The problem is the house is so overvalued, they never modernized it, and is far beyond what most people can afford for it. They're just born at the right time to be able to retire and have a house.
And buying up all homes, then renting at high rates and making the market so scarce that the few that can afford to buy get bid up to the maximum they can get a loan for, and then stay enslaved to the mortgage banks and never fight for their employment rights, healthcare or political rights or anything else that could jeopardize their livelihood.
Not even an exaggeration. My parents bought their house in the 1960s for $14K. Their 30-year mortgage went almost to the year 2000 and their monthly payment was fucking $85 the entire time. They sold it fifteen years ago for $190K.
Of course, a "market" doesn't have to mean the thing is a financial instrument. I go to the market to buy grocereries. I am not intending to resell the carrots that I bought from "market".
And yet grocery stores are in a similar situation with prices going up while quality and quantity go down. Maybe it doesn't have to mean the thing is a financial instrument but if it can be it will be.
Over the last 50 years material quality and workmanship have gone down. Now it's a race to build a neighborhood as cheaply and quickly as possible, doing the job right be damned.
I'll be honest with you: my house was built in the 1940s and it's really not that great. Definitely not noticeably better build quality than my parents' house built in the 1990s.
You should look up CyFy on YouTube. He does residential building inspection in Arizona and the build quality is appalling. Broken trusses, lacking insulation, roof leaks, stucco with exposed wire backing on top of literal cardboard for structure...
Cracks in the sinks and tubs, walls so horrifying out of square you wonder how they managed to fuck it up that badly. Unlevel floors with humps or saddles. Tiles misaligned so badly you can take a strip off your foot without realizing.
There's always multiple things from the above in every house he posts... And it's not just one house, it's all of them. Literally all of them... They deny, delay, defend the shit out of warranty claims and at least in Arizona hope you close and don't raise a fuss before hand.
That's because he doesn't get called in unless the homeowner believes there are egregious problems for him to find. It's sampling bias, not a universal trend.
He talks about this in his videos where he'll see the same problems in half the homes in a neighborhood because neighbors talk to each other and recommend him
Edit: just watch some of his videos you won't have to spend much time to see what I mean. It's systemic...
"Systemic" within one neighborhood (or even one builder) isn't the same as "systemic" in general. I mean, of course if one builder doing something wrong, he's likely to be doing it wrong consistently. But unless that builder is, say, D.R. Horton (which, to be fair, it very well could be), you can't really say that just because one random builder is doing it wrong that means the entire industry is doing it wrong.
They're not talking specifically about the lumber being bad, they're talking about companies building new developments cutting corners to save on cost. While they still use lumber, they are choosing cheaper lumber and their workmanship suffers as a result of the corners being cut.
Also, older homes were built with natural old growth lumber, which is denser and more rot resistant. They also used larger dimensions for extra support.
My house was built in 1942 as temporary worker housing. I tore down and rebuilt one of the walls and the original studs were just astonishing: perfectly straight and not a single knot in them anywhere. Compare and contrast with modern studs from Home Despot: split, shaped more or less like a pretzel, and 50% knots.
Interestingly, these old studs were 1.75" x 3.75". I never knew there was an intermediate stage between the old-time true 2x4s and the modern 1.5" x 3.5" 2x4s.
it's not Home Depot's fault we cut down all the old growth wood by the 1950s. Builders should be sorting the lumber and returning bad pieces...but nothing a sheet of drywall can't hide.
But Home Depot wood in Canada is the best quality, kiln dried. With softwood tariffs, US yards are scraping the bottom of the barrel and shipping crap that would have been shredded.
I will give you an example, a notoriously large home manufacturer has continued to create waves of houses built with the cheapest materials they can find. Once people started to move into these houses they noticed something strange: insects ripping out of their newly built walls
yeah, i was in loma prieta. that was "just" a 6.9. you could see the waves in the ground, visually, dozens of miles away, until it settled. it was eerie as fuck.
home builders should be ashamed of the quality of American homes.
