I'm way too old to be a Millennial, so I obviously can't directly sympathize, but the ridiculous prices today really trigger the introvert side of me. I have this strong desire to move somewhere that land is still very cheap and become a crazy hermit who lives in a shed or something.
I have this strong desire to move somewhere that land is still very cheap and become a crazy hermit who lives in a shed or something.
Any time I have a piece of this feeling I'm reminded of the most underappreciated technological and society development: the flush toilet.
Its freakin' magic that usually requires a functioning municipality to run dependably and cheaply. I just don't think I can live a life long term without it.
You make a great point for a sane person, but it's unconvincing to a crazy hermit.
You can of have flushing toilets with a septic tank. It doesn't have to be an outhouse.
Yep. Grew up in a village. We had flushing toilets that flushed into a septic tank.
A septic system isn't that expensive nor hard to maintain. If you have access to well water you can run it near independently. Assuming electricity of course, which is often available even in places without sewer or water.
All you need is to occasionally pay someone to come and pump the tank
A septic system isn’t that expensive nor hard to maintain.
OPs scenario is paraphrased as "shack out in the woods removed from civilization". Getting the equipment and workers out to such a place would present the first challenge.
If you have access to well water you can run it near independently. Assuming electricity of course, which is often available even in places without sewer or water.
See, now we've raised the bar to not only requiring a sewage solution, but also dependable electricity and water source. This is why a functioning society is so valuable. It can provide easy and cheap access to dependable water, sewage, electricity, and skilled workers to build, install, and maintain the systems that let the toilet function without a second though.
All you need is to occasionally pay someone to come and pump the tank
See point #1.
A bit inland in Dalmatia (Croatia) seems very cheap and you could have at least have your own wine and olives. Land directly at the coast is super expensive.
Well it's telling that all of the rich investment banker types always eventually quit and start a hobby farm in the country.
The general feeling seems to be that agriculture was a good idea, but we took things too far with this whole civilisation thing.
You remind me of this Hitchhiker's quote:
In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Nah screw that. The issue is not enough cities, and the solution is certainly not further unsustainable sprawl
B-b-but wages have gone up and interest rates have been higher decades ago! /s
I can't find it now because I'm on phone and not a computer and I can't really search for it l, but I'm sure that there was a post a while back where someone worked out that if minimum wage had actually kept up with inflation it would be around $80 USD an hour now. Which seems ludicrously high for minimum wage job, but apparently the math works out.
Obviously American employment protection laws are probably the worst in the western world, so probably not a great baseline, but it still demonstrates how badly off people are in general, compared to their parents and grandparents.
I think you’re thinking of the graph that shows how, if wages were tied to worker productivity, the minimum wage would be $80, but if we’re just talking inflation, the minimum wage should be ~$15-18
One in my area that had me raging was 65k in 2016, 295k now... It was a glorified shed that looked like it burned down twice in a shit neighborhood.
...so I'm stuck renting a garage "apartment" instead...
The house I own now has sold six times between 2000 and now. Mostly because it's been in a possession of elderly people who've lived in the house for 2 or 3 years after downsizing from their original house and then either dying or have to enter care.
As a result the house has basically had no work done on it for 20 odd years and it shows, the person I bought the house off of was one of the first non-elderly people to live in the property and she did do quite a number of important maintenance, but not a lot because she only lived in the house a year and then got married and moved in with her husband, so between me and her we've probably added untold value to the property. However had we done none of that and just held on to the house as an investment, we did probably been able to triple our investment in about 5 years.
Not that it'll do me any good when I finally sell it.
There was a literal burnt out shell in my old area that was listed for $400k.
Geriatric millennial here: it's missing the purchase at the top of the bubble in 2007, listing for sale at a loss 3 times in 2008-2009, list for rent in 2014 and 2015 at less than the mortgage, sell in 2017 at slightly more than when you purchased it when you finally got it off your back (but you paid it all in taxes because it was a rental), then see it sold in 2022 for 2.5x what you sold it for in 2017.
