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.
Except that kids probably aren’t the reason for them to not be able to afford home. It sounds reasonable to first establish one’s life and then think about kids, but it might be a bit late for that by that time
I was very very young when my first kid was born. I was 16. The second and third I adopted. I actually raised a few of my son’s friends as well when they were teenagers.
That’s part of the reason I couldn’t afford a home. I had three extra kids living with me at one point because their home life was so bad. Their parents didn’t help, most of them couldn’t.
I came of age right in the middle of the opioid crisis in Appalachia.
Harsh, I wish you all the best, hope that things will get better sometime
Things are great, for real. I get frustrated like anyone else when things seem so out of reach, but I’m happy to be alive and experience the most peace I ever have.
Thank you.