Friends let us stay in their new house in Ellicottville NY across the border from Ontario. Holy shit are there no codes and inspections in NY state? Explains all those youtube videos where people slip on a porch and take out the entire fence and stairs.
Not just the US, we can't buy a house anywhere, boomer cunts stole everything from future generations and will claim to their dying breath that THEY had it rough.
Ya but they rich are mostly boomers and boomers are actively voting and supporting policies that make this worse. It's not universal but does hold some weight.
Correct. What all these places have in common is housing expansion after WW2 when personal automobile became a thing for majority. There is no more cheap land. We are back to 19th century and it sucks.
So you grew up rich? Your parents had no struggles at all right? So I mean, wow, that must have been nice. They basically had infinite money to raise you with... that's awesome. I'm happy for you
What? Where did i say i was rich? How does your brain function? And my parents didn't have struggles?!? My mother and stepdad didn't have power or running water for 5 years in the Balkans btw, whether that's legal or not who knows and i don't think the cunts that turned it off cared anyway.
You need it spelt out for you or something? My mother was born in 1966 so she doesn't qualify as a boomer and also those boomers that you want to defend could buy a house or two with one income while having 4-5 kids while most of us today can't afford anything with two incomes and no kids.
oh wow, so you were the first poor family? I had no idea life was a perfect utopia where nobody struggled until your parents. I always thought the story of Adam and Eve was something that took place millions of years ago but it turns out it happened in 1966.
I'm honored to meet the child of the first humans to ever suffer
My wife and I have been together for 20 years. For the majority of that time, we have been taking care of various silent-generation and boomer members of her family who decided that they will just dump themselves on the most compassionate and competent member of the family (my wife) and thats their retirement plan. Right now we are dealing with her mother, and we have made it clear to the rest of her family and my family that after her, we're done, and anyone else can live under a fucking overpass because we would like to be husband and wife, not caretakers.
My wife has become adept at finding care facilities that take medicare and placing people in them. But not everyone has the time/ability to make that happen.
Of course we are not unique in having this issue. What happens when two people are staying in a 1 bedroom apartment that they both must work to afford? They might really want to care for mom and dad but...
And we end up with considerably more homeless boomers.
same here buddy, used to have alot of respect, just their actions don't deserve sympathy. got tired of the get mine attitude. our generation and newer generations just get the shit end of things and we don't get a chance to play by the same rules.
This is how the billionaires are winning, they manipulate folks into being angry at everyone but THEM. "Boomers" didn't buy $70k houses, your grandparents did.
Meamwhile, Zuckerberg is laughing his ass off while fortifying his Kauai ranch estate.
"Boomers" are the grandparents to most of social media posters these days. Statistically the internet stays centered at about teenager to 20 year old being the peak of the normal distribution of users. That's the Baby Boomers' grandchildren. Great grandchildren even.
Just pointing that out, but otherwise I agree. They're all angry at a strawman "Boomer". That strawman in reality is demographically a small portion of the world population who are very rich. The majority of baby boomers got fucked in their own way by the rich.
You guys are all distracted into fighting each other.
Furthermore, I'm continuously baffled at how or why people fawn over the anecdotes about those who talk about their parents having a good life straight out of college and now owning multi-million dollar homes. How can you not realize these anecdotes are from rich kids of rich boomers. You guys are so hungry to eat the rich??? That's them right there. What are you praising and fawning over them for. Start eating.
All part of the distraction. The lesser than billionaire rich hiding in plain sight, running distraction for the richest of the rich.
Boomers (b. 1946-1966) bought houses long before they were $70k. Assuming a great job straight out of high school, the first ones would have been buying homes as early as 1964, the last boomers by 1984.
Taking the middle - 1974 - and in my neck of the woods the median 1974 starter home was about $16k CAD, and the minimum wage was $4k/yr. This put even minimum wage workers within spitting distance of the flip side of the one-third rule, which states the price of a new home should not exceed three years of income. Workers in good industries - such as framers, plumbers, and electricians - easily met this 3× rule even within a year or three of starting work.
