Americans are living through the toughest housing market in a generation and, for some young people, the quintessential dream of owning a home is slipping away.
Mortgage rates surged in recent years, hitting the highest levels in more than two decades last fall. While rates have come down slightly since then, home prices remain painfully elevated and a limited inventory of housing is still failing to keep up with demand. Such conditions mean that housing has become woefully unaffordable.
Falling mortgage rates in recent weeks have helped, but home prices could remain sticky, according to economists. It’s still a cruddy time to be hunting for a home, but it’s even worse for young, first-time buyers who need to save up for a down payment and build up their credit score during a time when Baby Boomers are refusing to part with their big houses.
The situation isn’t a whole lot better for renters, with rents barely coming down from record highs and half of tenants in that market saying they can’t even afford their payments.
The uneasiness over America’s affordability crisis is captured clearly in surveys and polls, but data that outlines the sentiment specifically among young people is limited.
Brit here. I’m 43, earning more than I ever have and have basically no hope of ever owning a home.
And Canada has been struggling with this for something like a decade. I am not Canadian, just adding to what you are saying in how this is not a problem that is limited to the USA.
We have the same problem as the US. Vote team red team or team blue. We have a team orange in Canada, however they’re seemingly unable to find strong leadership.
In the USA we get the option to allow the rich to mostly ignore us while they increase their profits, or for them to flat-out enslave us while they increase their profits. Truly the worst time-line:-(.
We don’t have a team orange anymore, they joined team red.
Because they lack strong leadership
Correction: Parts of Canada. It’s a big country with a lot of places in between Vancouver and the GTA.
I would presume that it would occur mostly in or near the cities, being easier to control that way - is that right?
Same. 40 yo, nearing the top of my industry in salary, and every time I look at the housing market, it doubles.
I was lucky enough to purchase my home before it doubled in value just under 6 years ago. And at a 2 and a quarter % rate. And now I’m locked into this house now because there’s no way I’m jumping out of a rate this low.
~8 years ago here, the numbers didn’t work out for me to drop my rate over covid but I found a house at $75k at 4.125 on a va loan, I recently bumped my payment to pay it off at 50 but my base mortgage is under $500. I’m not going anywhere.
And if you do, the market is just gonna crash and you’ll be stuck with that inflated mortgage and unable to move physically or financially.