Americans are living through the toughest housing market in a generation and, for some young people, the quintessential dream of owning a home is slipping away.
Mortgage rates surged in recent years, hitting the highest levels in more than two decades last fall. While rates have come down slightly since then, home prices remain painfully elevated and a limited inventory of housing is still failing to keep up with demand. Such conditions mean that housing has become woefully unaffordable.
Falling mortgage rates in recent weeks have helped, but home prices could remain sticky, according to economists. It’s still a cruddy time to be hunting for a home, but it’s even worse for young, first-time buyers who need to save up for a down payment and build up their credit score during a time when Baby Boomers are refusing to part with their big houses.
The situation isn’t a whole lot better for renters, with rents barely coming down from record highs and half of tenants in that market saying they can’t even afford their payments.
The uneasiness over America’s affordability crisis is captured clearly in surveys and polls, but data that outlines the sentiment specifically among young people is limited.
And Canada has been struggling with this for something like a decade. I am not Canadian, just adding to what you are saying in how this is not a problem that is limited to the USA.
We have the same problem as the US. Vote team red team or team blue. We have a team orange in Canada, however they’re seemingly unable to find strong leadership.
In the USA we get the option to allow the rich to mostly ignore us while they increase their profits, or for them to flat-out enslave us while they increase their profits. Truly the worst time-line:-(.
German here. Same shit with house prices here. Unbelievable expensive. Netherlands, Denmark, Swiss, France all the same. All out of the cheap money/ interests thanks to Lehmans & broker bros.
The only country where housing is affordable is China. They built way too many apartment buildings. Entire ghost towns. People are fucked there as well though. Standard people lost a lot of money. Crazy world.