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.
They aren’t lying. The housing market has become incredibly prohibitive due to how property prices have gone up with speculation and demand.
Maybe the older millennials can afford a home eventually, but they’ll be 10-15 years behind their parents into achieving that goal.
Even in Canada, in the cheapest city to live in, Montreal, 1 and 2 bedrooms go for about 400k. Houses are over half a million. You can’t afford these with our average wages unless you’re in a couple and have a very solid down payment.
Shit like this is what I am talking about.
This is so deeply out to lunch it’s laughable.
Post your sources for that mate, I live in a major city in Canada and I assure you those numbers are hyper inflated.
Come visit me in Vancouver where a two bedroom rents for 3700 on average and avg home price is 1.2m. ‘Avg home’ being a 750sq foot condo with $350/month strata(HOA) fees.
We used to live in Montreal and thought that was pricey when we saw rents hit $2000. I do anything for that kind of rent:space ratio now.