[mikestew]

Despite TFA coming from Visa, of all places, I found it to be a read worthy of my time. Basically, inheritances might not be as large as one might suspect, and the all that "inheritance spending lift" might already be happening (my parents are blowing my inheritance).

I might take issue with the conclusion at the very bottom that GenX and Millenials are ahead of Boomers on a capital per-capita basis. That might be true, but (for example) when this youngest-of-them Boomer bought his first house, housing was much more affordable. So it's not like the "kids" are necessarily spending their money on the fabled avocado toast (a dish this Boomer enjoys very much, thank you).

[skybrian]

In many places you couldn't even buy "starter houses" like they had anymore. They wouldn't meet modern building codes. When people do manage to buy a house, it will likely be a nicer one.

[rayiner]

At least in part, that's because the positional status of "many places" has changed dramatically. We have a growing population with a high degree of internal mobility. That means that places don't stay in a fixed position on the product lineup. Santa Clara County today isn't Santa Clara County in 1990. It's more akin to what Beverly Hills or the Gold Coast were in 1990.

[cucumber3732842]

Those places who got rich wrote laws for the whole state in the intervening time. In 1970-whatever if some poor mill town on the outskirts or some exurb didn't want to play by the rich big citys rules they didn't have to. They could allow street after street of garbage starter homes on postage stamps with nary a fuck about muh stormwater. These days they'll be fined by the state, lose their grant funding, etc, etc. if they did that.

[SoftTalker]

It may look nicer, and have more features, but it's probably not built any better. Older homes were built with copper plumbing, plaster walls, solid hardwood floors, wood trim, and plywood subfloors, roof deck, and sheathing.

New homes use PVC or PEX pipes, drywall, OSB (basically glued-up wood chips) instead of plywood, laminate floors, and plastic or styrene trim.

The only things really better today are insulation and wiring.

[Kirby64]

> New homes use PVC or PEX pipes, drywall, OSB (basically glued-up wood chips) instead of plywood, laminate floors, and plastic or styrene trim.

PEX is better than copper. Drywall is better than lathe and plaster. Modern OSB like Advantech are just superior to plywood subfloors in every metric. Maybe the hardwood floors were better back then in some ways, but engineered hardwood or vinyl planks are superior in many ways over hardwood flooring. Better wear resistance, less shift with moisture/temp, etc.

Most countertops are far superior these days, with wide availability of quartz, granite, etc.

I’d say almost everything is built better at a minimum standard. You could always find poorly built houses back then, but the difference is there wasn’t even any rules often…

[hollerith]

If drywall is better than lath and plaster, then why is lath and plaster still used today -- in high-end construction?

[Kirby64]

The same reason many inferior materials are used in higher end goods: there’s some mystic that its superior for one reason or another, potentially aesthetically, and the higher cost is sometimes a draw by itself. There’s nothing you can’t achieve with drywall that you can with lath and plaster.

There’s no reason ever to use marble over quartz designed to look like marble… but some people do anyways.

[garciansmith]

I disagree about drywall versus plaster, save for ease of repair. Maybe it's just in most cases you won't encounter the highest quality drywall, nor will the installation be well done and actually last even if, in theory, it could be done well. E.g., my 100+ year plaster is still there and totally fine save in high-moisture rooms, whereas my friend's 20-year-old house has screws or nails starting to pop out of the drywall everywhere.

I was speaking to an architect about this very issue a few weeks ago, and he also noted that there are also acoustic properties to plaster and lathe that make it much nicer for residences (and if you have an old home and can afford it, repair the plaster and don't replace it with drywall).

Although maybe texture and acoustics count as aesthetics to you (same with real wood floors looking far better than vinyl). When it comes to materials used in residences, aesthetics matter to a lot of people.

[loeg]

The new building methods and materials are genuinely better.

(Criticizing OSB and glazing plywood is crazy. They're both just composite wood products. OSB is totally fine for what it's used for.)

