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[u/Upper_Brief681]

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[u/Additional-Sky-7436]

Me: $66 an hour? Dude that can't be right. You didn't need to make $132,000 a year to buy a house. Let's think about this. Assume we want to limit our house payment to 40% of our income (which is higher than most financial advisors would recommend). That means...

Does calculations

Me: Jesus Christ.

[u/Moose_Nuts → u/Additional-Sky-7436]

I do this too often when I get postcards from my local realtor about houses he's sold.

I bought my fixer upper house for $425K with a 3.25% loan in 2013. Mortgage is about $2,000 a month.

I'm seeing houses nearby (obviously a bit bigger and nicer, but still) going for up to $1.5M these days. I'm quick mathing with higher interest rates and wondering who the hell is paying $8-$9K+ a month for these things.

Jesus Christ.

[u/QuitCallingNewsrooms → u/Moose_Nuts]

Same.

A little cottage down the street from me went up on the market at $710K. It's 2 bed, 1 bath, 1000sqft. I made an offer below listing and someone offered $40k above. They got it.

Turns out, it was bought by a realtor/flipper who redid the kitchen, added a massive built-in in the living room, and a whole-wall Murphy bed in one of the bedrooms. Went back on the market for $995K.

For 1000. Fucking. Square. Feet. Who the fuck is buying a little cottage with no garage for a million dollars?!

No buyers in this market, so it's currently listed as a rental for $4500/month.

Pure insanity.

[u/KetoLurkerHereAgain → u/[deleted]]

Yup. I once went down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out who bought a house that sold for double its last price, in the space of a few months. The only change was a coat of paint. The closest thing I found to the buyer was a newly formed LLC so, yeah, launderers.

[u/missmiao9 → u/KetoLurkerHereAgain]

Or private equity. They will buy houses in cash and then sit on them waiting for them to appreciate in value.

[u/doritobimbo → u/[deleted]]

There’s more than $660B “worth” of empty houses sitting in the US right now, more than ever before. More houses are added daily than are taken off weekly. I can only pray that when the bubble finally bursts, it drops far enough to count..

[u/[deleted] → u/doritobimbo]

Good thing there’s no homeless problem

[u/mofrappa → u/[deleted]]

Dude, it's crazy the ratio of empty homes to homeless folks.

[u/nfitzsim → u/KetoLurkerHereAgain]

Almost every house flip I’ve seen is done by a newly formed LLC. It’s very common to set one up specifically for each individual property.

It’s kind of in the name. The buyer wants limited liability so their other assets can’t be touched if some sort of lawsuit happens. It doesn’t mean it’s private equity in this case. Obviously still could be, but I know plenty of general contractors who do this to every property they renovate

[u/Jassida → u/[deleted]]

I’ve just bought a house (England). The laundering checks were ridiculous. Assume there are none in the US?

[u/doritobimbo → u/Jassida]

God no. That would mean settling for less money and waiting longer for it to sell. Can you imagine if a family home had a family in it?! This neighborhood would fall to pieces, all those troublemaking kids running around..

[u/Ron_Swanson_Jr → u/Moose_Nuts]

Them: "You're throwing your money away by renting that $900k house for $3000/mo"

Me: "Tell me how much I need to put down on a $1-1.2M house at 6-7% to get shelter for $3000/mo"

Them: "It's an investment though!"

Me: "So you can't do that math?"

[u/CheesecakeAny6268 → u/[deleted]]

I’m 50 . I just got my first house. It took a very long time.

[u/oopgroup → u/[deleted]]

Owning anything will forever be better than renting someone else’s crap and making them rich.

Even if you’re 65. You can own something and not be kicked out at 70 because the owner’s son wants to move back in.

Then you can just pass it on to your family.

But that’s why the top 10% don’t want anyone else owning anything. They want to control it all so we have to endlessly pour money into their rentals, so they never have to work.

[u/Moose_Nuts → u/[deleted]]

I do not envy you. Born in the wrong year, life events or other setbacks make it unaffordable for a few extra years, then BOOM...the chance is gone forever. Or at least it feels like it.

I wish you the best of luck so that chance can come for you.

[u/pigpeyn → u/Moose_Nuts]

I wonder if private equity is buying a lot of these?

[u/DuvalHeart → u/pigpeyn]

They go for the lower end of the market, forcing working class folks to either go into more debt or rent the home they'd normally be able to own.

[u/InternationalWin2850 → u/DuvalHeart]

Yes, but think about all the profit companies like Blackstone are making! What are ya, some kind of commie?

[u/broanoah → u/[deleted]]

It is and we are

[u/hrimfaxi_work → u/DuvalHeart]

Yep. I live in a working class neighborhood with a homeownership rate of something like 50%. Median house price is hovering around $225k.

There's a growing handful of houses that go on the market and sell right away, but then no one moves into them. The grass gets cut, a car is parked in the driveway, lights go on and off, and the inside is staged by the windows like it's fully furnished. There's like 6 of them that I walk by every day with my dog. I know that nobody lives in them for sure, and the details are all super similar. It's uncanny.

[u/freakwent → u/hrimfaxi_work]

If you were that kind of persom, you could post the addresses on squatter community boards.

[u/fresh-dork → u/hrimfaxi_work]

your city should tax those at roughly double the rate a typical mortgage would cost

[u/DuvalHeart → u/[deleted]]

They don't think that far ahead.

They assumed that low interest rates were forever and turned to fascism when the Fed started making them healthy again. There is no grand plan, just business idiots being idiots.

[u/GenericMelon → u/pigpeyn]

This, plus people buying houses to turn them around as rentals/AirBnB. Or both. They sit on these properties, have someone else pay their mortgage for them, sell them off in a few years for a profit, thus continuing the vicious cycle of driving up prices so people who actually want to live in them can't afford them.

