Comment by laszlograves

1991 millennial here offering some perspective.

Transferred to a California state college a little late (27) and wrapped up my computer science degree @ SFSU finished in 2019 so somewhat recent anecdotal experience.

I met a lot of people just like me while in college. Lot of people mid to late 20s. One of my best friends in college was in the international business club fb group and they’d always host events or pub crawls every Thursday night. I’d ping my gf (now wife) and she’d asynchronously invite all of her friends and then I’d be inviting all our college friends so by the time we arrived we’d have a merged friend group. We met so many cool folks this way and people from different majors with diverse backgrounds.

It helped to be in San Francisco of course.

Now as far as the housing discussion I’d say that the 7% rates that are historically normal feel oppressive after 15 years of low rates following the Great Recession. I bought a place in the edge of the Bay Area last year with 5% down at 7% because I didn’t have the income that I have now when rates were low. We were saving for the last 7 years delaying a bunch of major life milestones. The prices in our zip code already dropped ~15% before we bought so we saved about a 20% down payments worth off the up front cost. I barely qualified with 270k combined income and I’m not sure ppl understand how weird that feels until they experience it. The home wasn’t even a median priced SFH in fact it was well below at about 750k. I kept a bunch of vested stock and savings but yeah not sure how things will shake out. It’s a tough market for sure.