[paublyrne]

I'm not sure the relevance of it being artificial or not is here. The reality is that many people in their 20s and 30s can't buy a house, while their parents could, even if their parents were less affluent by many measures, say in orange purchasing power.

[ishjoh]

There seems to be three issues related to real estate that effect prices and one issue related to purchasing power that I'd like to point out.

1) The percentage of people living in cities as compared to living in rural areas has increased dramatically (https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2016/comm/acs-...)

2) Large cities (NYC, San Francisco, etc), have lots of regulations to building more housing

3) Demand for housing in large cities has exceeded supply for decades

4) Student loan debt has destroyed purchasing power for folks in their 20s and 30s, the average student loan is almost 40k (https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics/)

Leaving NYC, even after taking a pay cut, was one of the best decisions I ever made. I don't have data, but I suspect that for young folks outside of the largest 20 American cities, if they didn't have on average 40k in student loan debt, they would have more purchasing power then previous generations even including real estate.

[prewett]

That's also partly because you can't hardly buy a newly constructed house unless it's 3000+ sq feet, whereas houses from decades ago were substantially smaller, leading to more affordability. The lack of these houses does not imply that people currently in their 20s and 30s are less affluent, just that there is less affordable housing.