Comment by jcranmer

> This sentiment strikes me a lot more as people in their 20's complaining that they're poor because they don't have the financial resources of someone in their 40's, despite having more resources than the latter did at their age.

Home prices have doubled over the past 20 years, twice the rate of income increases

This isn't just "complaining"

That’s the absolute percentage difference. Look at the under 35 category, it’s literally down 25%. That means 1/4 people that would have owned a house in that age group don’t now. Under 45 is a relative drop of ~17%, so about 1/5. One in four to one in five people is more than enough to see an effect.

I doubt it’s the only cause at all, this anti-social (“Bowling Alone”) trend has been going on for generations, and probably has multiple causes. But the US housing crunch on young people is adding to it.

And this damn attitude of “the younger generations are just entitled weenies” about housing is about the most infuriating attitude in the world. My parents bought their first house on a single earners blue collar salary at the age of 27. That house, with almost no updates, now literally needs a top 1% salary and payments for 30 years to be able to afford. Don’t tell the kids to stop whining when they’re watching older generations gobble up their future in the name of preserving property values.

That's for the whole country. This site is very heavily biased toward people who live in major cities, where real estate has in fact become the purview of only the rich.

Short version of the history:

Starting in the late 1990s, you had a super-concentration of both good jobs and interesting culture in a short list of cities: SF Bay, New York, LA/OC, Seattle, and a few others. I remember growing up during this period and the whole cultural zeitgeist was "if you don't live in one of those cities, you can't do anything."

These cities have always had an allure, especially creative centers like LA and NYC, but what I mean is that it got much more extreme. It fits with the general cultural zeitgeist of everything centralizing and going to the extreme right side in an increasingly tight power-law distribution.

This was followed by insane real estate hyperinflation in those cities, of course, because if you try to take all the "interesting" stuff in the world's largest economy and a nation of 300+ million people and cram it into a few metros, that happens.

The rest of the country still has a lot of affordable real estate, less so than it used to -- RE has appreciated everywhere and not just in the US -- but it's far less insane than the top-tier cities.

I post this every chance I get:

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...

It is really strange to read complaints that the vast vast majority of 20 somethings have no chance of competing against older established households in the housing market.

I would hope so, otherwise that would mean the country/locale is so bad that older households are packing their bags and fleeing.

So the most desirable properties, such as large SFHs, townhouses, penthouses, etc… within a short driving distance of an attractive city will likely be owned by the latter, by definition.