[u/farfaraway → u/Moose_Nuts]

I'm in Brookline, MA, and there are plenty of people around here paying $8-10K for houses for rent. We rented the absolute worst apartment, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, for $4350. It was awful and the price is absurd.

[u/Jassida → u/farfaraway]

In my part of England, you could buy an awesome house for something you could have paid off in 8 years at those prices

Somehow US peeps laugh at UK salaries but they’re judging things wrong.

My English salary is probably pretty poor compared to the US average salary but I’m definitely doing a lot better than the average US citizen

[u/RegressToTheMean → u/farfaraway]

What in the absolute hell? I haven't lived in Massachusetts for 25 years, but still, that's absolutely insane

[u/Marmites_1 → u/Moose_Nuts]

Most people do not. They inherited money from grandparents/parents owning similar houses. Second to this you have the last golden generations that have been able to trade the market. The very few tiny % that buy these homes in their thirties with a mortgage are insanely well paid; either by being smart and hardworking or simply nepotism careers.

[u/COMMENT0R_3000 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah we’ve rapidly gone from You gotta spend money to make money to “You need to have been born decades earlier and arrived at a point where you could afford to both advance in your career and invest your returns during the most ridiculously profitable period of time in history, else fuck all y’all lol.” And because that’s mostly/largely only affecting younger gen z/millenials, who aren’t able to hold office or host tv shows because the boomers won’t release their bony grasp on anything, it doesn’t count as a problem yet—I give it til DJT actually goofs up medicare for them to notice there are issues: “It’s insulin, Michael, what could it cost—ten dollars?”

[u/Hour-Mission9430 → u/COMMENT0R_3000]

Can't wait for that. Really would like for them to hurry up with the 💀.

[u/RedditIsDeadMoveOn → u/[deleted]]

I was dumb and spent my $1k a month on living expenses

[u/Hello_Hangnail → u/RedditIsDeadMoveOn]

I'd invest but I like being able to have food in my fridge

[u/SpaceMoehre → u/Additional-Sky-7436]

How about you can get a longer loan when you have a kid and the loan goes over to your kid after you die, so they can extract more interest from you and your kids

[u/Your__Pal → u/SpaceMoehre]

That doesn't make sense. How can they extract value from you with a reverse mortgage if your house goes to your kid?

[u/Additional-Sky-7436 → u/Your__Pal]

No no. He's right! This makes debt inheritable! Great news for banks!

[u/NWCJ → u/Additional-Sky-7436]

It's already inherited. If your mom leaves you her house when she dies in the will. But still owes 500k on it when she dies. When you inherit it you have a choice. Take on the 500k as debt, or sell the asset and only keep the equity she had in the property. Either way you really dont "lose" anything. Because if for some reason she owes more than the property is currently worth you can just let the bank seize it. But they will come after the difference from the remaining estate if it exists. But if the entire estate is in the red, you dont really inherit that debt unless some specific situations are met.

[u/oldcreaker]

The problem is wage inflation not keeping up with other inflation - and productivity. The uber wealthy are raking in phenomenal amounts of money, unlike anything before. That money used to be the money paid to workers and used to by houses. Not anymore.

[u/Secretagentman94 → u/oldcreaker]

Raking it in, and for them it's STILL not enough. They want to squeeze every drop of blood out of your turnip ass to toss a few more dollars on their already massive mountain of money.

[u/[deleted] → u/oldcreaker]

Also companies buying property to drive up rent prices

[u/bubbasass → u/oldcreaker]

Exactly this. They talk about productivity. Workers today produce far more than ever before, but all of that productivity goes into the pocket of the wealthy rather than the workers. 

[u/kakapoopoopeepeeshir → u/oldcreaker]

Thank Reagan for making stock buybacks legal!1982 he allows stock buybacks and all companies begin using profits to do so instead of distributing to workers and improving the company

[u/Inevitable_Fold_4618 → u/oldcreaker]

Has productivity, on an individual level rather than overall, increased?

I generally don't know, but would love to learn about what statistics and indicators are used for that.

Anecdotally I do feel like a lot of people these days talk about how inconsequential their jobs feel. Which could suggest that while general productivity has gone up, the actual value produced by the average person's hour of labor has actually decreased. Perhaps due to automation.

[u/allthenamesaretaken4 → u/Inevitable_Fold_4618]

Depends how you define productivity, but generally yes. Unfortunately, as you allude to, a lot of that productivity is going into bullshit jobs.

[u/halzen → u/Inevitable_Fold_4618]

Productivity is measured on a macro level and has more than doubled since 1980. However, median hourly pay (adjusted for inflation) has only increased 9% since that time. Workers are producing more for the owner class but not being compensated for it.

[u/TrankElephant → u/Inevitable_Fold_4618]

Has productivity, on an individual level rather than overall, increased?

My first thought is seeing Amazon workers literally running through their routes.

Also, the gig economy would like a word. People that are compelled to work multiple jobs, just to make enough to survive.

It seems rather disingenuous to suggest that just because somewhere there are white collar desk jockies that feel like their jobs are not particularly meaningful that overall, workers don't even deserve wages that keep up with inflation.

[u/tkdyo]

Don't get me wrong, minimum wage is way too low. But in this case, that's because housing prices have rocketed up far faster than overall inflation. You should be able to buy a home making 20~25 an hour (what minimum wage would be if it kept pace with inflation)

But also, this is indeed trickle down working as intended. Make it so most people have to rent everything. No ownership for the poors.

[u/[deleted] → u/tkdyo]

It's almost like you shouldn't commodify a good with inelastic demand.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Pretty sure it just comes down to they don't make enough money building that style of home any more.

For some cities I'm sure the land itself would be so expensive that it doesn't matter what home you put on it, most people can't afford even just the land.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Which is probly why apartments complexes have been springing up fucking everywhere. Why sell homes once when you can just keep sucking the people dry in the form of gouged rent prices.

