Evilphd666 [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net

6d ago

First-time US homebuyers at a generational low.

www.theguardian.com

Why is the number of first-time US homebuyers at a generational low?

Typically, when demand drops, prices follow. But even when the number of buyers dropped, prices kept climbing. The median price of a single-family home hit record highs in 2024, and has only continued going up. In May, the median price was $427,800 – up from $357,100 in 2021, when home prices started to climb.

At today’s prices, a family would need to earn $126,700 a year to afford monthly payments on an average home purchased in 2024, up from $79,300 annually in 2021, according to a report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Economists say a historically low inventory of existing homes, coupled with sluggish new construction, is keeping prices high.

All over my are there are shit tons of new

starting at $350-400k

There isn't a damned shortage. There is a shortage of affordable homes. Who is afording these

is beyond me because the jobs in the area don't pay nearly enough and there can't be that many upper management / C-suite families that can afford them. I am seeing banks offering Zero down / no PMI like in 2008. Like they are baking another housing crash.

United States | News & Politics @midwest.social

Davriellelouna @lemmy.world

2w ago

Why is the number of first-time US homebuyers at a generational low?

www.theguardian.com /society/ng-interactive/2025/jul/13/first-time-us-homebuyers-low

News @lemmy.world

Davriellelouna @lemmy.world

2w ago

Why is the number of first-time US homebuyers at a generational low?

www.theguardian.com /society/ng-interactive/2025/jul/13/first-time-us-homebuyers-low

19 comments

Zero mention of private equity investment firms buying up single family homes and driving up housing inflation.
- Yeah, I noticed that as well. Not to mention AIRBNB who are renting out "investment" homes. Housing needs to be fundamentally redesigned to remove housing scalpers from the equation...
  
  we should remove the leeches from earth.
My fairly lib coworker has frequently said "no one I know owns a house who hasn't gotten financial help or inherited it" and he's 40.
Who is affording these is beyond me
nobody is. most of them sit empty, with just a baseline of maintenance, so line goes up.
at some point the desperate masses are going to just move themselves into empty neighborhoods. i suppose at some point they'll just have armed patrol drones
- We're doing the China Ghost Cities thing but real and somehow even more wasteful and horrific than the fantasy projection.
  
  holy shit u are right. just without any of the associated infrastructure. "ghost neighboorhoods/5 over 1s and datacenters"
One of the things I hate most about capitalism is how it makes you a psychopath. Whenever I read stuff like this, I find myself literally hoping the market crashes so all this money we've spent years saving up will let us get out of renting forever. It makes you wish everyone will suffer, including yourself, so that you can time the market and scrape out something.
I see two kinds of construction:
apartment buildings where rent is several thousand a month
single-family and double-decker flips starting at $1M
I live in one of the most "affordable" parts of my city, and there are mobile homes in my area selling for over $400,000. I am not in a coastal state or a top ten metro area. Shit is insane and unsustainable.
- I live in a pricier area and mobile home are $75-$200k but you have to pay land rent worth $2400-$3200/month. There's no winning.
- It's super bleak. Prices in my city have basically tripled in the last 6 years. Shit that would have been $100,000 in 2019 is going for $350,000 now. It's out of control.
- What is "mobile home"?
  
  Also called a "manufactured home." They're pre built structures that are meant to be trailered to a plot of land and then dropped there (either with or without a standard foundation) and then hooked up to water/sewer/power/gas. The build quality is generally quite a bit lower than a standard ("stick built") house, because they need to be light enough to move around and totally self-contained. They only tend to last 20-30 years before they start to fall apart. If they're well made and newer, though, you wouldn't necessarily know from looking at the inside that they're not regular houses.
  Historically, they've been a way for lower income people to own a home (at least in the US), but that's receding rapidly. When people talk about "trailer parks," they mean mobile home complexes in which the residents (usually) own the structure but pay rent on the land, though in some areas (like where I live) lots of folks buy the plot of land and either drop a home on it or get the one that's already there. You can buy the structures for $100,000 or less (though they can definitely go higher), but the insane price of land and real estate price gouging is pushing up the overall cost into the mid six-figures in some places, even for units that are a decade or more old.

19 comments