So the better phrase would be:
boomers bought houses at $16k when they were making $6k/yr
The only reason my wife and I could afford a house is because we live in one of the lowest cost of living places in the US. Even here it’s still almost triple what it was just a few years ago.
Meaningful change will only happen when fewer than half of all people own houses. Now, more than half owns a property, and, if the system was to change, they'd lose money. More than half the people will uphold this status quo.
That depends on a few more factors.The fact that their home values have skyrocketed does go a long way to alleviate that.
Yeah, what may have been a $60,000 upgrade is now $250,000, but they're also getting another $200,000 for their home when they sell it, which makes up the difference.
The thing is they aren't going up evenly everywhere. A $400,000 house from a few years back in my area is now selling for $600,000, but a $100,000 house from that same time is now selling for $300,000. So the price difference between the 2 has actually stayed the same.
The institutional investors are targeting the cheaper houses, so they're the ones skyrocketing the most in value.
I’m not saying homeowners are in a worse position. Just that increasing values also hurt them.
My parents had to move out into the country into a smaller house because their taxes got so high they couldn’t keep up after retirement when they quit getting raises.
Ya but property taxes are still significantly cheaper than rent, and most states have some exemption for a portion of the valuation your first home. The same doesn't apply to renters, and in many municipalities multifamily zoning has significantly higher property tax rates to begin with. Many conveniences of cities are built around homeowners since they're the majority of voters. In my old apartment despite trash at the property being taken by the city, apartment residents did not have access to the city dump for recycling and large trash items. Meanwhile residents owning a single family home did and could even get them picked up as part of their regular trash bill, which was $5/mo less than what we in the apartment paid for trash.
Home ownership includes property taxes and maintenance. New roof, new furnace, new water heater, etc. These are big bills every 12-15 years. Boomers did this with HELOCs, but HELOCs are gone as housing values in my region are going down from the peak in 2022.
Another big problem is contracting is unregulated and out of control, before 2020, contracts were typically materials x2 for labor, now they have no upper guidelines, just a rolling scam and they learned in 2020-22 that it's better to work less and charge more.
I'm not saying homeowners are in a worse position. Just that increasing values also hurt them.
My parents had to move out into the country into a smaller house because their taxes got so high they couldn't keep up after retirement when they quit getting raises.
And of course they'd taken out extra mortgages on their house to try and keep up with the increasing costs so they could stay in the town they'dlived in for 60 years, so they didn't actually have a ton of equity despite their home having massively increased in value.
And with all the other old people moving out into the country, the property values where they moved are skyrocketing, so they're already getting upside down and I'm already having to pitch in to help them pay the mortgage on the smaller home.
LOL 😂 in Canada, if minimum wage - currently $18.25/hr - was indexed to home prices starting from 1972, when median homes in my city were $16k and minimum wage was $4k/yr, said minimum wage would currently be $150/hr, or $300k/yr.
That’s an 8.22× jump in minimum wage.
I would love to see most people being faced with this fact.
I realize the Canadian dollar is weaker than the US dollar but $18.25 is a pipe dream for tens of millions of Americans. Our minimum wage is $7.25. As of today that is $10. 29 CAD. Wages in my area are a little higher, places generally pay $13-15 and maybe $20 for skilled jobs. But I know a ton of people making around $13. Even that is basically right at Canadian minimum wage after converting. Our housing isn't cheap either.
You can still buy homes in US cities for under $150k. I just looked up my first home. I paid $37k in 1996, sold it for $74k in 2007, it's worth about $125k now. It's not a great location, but there are good jobs around St. Louis. If you want to live in an Instagram home in a big coastal city, I have no sympathy.
The sad part is that I make less money today than I did in 1996, not even factoring inflation. Inflation isn't so terrible if wages move with it, but wages are completely stagnant even as prices double. I can't afford to move. I've been stuck in my current home since I bought it. I just hope I'm able to pay it off before I'm no longer able to work.