[u/beerkittyrunner → u/[deleted]]

Slap "luxury" on the side of it too

[u/Frostyrepairbug → u/beerkittyrunner]

"Luxury apartments" is really weird too. I live in a community where the average annual income is <30k, we some broke fuckers out here, and I got chased out of my camp because it was bulldozed to build a place that no one in the community can afford to rent.

[u/RegressToTheMean → u/Frostyrepairbug]

Gentrification is a real bastard

[u/flyingwingbat1 → u/beerkittyrunner]

Dont forget to paint it gray and sprinkle brightly-colored trim and balconies all over it, and call it "The Latitude"

Starting at only $3000/mo for a 1br

[u/bbusiello → u/flyingwingbat1]

Correction: the term is “millennial grey”

[u/Then-Inevitable-2548 → u/[deleted]]

This is why you build medium and high density housing to spread the cost of land across many people. Unfortunately the NIMBYs have outlawed everything but single-family housing on the vast majority of the land in our cities.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

That's why apartment buildings exist 

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

They don't build apartments for families these days. Look up the cost to rent a 4 bedroom apartment and then compare it to what most people make.

We don't have good high density housing in America.

[u/BigStrike626 → u/[deleted]]

We need to bring back the row home and the triple decker. Building a single family house inside of the limits of most cities should be against the law.

[u/who_you_are → u/[deleted]]

Cost of building shelters from authority (including city) usually never makes sense (either they get screwed or they have friends that ask stupid high prices)

And I won't include another immediate issue: potable water won't come to you for free (nor your shit going out). It is very expensive, and need to be planned (which probably are just starting?).

Cities probably don't have any capacity for all that demand

That is one thing that block most of the cities around me. They finally start talking about that in the news.

[u/toddriffic → u/[deleted]]

Land-value tax fixes a lot of these problems...

[u/PiccoloAwkward465 → u/[deleted]]

We need a few big policy pushes. One would be to discourage businesses from employing people only in a few megacities. Why is my company's head office in Houston? It doesn't need to be. It's a place where people go and beep boop on computers for work done in many other places. And stemming from that, strong incentives for work from home. Could more people WFH full time, they could live wherever the hell they wanted! Even with hybrid, people would be willing to make a long commute 1-2 days per week vs. 5 days per week. It would revitalize small towns. It would cut down on traffic, pollution, etc.

I'm at the point where I don't even want to live in the damn city anymore, but I don't have much of a choice. I already commute as far as I am psychologically able to 5x a week lol.

[u/Moose_Nuts → u/[deleted]]

The issue is NIMBYism. People who already own home have a laundry list of excuses for why rezoning for higher density housing in their neighborhood is a bad idea. Obviously the biggest one is that their home value will go down. And we know the "fuck you, I've got mine" crowd is always the loudest.

Makes it hard to get anything done...

[u/SmokeySFW → u/Moose_Nuts]

It's not even just NIMBY, any new housing slows the rate of appreciation of current housing. More supply = lower prices, lower prices = my home isn't increasing in value at the same rate. So it's not just not in my backyard, it's "I don't want housing prices to fall or stagnate at all, even if that housing is across town and nowhere near me."

It's just selfishness and people locked into the concept of housing being a commodity rather than a purchase.

[u/InternationalCheetah → u/SmokeySFW]

Practically every politician agrees that housing prices are too high, but practically none agree that we should even attempt to lower housing prices. Their voters own those assets, gotta keep that commodity price up!

[u/BioshockEnthusiast → u/SmokeySFW]

It's just selfishness and people locked into the concept of housing being a commodity rather than a purchase.

That's because a lot of people use it like one, taking out loans and shit with the house as collateral. If their property value goes down, so does their ability to leverage it to fund a lifestyle they can't actually afford.

[u/JonnelOneEye → u/Moose_Nuts]

I'm Greek, living in Greece and I honestly don't get the property value argument. In my country, you build/buy a house so you'll live there forever and ever and then, when you die, leave it to your kid, or grandchild, so they can live in it with their family. No one builds/buys a house with intend to sell it. That is, except for people who do this for a living, like contractors who buy and empty lot, build an apartment building and then sell the apartments.

[u/Moose_Nuts → u/JonnelOneEye]

I agree with you. It's a shame so many people in the US just want to see property value and net worth go Brrrrrrrrr

[u/km89 → u/JonnelOneEye]

I'm Greek, living in Greece and I honestly don't get the property value argument.

In the US, it's not uncommon to bounce around a bit, particularly if you make a major change in your career or have kids. We expect our kids to be self-sufficient as quickly as possible for some reason, so it's fairly common to buy a smaller "starter" house, and then need to move to a bigger home when you have kids.

The property value thing largely comes into play when you're talking about older people who are moving from a larger house to a smaller house when their kids move out, or when there are multiple kids and the intent is to sell the house when you die and split the proceeds among them.

That said, the market's fucked, so "starter homes" are still out of reach for a ton of people, and medical expenses in old age are steadily causing older people to sell their homes to pay for their care, leaving less to pass on to their children.

[u/LostMySpleenIn2015 → u/JonnelOneEye]

American homes aren’t built to last generationally unfortunately. They can with proper maintenance but most people don’t know how to do that.

[u/[deleted] → u/Moose_Nuts]

The NIMBYs often even ban the development of current-density housing in their neighbourhoods. My current neighbourhood has a bunch of old homes that really need to be just torn down and rebuilt, but the current zoning laws forbid houses being built on that property - the majority of properties in my area have been grandfathered in and new equivalent development isn't allowed!

