First-time home owners have increased in age[0], the middle class is shrinking[1], education costs have vastly outpaced inflation[2] as have medical costs[3].
Perhaps the generalized fear is not so much about "coddling", but concrete realities. I do not envy them.
More of gen z are home owners than previous generations at that age[0], real wages are increasing for the lower and middle class for the first time since 1970[1]. More people are leaving the workforce than anytime in history, creating high paying trade job openings at an unprecedented rate[2]. Health care costs are growing slower now than any prior decade[3].
Every generation has challenges and benefits. Framing the narrative can happen in any direction and the variance in group is bigger than the variance between.
> More of gen z are home owners than previous generations at that age[0]
If you’re going to make a claim this bold and this counter to the prevailing narrative, you’re gonna need to cite a better source than an outbrain-riddled webpage that tells me to “watch our video to find the lede we buried”. I’m not saying this isn’t true, but extraordinary claims require good sourcing and explanation.
> If you’re going to make a claim this bold and this counter to the prevailing narrative
What do you see as the prevailing narrative? The one I see is homeownership itself, which suggests that homeownership has been seen as being hotly desirable. I strongly suspect we wouldn't have a homeownership narrative to speak of if ownership was unwanted. When something becomes unusually desirable like homeownership has, it is not unexpected to see an uptick in participation around it; in this case owning a home. Much of the urban age has been marked with the majority of the population being renters. Everyone wanting to own a home with such furor is historically unusual.
I expect homeownership has become so desirable as it has become seen as a way to build wealth. While, historically, housing only kept pace with inflation at best, real home values have risen by unfathomable amounts in the last decade or two. Which, again, attracts people willing to risk it all for a chance at some of that wealth opportunity. It would be unusual if said generational group had comparatively lower ownership rates given the "FOMO" aspect. People run away when prices are falling, not when they are rising.
Given the market we've watched, the extraordinary claim would be that Gen-Z has lower ownership rates compared to previous generations at the same age.
Well said. I remember making a spreadsheet in maybe 1995 laying out the math to compare the real costs and expected gains from buying vs. renting.
It mathed out about even. I decided to go with renting instead of buying, with the logic that the S&P didn’t need me to buy it a new roof every 15 years or to work in its garden every weekend.
It worked nicely too, growing the money that would otherwise have gone into mortgages and property tax, letting me take some of it out recently and buy a house with cash.
I don’t see much of this attitude in my younger friends now. But living cheap and saving does actually work.
A 5x levered bet with no prepayment penalty subsidized by future Americans, and it cannot be called and is non recourse in many states. And it provides shelter.
The claim isn’t that homeownership is undesirable to Gen Z, but that a lower percentage of Gen Z owns homes compared to previous generations regardless of the specific reason. I think in this case the most likely cause is the increase in prices is causing houses to be unaffordable to Gen Z, despite their desire to own houses.
There may be some temporal confusion here. Gen-Z rates of homeownership has stalled out over the past year or so. Prices are no longer rising like they once were, with fears over impending decline, so the desire is not what it once was. It may be fair to say that the narrative has shifted to "too expensive", but as they loaded up early when prices were rising at unprecedented rates there is a big head start at play. They don't have to buy any more homes for a while to maintain the lead.
Regarding home ownership: they only started with a higher rate. It's too early to say, but considering that growth has stagnated, they're on track to become the generation that will own the least homes.
[0] in the parent comment needs to note most of the increase comes from older people living and staying in their houses longer rather than dying, moving to facilities or in with family.
> Health care costs are growing slower now than any prior decade[3].
I don’t see any data on that page supporting this claim. The current decade is growing much faster than the previous one, and they only show data up to 2023.
> Health spending increased by 7.5% from 2022 to 2023, faster than the 4.6% increase from 2021 to 2022. The growth in total health spending from 2022 to 2023 is well above the average annual growth rate of the 2010s (4.1%).
Those are easier to cope with when you live in a supportive society. _Most_ humans naturally help each others in case of emergency. It’s easier when the framework is already in place.
In the sense of how certain trade unions function as a hiring hall. Like a centralized job assignment. We already have a version of it except it's a million splintered hiring/recruitment agencies that may or may not be good. Lot's of time wasted.
Probably the wrong place to be barking up this tree though.
Actually, anyone who want's to scratch this itch just youtube the Excel World Championships. It's way more entertaining than it has any business being.
Society hasn’t setup future society to be better. It’s a grab and go everywhere you look and it’s tiring. This is coming from a millennial with a good tech job. I cannot imagine how younger generations feel.
This is the inevitable result of higher connectivity in society. More spoils flow to top performers due to the reduced friction. I don't see any way to undo this trend short of undoing the connectivity, i.e. forcibly rolling back technological progress. Kind of a non-starter.
First-time home buyers are getting squeezed by a combination of peaking market forces, but those forces are peaking and we're probably seeing the worst of it at this moment [1]. It will get better.
Their arguments for "won't go up much" are reasonable but their arguments for "will actually fall enough to allow two generations to finally own homes" are pretty fucking nonsensical.
They're comparing to hosting dips in the world wars and while I assure you ww3 will have enough loss of life to make houses quite cheap a third time, you still won't want them because they'll be covered in radioactive contamination.
The issue isn't blind supply and demand, it's that we've made construction expensive through code and arbitrary supply chain constraints and we're planning to deport all the construction workers. Even if population grown naturally slows to zero we will simply stop building houses because it won't be profitable. That's what got us here in the first place.
I quite like the parts of the code that prevent random electric shocks, and the parts that keep the roof from caving in, etc. (I assume you meant building codes)
The forthcoming mass deportation will definitely fuck shit up though. UK is having a similar issue due to Brexit. I guess Eastern Europeans are to the UK, as Mexicans/etc. are to the US?
I didn't want to get into a huge aside so I just left it there but imo the NEC et al are absolutely great. In a lot of ways current building standards actually make things easier and cheaper, they remove ambiguity and offer a set of best practices that are time tested to reduce labor and errors.
The issue is how local municipalities enforce it along with zoning to make building massively more bureaucratic. Reaching the right people is impossible, everyone has their own agenda and interpretation, and city councils across the country add arbitrary stipulations entirely to reduce construction so line goes up.
> education costs have vastly outpaced inflation[2] as have medical costs[3].
This is basically a law of nature. Anything that's done by humans and can't be scaled will necessarily get more expensive in real terms over time. See: Baumol effect.
Every generation has challenges and benefits. Framing the narrative can happen in any direction and the variance in group is bigger than the variance between.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/09/05/how-gen-z-outpaces-past-...
[1] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/americans-wages-are...
[2] https://www.protectedincome.org/news/labor-day-peak-65-trade...
[3] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spe...