Yeah, that's why I drive for Uber while doing my Door Dash Deliveries. I also tie some dogs to my bumper to I can get some cash with Rover. The best part? I can also fill out surveys the whole time too to eek out an extra 0.5 cents per hour!
I figure if I save it all, I'll be well in range to make a 5% down payment on a 2 bed/1 bath house from the 1940's by the time I'm 75.
Not all boomers, just the loud ones. I'm surrounded by boomer neighbours who own their properties and are vocal about the complete lack of options for current generations. I meet more of the loud ones at work though
The reason housing isn't affordable is because of:
Price fixing for rentals
Corporations are buying up every last bit of housing and then see number 1.
When you say "boomers," are you meaning the people in power? Cuz yeah, they're old and making these decisions to let this happen. Most normal people don't have the power to stop this shit. Stop complaining and start working towards getting rid of 1) and 2).
When I say boomers and I’m talking about this, I’m talking about the retired couple still living in a four bedroom house in the suburbs refusing to sell it because it’s going to be worth just a little bit more next year meanwhile there’s a young family who can’t afford a fucking house due to none being available. Yes corporations are a problem, a big one, but the number of neighborhoods that used to be filled with kids that are now filled with retirees is also a problem.
For each long-held boomer held household there's a half dozen other houses that are out of reach for other reasons.
We don't have to be advocating kicking old folks out of their homes they have lived in all their lives, and even if they freed up their housing, it probably wouldn't help.
You would have a house for sale for almost the same money as new construction, but in need of tens of thousands in repairs and probably significantly smaller than construction done in the last two decades.
There's stories starting to come up about inheriting from boomers being more trouble than boon. Houses that ostensibly should go for a lot being hard to sell unless they spend a lot to fix it up to make it appealing.
Either I’m not understanding you or you aren’t making the argument you think you are, you are talking about repairs that should’ve been done years ago when it was cheaper to do those repairs and it’s those same boomers who chose not to do those repairs.
And most new construction houses aren’t going to have the longevity of a well repaired older house. Shrinkflation and enshitification have hit the building market as well.
At the end of the day you aren’t totally wrong, but I feel like you’re missing the point that I was very specifically answering the question of the person I replied to “when you use the word boomer…“.
Yes, often the repairs should have been done years ago, but either way you slice it, the typical boomer house is not exactly super enticing stuff. A family member looked into buying a boomer house after the owner died, and before even delving deep the ductwork was shot, termite damage visible, warped subflooring, cracked foundation. On top of all this it was a 1500 square foot home when pretty nearby houses of comparable room count were about 3000 square foot and not much more expensive list price. Even if it were in mint for the era condition, the windows were single paned, the insulation thin, and various other updates you'd want.
I'm not so sure "they don't build them like they used to" applies to houses. Shrinkflation for the yards to be sure, but in terms of the house itself, the houses tend to actually be smaller. In terms of durability, you may have bottom dollar sentiment but it's competing with a lot of engineering advancements. They can be relatively cheap but still be a very robust structure. Even mass-market plumbing fixtures are generally better than fixtures you'll find in 40 year old construction. That old house might have a lot of Polybutylene plumbing, for example, instead of PVC and PEX, for example. The old house probably has a higher chance of usable attic storage space versus modern trend of engineered trusses using up the space, but can probably take more of a beating structurally.
Just saying that getting all fixated on the Boomers personal residences isn't really that big of a part of the problem. Now if you say they are tossing their retirement money toward contributing to the rental racket, I'm with you, but I'm not going to think it's worth it to see about trying to get those boomers into apartments just to free up housing stock that isn't generally as great as folks might think it should be.
Do you have statistics, cuz we have statistics on what I'm saying. Let's say what you're saying is true, why are they holding on to it for pricing? Because the fucking corporations are buying up all of the stock.
Yup. Keep the left mad at the right, bottom mad at top, country mad at city,, all the while shit gets worse. Well, not for the pricks starting shit in comment sections, they'll have plenty to keep themselves distracted with.