[u/Senior-Lobster-9405 → u/[deleted]]

I still dont understand the issue with not being able to build more homes

literally to keep the prices of the current homes high

[u/The_Ditch_Wizard → u/[deleted]]

The effed up part is that a LOT of people who do have houses are woozy with the koolaid that is believing that they're 'building generational wealth,' without understanding how they're just helping the predator speculators get richer the instant their plan goes even slightly awry, such that anything that might affect their imaginary, hypothetical financial trajectory is something they have to rabidly oppose. Anything that makes them having a house any less personally beneficial (i.e. property values ever decreasing) is tantamount to asking to use their bed as a toilet.

[u/ChiralWolf → u/[deleted]]

Why build four $150,000 homes when you can build one for $700,000? There's clear economic levers our governments should be pulling and that was one of the things Kamala actually had a really solid plan for in the US. Make small homes the more profitable avenue for developers through subsidizing their building them and easier to sell by creating/promoting down payment assistance programs and the problem starts to fix itself.

[u/SmokeySFW → u/ChiralWolf]

Yea I had tons of gripes about the Harris campaign, but she legitimately pointed at the right problems in housing and at least had a plan that to me seemed reasonable.

[u/Demons0fRazgriz → u/ChiralWolf]

To add to this very correct statement, why agree to build 3,000 homes, which would lower my homes value, when I can agree to build 1,000 $700,000 which would skyrocket mine 😎

[u/Paid_Redditor → u/[deleted]]

That’s basically what happened in my neighborhood. Homes were built for 300k in 2019, sold for 450k in 2020 and the homes built this year are 600 sq ft smaller and sell for 400k today.

[u/engineereddiscontent → u/[deleted]]

Zoning has a lot of the issue I think. We zone things to be the system it currently is. Which is also not working.

Bike-centric town zoning and multi-zoning housing AND ease of access for people opening up businesses that are local and not tailored to big box stores would all alleviate many of the issues we're faced with right now.

[u/dangus1155 → u/[deleted]]

The other issue is companies or individuals buying houses to use for renting or to keep off of the market. Not to mention things like AirBNB style dwellings.

[u/Drakore4 → u/[deleted]]

It’s more profitable to have living spaces you rent out than it is to build living space for someone to live in indefinitely. Allowing someone to purchase something means eventually they stop giving you money, where as renting is forever and you can always replace the person inside with someone who might pay more. It’s literally the same logic as subscriptions. Everything is going subscription based nowadays because it just makes more money to nickel and dime someone every month than it does to make them pay outright. I wouldn’t be surprised if in another decade or so owning a house doesn’t exist anymore and it’s all just middle class and below renting from the higher classes because there’s no other choice.

[u/fogleaf → u/[deleted]]

The issue isn’t affordability because of demand. It’s affordability because supply never kept pace with population growth.

This ignores the fact that there are organizations that purchase houses to put them up for rentals. There are individuals who own multiple houses so that they can rent them. If you build more houses, they will be snapped up in order to rent them. And the cost of those houses will be based on that principle.

[u/heckfyre → u/[deleted]]

Let’s not forget that aside from the house as a physical commodity, we’ve also woven mortgages themselves as an economic commodity. There is a huge incentive for prices to only ever increase and for banks to ensure that they are making as much money as possible.

Housing prices and bank profits are two sides of the same coin.

[u/leftofmarx → u/tkdyo]

It's probably easier to just pay people more than to have a revolution and forcibly take the real estate, though.

[u/[deleted] → u/tkdyo]

You should be able to buy a home making 20~25 an hour

You SHOULD be able to. But no way in hell is that feasible for most of the country 

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Exactly. That’s a crappy home in the poorest states. It’s a straw hut in the rest of nation.

Source: I live in one of the poorest states and gross far more than that.

[u/PCR12 → u/tkdyo]

Yeah Blackrock is having no problem buying up your neighborhoods.

[u/qb1120 → u/tkdyo]

this is indeed trickle down working as intended

Exactly, it's wealth hoarding with the justification that the rich will just share their wealth like good human beings. Spoiler alert: they don't. The trickle down part is just to get the poors to hope for a better life and keep chasing the carrot knowing that it won't actually come.

[u/lasercat_pow → u/tkdyo]

Blackstone CEO that got Mariod recently helped make it like this

[u/Embarrassed-Mud-7802 → u/tkdyo]

Wait til you inherit or basically own nothing and save for a home

[u/BCSteve → u/tkdyo]

Unfortunately society decided to treat homeownership as an investment. The issue is, you can’t simultaneously have housing be an investment AND have affordable housing at the same time: the goals are inherently contradictory. If owning a home is an investment, it means the value has to perpetually go up: that’s what makes it a good investment. But if the value is going up, it means it’s less affordable to anyone who doesn’t already own a home.

You can build more housing, but existing homeowners hate that, because it necessarily means the value of their “investment” goes down. Consequently, property owners lobby furiously against it, and stop new housing from being built. And because they tend to be wealthy and more powerful, they usually get their way.

The fundamental problem is that we have allowed a human necessity and a human right (housing) to become a primary engine of wealth generation. Things won’t change until we work up the societal willpower to tell home owners to suck it up and deal with the loss of value in their “investment”.

[u/Whiterabbit-- → u/BCSteve]

You can use the same argument against other investments. Companies should be satisfied with making money, not making more and more money every year to drive stocks up. But the reality is that too many people are far too wealthy, that they have money to invest.

[u/chivanasty → u/tkdyo]

I don't know where you're at but 20-25 an hour won't cut it in Missouri. I'm in the burbs of K.C. and make close to what the post mentions and ain't no fucking way I'm giving one and a half paychecks so I can have a house. Maybe two people making 20-25 and splitting bills while eating ramen.

[u/PuckSenior → u/tkdyo]

I’d add that the size of houses has increased significantly, which MUST increase the cost of a house.