At least that's how my first home purchase went when everyone told me real estate was a guarantee in my 20s on a non-profit salary. The only thing you wouldn't see is the 0% mortgage offer they made on the first 150k when we started walking away in 2009. And the medical bills for idiopathic neuropathy from the stress.
I'm also a 'geriatric millennial', but I wasn't in a position to buy until 2009 so my experience was vastly different. I do have some same-age friends who bought in 2007 with stories more similar to yours, though.
Ironically, my mom tried to warn me against buying back then. I would've been absolutely screwed if I'd listened to her.
I'm sorry about the stress but to be fair one of the reasons that house prices got so insane was people like you who were buying to rent. That puts pressure on the housing market because if you buy to rent you can own multiple properties, so more and more housing stock gets taken out of rotation so it gets to the point where even if people could theoretically afford to buy a house, there are none available.
Renting brakes the supply and demand system. If there were more houses than there was demand, the value would go down and would open up home ownership for more people, this would increase demand and stabilise the market. If there was insufficient supply, housing prices would go up which would incentivise companies to construct more properties, thus increasing availability and stabilising the market. But the want to be landlords come in and buy up all the available homes and now there is high demand but low supply, so construction companies build houses and sell directly to landlords (because landlords have no chain), demand has increased but supply has remained the same, despite construction having happened. Repeat that for 50 years and you get our current housing market.
This doesn't sound like someone who bought 4x houses and became a slum lord.
Renting out a home you own is a normal part of home ownership. You might move to another city, care for your elderly parents, or move in with a spouse.
Its easy to say "oh well hurry durr you should sell because charging rent is unethical", but in practice no one would actually sell in these circumstances for that reason, if it were contrary to their interests.
This has been happening since the first troglodite laid on some straw and called it a bed. Renting for a few years is not everything thats wrong with the property market.
Average wage index in 1999: $30,469.84
Average wage index in 2023: $66,621.80
So wages roughly doubled, while the house now costs 8x as much. Yep, sounds about right.
Nothing says ‘Millennial experience’ like watching the same house age better financially than you 😅📈
Yeah but your income adjusted for it, so stop complaining /s
Luckily I was earning 40k in 1999, and I'm now earning 400k!
yep, if you're not working 6000 hours a year, you don't deserve to own a home because you're just lazy
Am millenial, am homeowner, am still rooting for a marketcrash. Solidarity! ~Also our home hasn't appreciated noticeably in the last 10years so we don't stand to lose much~
It's really really really easy to have this outlook, if you consider a house to be more a thing you live in, and less an investment opportunity.
I'll also pay less taxes on my forever home. So I'd also be happy.
Being that I am now middle aged... have a full time job\career, single, and I still can't afford to buy a home.. isn't that great?
The only reason my partner and i could is we lucked out and bought our house at the bottom of the housing market during COVID. Interest rates hit the lowest point just as we began financing but people hadn't quite started buying yet so prices had bottomed out. It "appreciated" by over 50% within two years, like fucking magic.
If we had waited until now, we could not afford to buy our two bedroom, one bath, <1000 square foot, old-as-fuck, not fancy house. The monthly payment would be almost 2.5x higher and the FHA minimum down payment nearly killed us already at the lower price.
My partner and I both have advanced degrees and now make over $200k a year (disclaimer: we live in one of the top 5 highest cost of living areas in the US). We still don't make enough to adopt kids. The market, economy, and country in general are just super fucked.
For some reason I feel like this should be adjusted for inflation. Now this isn't any better but $162,000 adjusted for inflation would have been roughly $296,288 and some change in 2023. That's still well over a 470% increase, if my bad math is not bad today. I was lucky enough to buy one as a Millennial back in 2019 before houses started to skyrocket but this is just absolutely asinine.
This is inflation
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