While speculators driving up prices is a problem, the bigger problem is your small scale landlords with half a dozen revenue properties 3 of which are only being used as AirBnBs, and the rest managed using price fixing software to gradually break renters backs.
We've known since the beginning that Rent Seeking is anathema to free markets. It's the dirtiest word in economics, because it breaks the whole system and is accountable to no feedback mechanism on a macro-scale.
There are homes in most areas that are well under 400k. Housing obviously needs to be cheaper but it's not nearly as bad as the fediverse memes make it seem.
Is everyone making shit up? Or are there places with expensive homes? Do you even know where the OP in the image lives to claim that they're making shit up?
I don't think anyone is saying the minimum house price is now $700k. But, living in Massaschusetts, even cities besides the uber-expensive Boston have more houses closer to $700,000 at list price than $400,000.
I could list the multiple cities I surveyed where capping the maximum price at $700,000 filtered more houses than capping the minimum at $420,000.
Unless you have research data that documents the median house prices for urban and near-urban locations, your $400,000 is just as much an anecdotal, "cherry picked edge case" as any other value.
You came in, gave no supported facts, but complained that someone's anecdote is false and biased while fully refusing to engage in contextualizing the tweet.
400k is nearly untouchable for most people right now.
My partner and I had to scrimp and save for years, and then borrow money from my family, and then go into a bit of CC debt to secure a house for 317.
And we're two working professionals with no kids.
Median household income in the US ~80k. Your mortgage is supposed to be no more than 1/3rd of your income.
So that means the median household has about 2300 a month for housing expenses. My 317k house right now is running ~2700 a month (~2100 for the house, 600 for PMI and escrow).
So you're probably only getting ~270k at most on the median income. 400k is way out of the typical buyer's price.
30% of Gen z and 50% of millennials own homes. Stop blatantly making things up.
Homes are too expensive and should come down. Wholly agree. But majority of the population, even projected gen x will own their home. The median rate that they are selling at is about 420k +/- who you talk to.
127 Comments
LaserTurboShark69@sh.itjust.works · 127 pts · 36d
Boomers selling their homes at 10x cost and preaching about savvy investing
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 34 pts · 36d
The problem is the house is so overvalued, they never modernized it, and is far beyond what most people can afford for it. They're just born at the right time to be able to retire and have a house.
baines@lemmy.cafe · 23 pts · 36d
nah it’s deregulation on corps buying homes as investments
like usual thank republicans and neolibs
heartSagan5@lemmy.zip · 12 pts · 35d
Also, AirBnB creating a system that incentivized the purchase of homes as rentals.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 35d
Taxation could fix all that. How many politicians own multiple housing? All of them.
anomnom@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 36d
And buying up all homes, then renting at high rates and making the market so scarce that the few that can afford to buy get bid up to the maximum they can get a loan for, and then stay enslaved to the mortgage banks and never fight for their employment rights, healthcare or political rights or anything else that could jeopardize their livelihood.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 35d
Not even an exaggeration. My parents bought their house in the 1960s for $14K. Their 30-year mortgage went almost to the year 2000 and their monthly payment was fucking $85 the entire time. They sold it fifteen years ago for $190K.
shawn1122@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 35d
Damn never realized this but every boomer homeowner is actually an investment savant. Why are we all so stupid? Why can't we just do this? ^/s
Bytemeister@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 35d
The dumbest financial mistake you've ever made was not going into debt immediately to buy a home the day you were born. Should have planned ahead.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 35d
$14K in 1960 was $167,000 by 2010.
Average salary of a worker in 1960 was $3,700.
I paid $320K for my house in 2002 , which peaked in value to $1.6M by 2022. That was insane, it's now worth $1.2 or less and headed downward.
It should be worth $600K. People took out HELOCs on houses now descending in value.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 35d
Yeah, the location was not one of those places with seriously insane housing appreciation. Small town in Ohio. 14X appreciation is still pretty good.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 35d
$20,000 in 1965 is equivalent in purchasing power to $212,776.51 today.
So it's not about savvy investing, it's about inflation.