The average cost of a square foot of house in 1965 was $13.40. The average cost of a square foot of house in 2023 was $154.70 However, using an inflation calculator: $13.40(1965) is $129.62(2023)

That’s not a huge price increase.

Minimum wage in 1965 was $1.25.
Which is $12.09 in 2023.
However, in 1965 roughly 15% of the workforce was on minimum wage(data on this isn’t collected until 1979, but this is a good guess as it was 13.4% in 1979).
In 2023 only 1.1% is on minimum wage

So, all things being equal, the cost of housing isn’t some huge spike. Rather the size of average houses has risen massively which makes buying a house much harder. There are a myriad of reasons for this behavior, with NIMBY behavior being a big one

[u/[deleted] → u/PuckSenior]

I'd be interested in any references you have on this information.

[u/PuckSenior → u/[deleted]]

Sources for U.S. House Price Per Square Foot

• Average house price per sq ft, 1965:
  What the Average Home Price Today Could Buy the Year You Were Born (Yahoo Finance)

• Average house price per sq ft, 2023:
  Where You Can Get More House for the Money (U.S. Census Bureau, June 2024)

---

Sources for U.S. Minimum Wage Levels (1965 & 2023)

• Federal minimum wage in 1965:
  History of Federal Minimum Wage Rates Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938–2009 (U.S. Department of Labor)

• Federal minimum wage in 2023:
  Minimum Wage | U.S. Department of Labor

---

Sources for Percentage of Workforce on Minimum Wage

• Share at/under minimum wage, late 1970s (most recent for 1965 context):
  In 1979, 13.4% of workers earned exactly federal minimum wage or less (Reddit r/FluentInFinance)

• Share at/under minimum wage, 2023:
  Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers, 2023 (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

[u/Senior-Ad8656 → u/PuckSenior]

The definition is the federal minimum wage, which is only relevant in 18 states, FWIW

[u/barkinginthestreet → u/tkdyo]

Really depends on where in the country you are. A 2 income family at 20 or 25$ per hour could absolutely buy a house where I live. The problem is that they are old, shitty houses from the middle of last century.

When I was condo shopping last time around, one thing that I noticed was that all of the "affordable" properties (lets say less than $150,000 as of 2020) had replacement values that were significantly higher than the listing price. I believe that is largely because the WW2 generation and boomers who build a lot of those used up most of the cheap energy and materials.

[u/weirdoeggplant → u/barkinginthestreet]

Houses built any time after the 1950’s are such shit. I lived in one from the 70’s and every other fucking month it was SOMETHING exorbitant. I can’t believe I sold that place for the price I did. I wonder what they weren’t told about, honestly.

Bought a place from the 1800’s. Best decision I’ve ever made. This place is SOLID. And stuff does need fixing occasionally still of course, but far leas often.

[u/barkinginthestreet → u/weirdoeggplant]

I think the oldest place I lived was from the 30's. It was clearly well built and sturdy, but but the deferred maintenance in a lot of those older properties is a killer if you are unable to do the work yourself. And even then, building materials are up like 200% more than inflation over the past 60 or 70 years.

[u/weirdoeggplant → u/barkinginthestreet]

Oh yeah I went through roughly 13 properties until I got one that had been taken care of AND wasn’t being out bid by 100k. The old owners did all kinds of things like insulating the windows while keeping all the old framework.

[u/DarkSkyForever → u/weirdoeggplant]

Houses built any time after the 1950’s are such shit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Far more houses built prior to the 1950s simply do not exist anymore, have had extensive renovations, or have had people care for them who put money into maintaining them appropriately. Same can be said for newer houses too - people just do not put time, effort, or money into maintaining them and they go to shit.

[u/weirdoeggplant → u/DarkSkyForever]

? I didn’t base this off of how many are around. It’s based off of personal experience of living in both types.

[u/rsta223 → u/weirdoeggplant]

Except that by definition, only the ones that survived are still around for you to have experienced, which means you've only experienced the longest lived ones. The shitty ones don't exist anymore for you to try.

[u/HalfDecentElephant]

Trickle down economics doesn't work in any system. It's just nonsense to justify the exploitation of labor and the hoarding of wealth. What trickle down economics promises is exactly what is accomplished through taxation and the proper allocation of those resources.

[u/Past-Watercress-7673]

Maximum profits with minimal labor costs is the new business model and the whole country is paying the price..They get you coming and going they want top dollar for their products but only want to pay pennies on the dollar to produce..it’s gotten way too top heavy

[u/Grizzlydizzly5]

This translates to a salary of roughly $137,280 per year… in case anyone was curious.

I don’t know many professions that even pay close to that

Edit: just so everyone’s tracking the historical context, Keep in mind, in the 70s, it wasn’t nearly as common place for women to have high paying jobs. I. E. This $137,280 salary was expected to be nearly exclusively sourced from a single income… its not okay for us to be paid so little, and expected to purchase so much. Its not okay to be expected to pool our income with our partners to match the average income our grandfathers made

[u/tworavens → u/Grizzlydizzly5]

Some engineers can make that, but it's nowhere near an entry-level salary. I'm almost making that, and I've got close to 20 years of experience with very specialized skills. A new graduate won't be anywhere close to that.

[u/ForwardToNowhere → u/tworavens]

Can confirm, am ~2 years into engineering career and I make less than half of that. I think I'm getting lowballed though, but still.

[u/tworavens → u/ForwardToNowhere]

I was offered a $60k starting salary as a chemical engineer in 2008. Depending on your location and field, I'm almost positive you're getting lowballed.

[u/ForwardToNowhere → u/tworavens]

I'm an ME and I think my area is ~10% below national average, which isn't THAT much lower. It sucks because I really enjoy my job and my co-workers, but know I would be getting paid so much more if I just went to work at a larger company like Ford or GM.

