[game_the0ry]

> I don't think I've ever heard of a politician even talking about that though

You have to consider that legislative members tend to own property and tend to be baby boomers. They are far removed form the experiences that younger generations have to deal with - from their perspective, their home value can go up 20% in 2 years and that will be rationalized as a normal market. They are not talking about it because they are benefiting financially, and talking about may make them hurt financially. This will change, baby boomers cannot live forever even though they behave as though no future generations exist.

[fleddr]

It won't change. After the boomers come the millennials, and I believe there's still a generation in between (generation Y?).

Many of them may have been just in time to snatch a house from the market, and they see their home value go up. None of them are going to advocate for super high taxes on their "unjust" gains nor will they give a discount to future buyers. They will maximize the return just like everybody else would.

It's not boomer behavior, it's human behavior. Boomers were just lucky to get in earlier. The only annoying thing about some boomers is that they don't acknowledge their luck, and insist it was all due to their hard work or brilliance.

The school going generation always wants a revolution, a redesign of society. To fix its flaws, to make it more fair. It's easy to want to change everything if you have no responsibility or anything to lose. But then they grow up and have skin in the game, and they'll be just like everybody else, protecting whatever wealth they have.

Consider that many boomers were hippies when they were young, rejecting even the notion of personal property. Now they own almost all property. The 21st century version of hippies are even better at managing progressive optics whilst taking in top 1% salaries.

[ajsnigrutin]

Most baby boomers (the ones getting all the blame) usually own one house, that they live in... even if the value goes up, they need a place to live in, and the high prices are pretty much everywhere, people actually want to live. The only ones profiting from baby boomers are their kids when they inherit the houses.

Politicians are probably getting paid of by companies investing in housing and buying up hundreds or thousands of houses, because the price increases make it more profitable than many other investments, and (unless there's some legislative action) makes the investment safer than most other high-profit ones (eg. cryptocurrencies).

And the little guy gets fucked in the end.

[acdha]

> even if the value goes up, they need a place to live in, and the high prices are pretty much everywhere, people actually want to live. The only ones profiting from baby boomers are their kids when they inherit the houses.

This leaves out one major factor: they need somewhere to live but that doesn't mean it needs to be the same real-estate market or size. Someone who sells a house large enough to have a family in a major market and retires to a cheaper market can see a very comfortable return. Probably nowhere near enough to make up for the other impacts of the policies people voted for to drive up their home value but it's harder to get people to give equal weight to different factors when one of them will show up directly in their personal bank account.

[ajsnigrutin]

This would be true, if someone old sold a house in san francisco and bought a house in bumfuck alabama...

But considering that people tend to move to a few urban locations, the house prices in eg. florida got very expensive too... yes, they earn a bit more, but I don't believe that single house owners, moving from SF to FL (or wherever) are causing the housing crisis.

[acdha]

It's also true if you sell a house in San Francisco and move to South Florida, or North Carolina, or all of the other places millions of people do exactly what I described. Retirees don't need massive houses, to minimize commutes to downtown, or being in the best school district, which opens up many options which other people might pass up. If your goal is “on the beach in South Beach”, yes, it'll cost a fortune but if your goal is “near the beach, any beach” you have plenty of options for well under $100k.

I don't disagree that this isn't driving the housing crisis — my point was simply that it's not like many older people aren't strongly in favor of the housing market staying high until they can cash out, because for many people their home equity is the largest component of their retirement plan and they aren't interested in continuing to need to deal with the maintenance required by a single-family house.