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com · 101 pts · 36d
I do not like calling people trying to afford to buy a pile of lumber and tape on a small parcel a "market".
It removes the fact that homes used to stay flat value or go down in value before houses became a "market".
Fuck markets. The markets should be crushed. And American home builders should be ashamed of the quality of American homes.
A pile of lumber and tape.
jj4211@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 36d
Of course, a "market" doesn't have to mean the thing is a financial instrument. I go to the market to buy grocereries. I am not intending to resell the carrots that I bought from "market".
zaph@sh.itjust.works · 12 pts · 36d
And yet grocery stores are in a similar situation with prices going up while quality and quantity go down. Maybe it doesn't have to mean the thing is a financial instrument but if it can be it will be.
WoodScientist@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 36d
What's wrong with making houses out of wood? It's renewable. It has an absurdly low carbon footprint. It's a fantastic building material.
FluorideMind@lemmy.world · 25 pts · 36d
Over the last 50 years material quality and workmanship have gone down. Now it's a race to build a neighborhood as cheaply and quickly as possible, doing the job right be damned.
grue@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 36d
I'll be honest with you: my house was built in the 1940s and it's really not that great. Definitely not noticeably better build quality than my parents' house built in the 1990s.
jj4211@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 36d
I'll add that I recently bought a house built in the last decade and the home inspector remarked how well put together it was.
iocase@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 35d
You should look up CyFy on YouTube. He does residential building inspection in Arizona and the build quality is appalling. Broken trusses, lacking insulation, roof leaks, stucco with exposed wire backing on top of literal cardboard for structure...
Cracks in the sinks and tubs, walls so horrifying out of square you wonder how they managed to fuck it up that badly. Unlevel floors with humps or saddles. Tiles misaligned so badly you can take a strip off your foot without realizing.
There's always multiple things from the above in every house he posts... And it's not just one house, it's all of them. Literally all of them... They deny, delay, defend the shit out of warranty claims and at least in Arizona hope you close and don't raise a fuss before hand.
grue@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 35d
That's because he doesn't get called in unless the homeowner believes there are egregious problems for him to find. It's sampling bias, not a universal trend.
iocase@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 35d
He talks about this in his videos where he'll see the same problems in half the homes in a neighborhood because neighbors talk to each other and recommend him
Edit: just watch some of his videos you won't have to spend much time to see what I mean. It's systemic...
grue@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 35d
"Systemic" within one neighborhood (or even one builder) isn't the same as "systemic" in general. I mean, of course if one builder doing something wrong, he's likely to be doing it wrong consistently. But unless that builder is, say, D.R. Horton (which, to be fair, it very well could be), you can't really say that just because one random builder is doing it wrong that means the entire industry is doing it wrong.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 35d
We had a new subdivision in which every single roof failed in 6 years.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 35d
How could you leave out the gas leaks? In every single fucking house he inspects.
iocase@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 35d
Oh yeah you're right lol I forgot about those somehow! I laughed when he checked like 8 houses in a row and they all leaked.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 35d
Builders know most of the buyers are Boomers who will be dead in under a decade, so make everything last 11 years.
Banana@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 36d
They're not talking specifically about the lumber being bad, they're talking about companies building new developments cutting corners to save on cost. While they still use lumber, they are choosing cheaper lumber and their workmanship suffers as a result of the corners being cut.
Thus, a pile of lumber and tape.
Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml · 13 pts · 36d
Also, older homes were built with natural old growth lumber, which is denser and more rot resistant. They also used larger dimensions for extra support.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 35d
My house was built in 1942 as temporary worker housing. I tore down and rebuilt one of the walls and the original studs were just astonishing: perfectly straight and not a single knot in them anywhere. Compare and contrast with modern studs from Home Despot: split, shaped more or less like a pretzel, and 50% knots.