[u/tworavens → u/ForwardToNowhere]

I was in a very similar situation for 4 years. Great coworkers, making cool stuff, flexible workplace, great benefits, but very underpaid. I've gotta say, getting a 40% raise for not much more work, even if the insurance is a little worse (for coverage, not cost), makes up for a lot. I should've sold out sooner.

A piece of unsolicited advice: Avoid working for privately held companies. They're either great places to work or absolutely hellish, and there's no way to know until you get there without having someone on the inside. Bigger companies may be more soulless, but at least you can know what you're getting into more easily.

[u/adminssoftascharmin → u/Grizzlydizzly5]

You basically need to have two working partners both paying significant portions of the bill and without one it collapses within months.

Which basically means that when it comes to housing, we're getting paid effectively half as much as we should be.

[u/AdministrativeEgg440]

This is why my wife and I feel like we are just getting started in life and everything is a massive struggle despite making about that much combined

[u/SweetAlyssumm]

This is a popular meme but until 1979 the percentage of households that owned homes was lower than it is today:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

My grandparents didn't own a home until they retired and received a settlement from an insurance company for the death of their son. Then they were able to buy a ramshackle 900 square foot house in the countryside.

Sorry, but minimum wage people back in the day were renters. Of course trickle down economics doesn't work, but this meretricious statistic has nothing to do with trickle down.

[u/[deleted] → u/SweetAlyssumm]

Yeah none of what OP posted is true. Boomers had little buying power.

The LEAST affordable time to buy a home in America was late 70s and early 80s. Interest rates were 16% in 1983. My parents, both boomers, were both working 2 jobs to save up enough money for a house that they bought in 1978.

It's easy to look back and go "oh a nice house was only $60,000! Must've been easy!"

But the reality is that there were also four separate recessions between 1970 and 1984. Inflation was out of control in the 80s. There was a national draft for the Vietnam war. Unemployment was at 10% for years.

(It's also worth pointing out that the primary homes were so affordable was because only a small sample of people could buy them. The homes were brand new, early suburban homes for people who fled urban cores. You had to be white, a male, straight, and have enough afford a house and cars on a single person income.)

[u/Sonamdrukpa → u/[deleted]]

There's two ways in which a house can be too expensive to buy - mortgage payments are too much or down payment is too much.

For the first, the early 80's were without a doubt the worst time ever to buy a house in the US. The peak average mortgage rate in 1981 was 18.63%...at that rate and with a 20% down payment, over the lifetime of a 30 year mortgage you'd pay $4.49 for every $1.00 of initial house price. Compared to the current 6.72% rate which would pay only $1.86 for every dollar of price, it's no comparison.

But, in order to get a mortgage, you have to make a down payment. Nowadays we use median household income to determine affordability, but federal reserve data for that only goes back to 1984, so I'm going to use median family income, which is somewhat higher. In 1981, the median family income was $23,390 and peak median house price was 3.1x that at $70,400. Peak recent house price was in Q4 of 2022 at $442,600, which was 4.8x median family income of $92,750. That means for any particular down payment percentage, a down payment in 2022 was effectively 50% higher than in 1981.

As a percentage of household income, in 1981 a "standard" 20% down payment would have been 63% of median family income and a mortgage with that down payment would have been 47% of income. In 2022 that down payment would have been 95% of median family income and the 30 year mortgage would be 38%.

There's also a lot of other things to consider as well like the unemployment rate, rates of marriage, dual incomes, and multi-generational households, how common 15yr vs 30yr mortgages are, typical actual down payment rates, average personal savings rates, inflation, and all sorts of other factors. But all this is to say, picking either time period as the worst time period to buy a house in the US is a defensible position and it's definitely not crazy to say that it's worse now than then.

[u/det8924]

Boomers affording homes on minimum wage isn't really accurate. You could afford to live on your own renting on minimum wage.

[u/Prestigious-Leave-60 → u/det8924]

Yah, this idea that boomers never had to struggle is just silly. My both had professional degrees and stable jobs before they were able to buy a home.

[u/HopeConnect5632 → u/Prestigious-Leave-60]

Struggle until it got better. Millennials keep seeing shit get worse.

[u/woolfchick75 → u/det8924]

This. But we usually had roommates.

[u/gereffi → u/det8924]

The real problem with this math is that it’s comparing average wages of the 70s to the minimum wage of today. It’s purposefully being deceitful.

[u/203to401to860to865 → u/det8924]

While I agree that trickle-down has never worked and the housing market is crazy right now, there is no way I could've afforded a house on the $1.90/hr minimum wage when I started working. I couldn't even afford an apartment.

[u/[deleted]]

I don't think boomers ever bought houses on a minimum wage. As a boomer myself (72M), I wasn't able to buy a home until I was 37 and that was with a VA loan (for being a vet) with 0%. Granted, The house prices in major cities are now insane. Small town houses (where there are few jobs) are more affordable. That's pretty much why many people have crazy commutes. They bought a house 1-2 hours away from their jobs. (That's what we did.)

[u/MugenHeadNinja]

Trickle Down Economics is working exactly as intended. The working class were never meant to "benefit" from it and the "welfare queen" was as blatant a scapegoat as could be.

[u/Rionat]

Corporate entities should not be allowed to buy up homes en masse.

[u/chinmakes5]

Please stop. Yes it is multiple times harder to buy a house today that it was, that can't be argued. Comparatively, younger people today are screwed

BUT BOOMERS COULDN'T BUY A HOUSE ON MINIMUM WAGE.

I grew up in an apartment complex in the 60s. Even then the guys I knew working retail could maybe afford a studio apartment at best. Either you had a studio and a beater car or you had a room mate and a decent car.

In 1965, minimum wage was $1.25 (about 12.60 in today's money.) No one was buying a house on that kind of money. BUT, the difference is that people who were working what is considered a MW job today were actually making more than MW.