[SoftTalker]

Having seen OSB fall apart when it gets wet vs plywood which can delaminate but is still solid wood, I would disagree. OSB works if you can ensure it stays dry.

[cucumber3732842]

>OSB works if you can ensure it stays dry.

Plywood is getting to be almost as bad.

The glue changed and got categorucally worse 10-20yr ago.

[Danox]

Not better just faster to put up, all those expensive cheap track homes and luxury apartments going up they are not made or built better not by a longshot.

[loeg]

Faster and cheaper to put up is better! Modern insulation is more comfortable and saves you on utility bills; modern electric is safer and supports more usecases; it's easier to attach things to drywall walls than plaster; etc, etc, etc. "The old ways were better" is rosy retrospection.

[alephnerd]

In California, a big difference is earthquake retrofitting. Older houses often aren't retrofit until sale, and retrofitting is expensive.

Also, I've noticed newer houses (2000s-present) are airier and have more natural light compared to older (pre-90s) houses.

[Jtsummers]

> Also, I've noticed newer houses (2000s-present) are airier and have more natural light compared to older (pre-90s) houses.

This depends a bit more on the specific era of the home, rather than just being pre-90s, but it's particularly present in 1970s housing stock. The energy crisis led to a style of home design that favored small windows (energy efficient windows weren't yet really a thing, or at least not widely available at affordable prices) with lower ceilings. After the energy crisis through the 80s things started opening up again, and then improvements in insulation and windows (for two specific features) and improved efficiency in AC units led to a further opening up of home designs (with larger windows, higher ceilings) through the 90s and to today.

[SoftTalker]

Yeah, go back to 1950s or earlier and you are into the pre-AC era, houses had big windows, big covered porches, and higher ceilings.

[lisper]

Newer CA homes also tend to do better in fires.

[michaelt]

At least in my area, the price of the land is a huge fraction of the value of a house.

Imagine a house-sized plot of land costs $250,000. That means a builder can offer buyers a $20,000 building for $270,000 or a $150,000 building for $400,000. And in the latter case, the buyer gets 7.5x the building for 1.5x the cost.

[epistasis]

It is a very good read. And my only difference in option is that I think Visa of all places would be very knowledgeable about spending and where it all goes.

They have an absolutely vast amount of information about how money flows in the economy, and an interest in finding out where it will flow in the future, and when.

[dsauerbrun]

They have the data but I wouldn't trust their analysis of it unless they release all the raw data which would be to the benefit of their competitors.

[rlucas]

This piece is very much not sourced from payment rails transaction data. It's big demographic and macro data and the sources are all nicely cited

[mae3x]

"my parents are blowing my inheritance". Really? It is their money, not yours. I think you mean, "my parents are spending down their savings."

[beepboopboop]

I read that as an observation rather than commentary on who the money belongs to.

[mikestew]

I meant when I wrote. I just might not have meant it as seriously as you seem to think.

[rayiner]

> That might be true, but (for example) when this youngest-of-them Boomer bought his first house, housing was much more affordable.

I think my fellow millennials are overlooking something in our complaints about housing prices, which is that the positional status of neighborhoods doesn't stay constant. There's a good chance that the neighborhood you fondly remember growing up in was much less desirable in relative terms than it is today.

My wife and I, for example, bought a house 10 years ago. In that time, the value has easily doubled, growing far faster than wages or inflation. But it's also a completely different product today. 10 years ago, we were young parents willing to make a lot of compromises to get a house on the water. Pre-COVID, the commute was 1:15 minutes each way, 5 days a week. The house next door was a tear-down with a tree growing in the living room. The other houses on the street were small cottages from the 1920s. Today, half of them have been torn down, rebuilt, and filled with more affluent neighbors.

If my kids grow up and say, "I have a professional job, why can't I afford a house like you guys did?" A big part of the answer is: we couldn't have afforded to live in their neighborhood at your age. We bought our house in a completely different neighborhood.