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by 9x39 44 days ago
Middle class families can, but young families just don't now. Median homebuyer age is now 56, up from 31 decades ago:

https://x.com/heimbergecon/status/1943925791055917417

As for how it all happened, I don't have a comprehensive exploration of this to share, but look at interest rates and house sale prices:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

Sale prices begin rising immediately once interest rates dipped to the lowest ever (borrowers could "afford" more principal - sale price - for similar monthly payments).

Combine that with houses making up a significant chunk of balance sheets for the US, and we (collectively) are loathe to let prices fall:

https://eyeonhousing.org/2024/02/homeownership-is-key-to-hou...

1 comments

HN, we seem to care about this. We post a lot about it. Maybe we should put together a site to consolidate this sort of information, work on articulating something insightful about what is going on, and then a system/group/accountability(this is important) for pushing this to our politicians. My grandfather used to do that and the US was improving. My dad did nothing other than vote. I've done nothing other than vote. The US stopped improving. It's easy to setup a ghost website and do nothing though, so we would need a way to hold each other accountable, broken out simple to follow actions to take. Basically a 10 step program but with the steps being political action we hold each other accountable to take.