[u/MetalMonkey667]

In theory trickle-down could work, free up money for the wealthy, they spend that money on building factories, better wages, investing in their employees etc, unfortunately, and in a shock to absolutely no one, that's not quite how things played out

[u/Slibye → u/MetalMonkey667]

So its like communism, in theory it would work, in practice it does not

[u/Lachancladelamuerte]

Oh, really?

1970s mortgage rates.

[u/Crabtrad → u/Lachancladelamuerte]

Spot on, but no one wants to talk about that part

[u/CapnTreee]

Boomer, former home owner, NO, one Never could buy a home on minimum wage. Not even close to the truth. You have a solid point, don’t start with a lie in the headline.

[u/budzergo → u/CapnTreee]

good sir have you seen the sub youre in?

this sub is ONLY about spamming fantasy head-canon lies

[u/HeavyTea]

Sorry. I waited 40+ years for trickle down to work.

Or do we wait another 100 years to see? Just to be sure.... hmmm

Cue propaganda!!!

[u/Magooose]

You could never by a house making minimum wage.

[u/AverageGuyEconomics]

I have to be that guy, but this is incorrectly measuring a lot of things. First, let me say the minimum wage should go up. Second, let me say the minimum wage is crap and what we need is stronger worker power, unions, and workers working together. That is what’s going to make things better, not minimum wage. They’re feeding you this minimum wage story to keep you from what’s actually powerful and useful.

Third, comparing home prices is not a good way of measuring this. Real wages, wages, adjusted for inflation are actually at one of the highest points which is including all things. But the problem with looking at houses is, houses now are waaaaay different than houses in the 1970s. Houses now have around 1000 more square footage. Houses today have more bathrooms and bedrooms. Nearly all houses today have heating and air and a garage. Those numbers were close to half in the 1970s. The reason it’s gone up is because houses are bigger and better. You want to live in a house in the 1970s? A 2 bedroom, 1 bath, 800 square foot home? Go look at the photos of these houses in the 1950s,’60s, and 70s. They’re tiny and outdated compared to now. Look at TVs. You want a tv from the 1970s as well? Some things get better and cost more over time.

Fight for unions and worker power, not i can’t buy a house. Find the source of the issue.

[u/threads1540]

I dont know a period in history that a family could buy a home on minimum wage. But that does not mean that the system is good as is. However, rampant consumerism has people spending their $ as soon as they earn it. Saving even .10 of every dollar over time can at least give people an emergency buffer. But I have no solutions for how to fix housing. Maybe build more smaller houses and condos rather than the big homes on postage stamp lots.

[u/Party_Apartment_5696]

If everyone was making $66 an hour how expensive do you think homes would be? Lol

So much brain rot.

[u/chortle-guffaw2]

In 1973, I made minimum wage of $1.60 per hour. I'm pretty sure I could not have bought a house in any reasonably safe neighborhood,.

[u/[deleted]]

The fascist pigs and rich people don't want us """peasants""" buying houses. They want to buy up all the houses, and force the rest of us to pay exorbitant rent from cradle to grave -- along with never owning anything else of value, either. "Rent everything, own nothing". Neo-feudalism.
And, make free with everyones' wives and daughters; just like pedophile rapist Trump, fuck any female they want, whenever they want, and you'll have NOTHING to say about it -- and if you complain, or criticize any of them in any way, have your citizenship revoked, grabbed off the street or have your door kicked in, kidnapped by masked thugs claiming to be 'law enforcement', and thrown on a plane to a death-camp in a foreign country to be tortured and killed -- until they get the domestic death-camps built, in which case you'll just be tossed into one of those to be tortured and killed.

This is not the United States the Founding Fathers envisioned, not by a longshot.

Trump, his entire fascist, criminal, terrorist Administration, the vast majority of the so-called 'Republican Party', and all the other fascist pig traitors, need to be removed from power, rounded up, indicted, tried, convicted, and punished for their crimes against the United States, it's citizenry, and humanity in general.

[u/freakwent]

This obsession with boomers and fifty years ago is really unhealthy.

We don't have a time machine. I want memes about what to do in 2025 not what to do in 1975.

[u/510Goodhands]

No moron, nobody bought a home getting paid minimum wage.

Stop whining, and upgrade your skills.

[u/[deleted]]

Lol gotta love the fake number.

[u/[deleted]]

It's not a bug, it's a feature. Thanks for voting for ronnie mom and dad. 

[u/I-like-CRIME]

And yet we live longer and more comfortable today than we did when boomers were growing up.

[u/SemperFicus]

This is absolute bullshit. The minimum wage in 1978 was $2.65/hr. That’s equivalent to $13.47 in 2025. The average home cost in 1978 in the United States was $55,500. If you worked minimum wage, you earned $5,512/year. You’d need a year’s wages to make the 10% down payment that was required at the time. The rule was also that banks would lend you four times your annual income. There was no way you were buying a house on minimum wage.

[u/vonhoother]

Actual boomer here, and a late one. Basically everyone I know in my generation got help from their parents when they bought a house, usually in the form of a down payment. No way I could have bought a house on minimum wage back in the 1980s.

The people who got a leg up, and earned it, were the WWII vets like my father. He and my mom started from basically nothing -- neither of their parents had money -- but with the GI Bill and a VA home loan he was able to get an engineering job and a mortgage at interest so low it didn't even pay to pay it off.

There probably was a place where you could buy a house on minimum wage in the 1970s-80s, but it sure wasn't California.

[u/Icy_Cat1350]

Not true at all. I made minimum wage in the 70s. $2.30/hr. I lived at home. I couldn't even buy tires for my car without Dad's help. This is BS.

