And the best part is that the next generation will have it even worse. They’ll have 75% Social security payments, little chance of building net worth through home purchases and a lifetime of $10/hr jobs.
Perversely, it may not be the worst thing if an entire generation decides that building wealth through your primary residence is not the best idea, and forgoes this in their lives and pushes their representatives to repeal the slew of incentives currently written into the tax code.
Not if in lieu of homes they invest in nothing at all. If you don't own a home you're paying rent. Rent prices have also increased dramatically so it's not like there's money going into savings.
Personally, I pay more in student loans than every one of my parents, aunts, and uncles pay on ybeir mortgage. I pay 2-3 times more in rent than their mortgage. I might be ok but only because of a high paying tech job. Those at the lower end the scale are absolutely fucked.
This is already happening. The new tax bill hits housing's special status three ways-- the mortgage deduction cap is lowered 25%, the standard deduction doubles (making the mortgage deduction less valuable) and high property taxes are no longer deductable.
Property ownership as your sole investment apparatus is obviously flawed, but seeing the ownership of all land and property centralized even further into the hands of land barons and oligarchs who can afford to rent seek an entire population is much worse.
There was a lot of misguided misdirection in trying to sell every US citizen on home ownership, but there was also a tinge of romanticism towards the principle that maybe everyone could have their own small slice of the pie rather than a few fat cats owning the whole thing with all of us begging to borrow a piece.