all and lived in apartments, then bought a house in NH then moved progressively (see what I did there?) to nicer places. I see other non whining millenials in my family doing the same, start with apartment, move to condo, buy house. My niece managed to buy a 600,000 home in Topsfield, her sister a simlar priced home in Middleton, another niece a 700,000 home in Briarcliffe, NY. They all manage sans whining.

Did you read the thread at all? wrote:

R1200 wrote:

Boomer here. Simply untrue. I went to school in Boston and could l not afford to live there when I started out late 1970's early 1980's . Worked in Beantown and commuted 1.5 hours each way. Many others did the same. Now its your turn. Stop whining.

Yes that is what we are talking about. Millennials are pushed to the edges of the city where they need to commute 1.5 hours each way. Want a 90 minute commute to Boston? Better be willing to pay upwards of 50% of your take home on housing (not including utilities). That's if you get a decent job.

A rundown apt in the Boston area between 60-90 min from downtown Boston is going to run you $1,500 a month/ per bedroom. If you can find 4-5 roommates you can bring that down to $1,200 a month/ per bedroom. Plus utilities.

Yeah, I did read it. And I do get it. And I had to do the exact same thing you describe. Had roomates, commuted a long way, had to wait until I could afford to live on my own, move closer to the great city and live in nicer places. Thats how life works.

Down payment isn't the barrier when almost every house in Seattle is swooped up sight-unseen all-cash by foreign "investors" and Bay Area transplants.

Median income is ~$70k and median house is over $800k. Do the math on that.

Typical whiny millennial. Right now is a terrible time to buy unless you are looking to hold a property long enough to weather the highs and lows of the real estate market. In my opinion, real estate is on the verge of collapse in many markets due to its unaffordability (rising interest rates, elimination of mortgage deduction, etc. should have squashed the housing market a while back, the fact that prices continue to rise even though wages are not rising that much means that the crash is going to be that much more painful). Don't buy when the market is high, as it is now. You buy a house when it makes financial sense, you don't buy a house because you feel like you have to. I have a single co-worker who is a millennial. He makes 1/5th of what my wife and I make combined, and he just bought a house that cost more than double what I paid for mine ten years ago (in an area that I would not have gone at night when I was growing up because it was full of crime). In my opinion, he made a terrible decision as I don't think it is a great financial decision to buy a $500k house when you make $70k a year. Go watch the Big Short before you go and get over leveraged on a house you can't afford.

Month Lea wrote:

deradoodledoo wrote:

Math here. You are simply wrong.

Median House price in Boston:

1983: 82,000 .

2018: 580,000

1983 median house price adjusted for inflation: $207,000

You were only off by about 200%

What, are you 21 years old? There are a lot of nice cities to move to that are under $250k for a home. A mortgage of $225k (10% down) is about $1100 per month.

https://www.census.gov/construction/nrs/pdf/uspricemon.pdf

Right.....just as in 1983 there were lots of cities with house cost less than 82,000. It's much harder to buy a house in Boston than it was during the "I had it bad too" years that the poster was referring to.

I'm not a millenial. I paid 60,000 for my condo a couple years ago.

That doesn't mean I suddenly assume a moral high ground against people who need/want to live in these cities for career or other purposes.

If you graduate college with an enormous debt load then there's more pressure to seek the high incomes of the more expensive cities.

uhhhhhhhh.......... wrote:

Hsjsjsjs wrote:

40% of millenials get 2k/month from mommy and daddy

Boomers didn’t have that luxury and you didn’t live with your parents after college

you have some data for that fact you just pulled outta your a**?

.....and don't get me started on college costs now compared to the Leave it to Beaver years.

It is unfortunate that, unlike most millennials, your momma and papa won't give you $2k a month to survive in the mean world out there.

Look at the price-to-income ratio graph.

I don't why people act so willfully ignorant of these facts. Housing IS more expensive in real and relative terms form buyers today.

The solution is to build housing. Homeowners block that because they likely having their POS house worth 500k.

You were able to commute to Boston from NH in under 90 minutes??! What a life! Try commuting form Waltham to Boston in that time now.

Topsfield another 90 min ride to Boston for $600,000 for a starter home for a 25 year old.

When did they buy these houses? The cost of purchasing a home in Boston has skyrocketed recently. I know plenty of people who bought homes in 2014 and have seen their value increase by 30-40% in 4 years. Similarly, rent prices have doubled in that time. I rented a place in Boston in 2013, and the price has doubled since then. Seriously doubled and no improvements were made. Meanwhile wages have been stagnant since 2007.

Imagine your niece trying to afford an apt then a condo then a house that are worth 50% higher than what she paid on the same salary and see if she can make those jumps.

A lot of the Pacific northwest is being inflated by people moving from China. A number of millionaires in China are coming to the US and Canada due to the better standard of living / less crowding and less pollution than what they are leaving behind in China. Vancouver, Canada is especially vulnerable to collapse as the household debt to income ratio is about 15 points higher than it was in the US in 2008.

The only ones sad about this are the millennials who get TOLD to buy a home from their boomer parents and grandparents, and they don't have the independent thought capabilities to tell them "no, it's a bad investment now".

These people are the saddest of the sad.

2 years ago for the ones in Mass. 1 year for the one in NY. Yeah, well wage increases have always been crap if you stay at one place. Jump and enjoy a nice increase with each job change. And hint. Dont live in Waltham. Pick a town that has a better route in.

deradoodledoo wrote:

R1200 wrote:

Boomer here. Simply untrue. I went to school in Boston and could l not afford to live there when I started out late 1970's early 1980's . Worked in Beantown and commuted 1.5 hours each way. Many others did the same. Now its your turn. Stop whining.

Math here. You are simply wrong.

Median House price in Boston:

1983: 82,000 .

2018: 580,000

1983 median house price adjusted for inflation: $207,000

You were only off by about 200%

Lets be fair. Per capita income in Boston:

1983: 15k

2018: 70k

1983: 5.4 times median salary

2018: 8.2 times median salary.

Its not really that close. And these things compound on each other. higher home prices mean higher rents means less saving means more years of saving its all a cycle that favors the rich.