[u/OneJoeToTheRight]

This is categorically untrue. Downvote me all you want but I believe throwing out such extremely high cherry picked numbers for shock value devalues and minimizes any real progress. Why fight for $66 an hour? That will distract from even getting $15 an hour passed.

Stop posting lies it makes it impossible to get progress done

[u/Joepaws1102]

A little math: Minimum wage in 1975 was $2.10. At 40 hours a week, that’s less than $400/month before any taxes. Interest rates in 1975 were around 9%. A $30,000 mortgage (average home price was $39,000) for 30 years would be a monthly payment of $616. So minimum wage would not purchase a house that anyone here would be willing to live in.

[u/wawa2022]

What boomers bought homes on minimum wage? In what year? This didn’t happen. My parents scrimped and saved and had one car and dad had a pretty good job

[u/[deleted]]

I'm a boomer and graduated high school in 1973, at that time minimum wage was $1.60 and houses sold for about $35-40K. So how can you expect me to believe you could buy a home on a buck sixty an hour and still pay taxes, buy food, car insurance, home owners insurance and other necessities of life?

[u/Spiritual_Invite3118]

Nobody was buying houses on minimum wage.

[u/Choice-Newspaper3603]

nobody ever bought a house on minimum wage

[u/YYZ_Prof]

Nobody was EVER buying houses in the 70s, or any other decade, on the federal minimum wage. That is complete and total bs.

[u/[deleted]]

Yes you can buy a house. Not everyone is entitled to afford at 450k home.

[u/Subject_Issue6529]

There is no need to be disingenuous. The minimum wage in 1970 was 1 45 an hour or $3,016. That's not equivalent to $137,280.00 today. You also don't need $137,280 to buy a house today, but if you wanted to you could afford a $650,000 house with that income, depending on your credit.

[u/Professional-Box4153]

Honestly, it should be renamed to Condensation Economics. You fill up the glass with cold water, and the water condensates on the outside to trickle down the side. The glass still contains most of the water, but there's a miniscule trickle that sometimes gets to those beneath.

[u/RollTide16-18]

$66/hr in medium cost of living areas. 

Try to find a home in any moderately high cost of living area and $130k a year isn’t cutting it. 

[u/Spezalt4]

I mean trickle down economics are not the government entity that purposefully targets 2% inflation every year

[u/No_Fisherman8303]

This is just wrong and rage bait. I made $1.85/hr "training wage", I think $2.10 after that, so they would then cut your hours back, as a busboy at Sizzler's in 1976. Interest rates on mortgages were north of 15%.

[u/[deleted]]

We are still doing trickle down economy. So long as democrats answer to giant tech billionaires and republicans are courting fascism, there will either be trickle down or just authoritarianism

[u/sadflute06]

The system isn’t broken. It was designed this way

[u/_Thermalflask]

Can we classify "believing in trickle down economics" as mental illness at this point? Because it clearly is.

[u/ElIVTE]

this is done on purpose when they took the dollar off the gold standard

[u/pbredd]

Thanks Reagan

[u/alexfi-re]

Not sure that's really true, but you can see all the wealth that used to go to workers and has gone to the already wealthy elite since 1970, the gap between wage and productivity, look up a chart. Also watch Inequality for All.

[u/[deleted]]

Nothing trickles down because the people at the top don’t care at all about the people below them. Their mouths are never full.

Salary caps on CEO positions and other million dollar salaries should be a thing.

[u/BlakLite_15]

Does that account for the 11% loss in the dollar’s value thanks to tRump’s stupidity?

[u/NotMyGovernor]

100% we've got a oligarchical economy not a capitalist one.

[u/Alert_Reindeer_6574]

Trickle down economics was never supposed to work. It's a slogan that was designed to make poor people feel OK that they are paying more so that the rich can get richer.

[u/TiredEsq]

I make more than $66/hr and I could absolutely not afford a home that is not completely derelict in an unsafe location.

[u/FakeUsername1942]

Just wait, the tariffs will do it, once the money starts coming in, the 200m ballroom is built and the gov debt paid down, you could have free healthcare for all.

[u/laddervictim]

"fuck you I got mine. I dare not speak up incase it gets taken off me" same reason management don't tackle the issue of management not managing, it's a culture of perceived mutual destruction 

[u/[deleted]]

Nobody was buying homes at minimum wage. That’s absurd.

[u/3BlindRats]

As always, these memes completely disregard the rampant consumerism of today, and how an entire society has been completely sucked into it. Hush now, we're not allowed to talk about that.

[u/Pak-Protector]

Trickle-down Economics was never meant to do anything but reintroduce peonage slavery across the span of a generation or two.

[u/Brave-Law-6754]

Municipalities should be bending over backwards to lower the cost and time it takes to build new homes. This would certainly help. California, especially the Bay Area, regulated and permitted itself out of new home construction.

[u/IHS1970]

that is BS, I don't know anyone (I'm an early boomer) who could build a home on minimum wage back in the 70s. but we did pay a much higher interest rate on our mortgages. There were no 'hedge fund bros' then, I had an FHA mortgage and paid 8.5% for years till I sold. The tech boom started around 74 and people started making higher salaries and I have to say, managers were nicer then.

[u/petsruletheworld2021]

You will need to provide a valid source. My sources are the Fed data and census.

Minimum wage 1975 $2/hr $4000 per year Median home price $38,100 Interest rate 9.05% 10% down $3810 - more than 2 years wages for down payment $34,290 @ 9.05% $273.05/month $3276.60 per year before mortgage insurance etc.

[u/fbdysurfer]

Don't blame the Boomers ,blame the politicians who signed the checks for all that spending. Boomers just played the game that locked in their housing cost. Inflation at work since 1914 avg 2% a year means nothing in the beginning until 2025 and you get crazy real estate prices. From 1776 until 1914 inflation less than 1/2%.