Interestingly, these old studs were 1.75" x 3.75". I never knew there was an intermediate stage between the old-time true 2x4s and the modern 1.5" x 3.5" 2x4s.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 35d
it's not Home Depot's fault we cut down all the old growth wood by the 1950s. Builders should be sorting the lumber and returning bad pieces...but nothing a sheet of drywall can't hide.
But Home Depot wood in Canada is the best quality, kiln dried. With softwood tariffs, US yards are scraping the bottom of the barrel and shipping crap that would have been shredded.
trackball_fetish@lemmy.wtf · 2 pts · 35d
I will give you an example, a notoriously large home manufacturer has continued to create waves of houses built with the cheapest materials they can find. Once people started to move into these houses they noticed something strange: insects ripping out of their newly built walls
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 35d
Wood is fine. It actually traps carbon, but the build quality is horrendous and permit inspectors must be corrupt.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 36d
they probably live in an area without a lot of earthquakes so it makes sense to build out of brick there
Mnem667@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 36d
laughs in PNW
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 36d
uh
this is 7 years old, but i wanted to argue my "uh"'s point a little more
love from San Francisco. I woke up the other day to a 5.6 alarm. My love to Yreka who got the brunt of it.
rbos@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 35d
Better a ton of smalls than one big one. The energy released in a huge quale is several orders of magnitude so it takes a lot...
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 34d
yeah, i was in loma prieta. that was "just" a 6.9. you could see the waves in the ground, visually, dozens of miles away, until it settled. it was eerie as fuck.
ceenote@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 36d
But how else will we make the peasantry feel richer without enriching them?
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 35d
Friends let us stay in their new house in Ellicottville NY across the border from Ontario. Holy shit are there no codes and inspections in NY state? Explains all those youtube videos where people slip on a porch and take out the entire fence and stairs.
HeyJoe@lemmy.world · 70 pts · 36d
Yeah, but now you and your significant other work so thats like 120k a year. /s
turtlesareneat@piefed.ca · 26 pts · 36d
And the fact that you're each working multiple part time jobs and gigs, well that's the extra freedom we had lying around.
Landless2029@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 35d
Yeah. The fact that most couples have to go dual income just to survive is a problem.
We used to have the leeway to have one of us not work and still be comfortable.
Eternal192@anarchist.nexus · 39 pts · 36d
Not just the US, we can't buy a house anywhere, boomer cunts stole everything from future generations and will claim to their dying breath that THEY had it rough.
Mrkawfee@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 35d
Dont fall for the intergenerational war. The rich are sitting on all the assets and stealing from future generations
CptOblivius@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 35d
Ya but they rich are mostly boomers and boomers are actively voting and supporting policies that make this worse. It's not universal but does hold some weight.
majster@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 35d
Correct. What all these places have in common is housing expansion after WW2 when personal automobile became a thing for majority. There is no more cheap land. We are back to 19th century and it sucks.
Eternal192@anarchist.nexus · 1 pts · 34d
Kinda but almost everything is 1000% more expensive.
VelvetPinkOtter123@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 35d
So you grew up rich? Your parents had no struggles at all right? So I mean, wow, that must have been nice. They basically had infinite money to raise you with... that's awesome. I'm happy for you
Eternal192@anarchist.nexus · 2 pts · 34d
What? Where did i say i was rich? How does your brain function? And my parents didn't have struggles?!? My mother and stepdad didn't have power or running water for 5 years in the Balkans btw, whether that's legal or not who knows and i don't think the cunts that turned it off cared anyway.
VelvetPinkOtter123@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 34d
You said, "boomer cunts stole everything from future generations and will claim to their dying breath that THEY had it rough."
But then you said, "My mother and stepdad didn’t have power or running water for 5 years"
Weird, it's almost like they did have it rough after all
Eternal192@anarchist.nexus · 1 pts · 34d
You need it spelt out for you or something? My mother was born in 1966 so she doesn't qualify as a boomer and also those boomers that you want to defend could buy a house or two with one income while having 4-5 kids while most of us today can't afford anything with two incomes and no kids.
VelvetPinkOtter123@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 34d
oh wow, so you were the first poor family? I had no idea life was a perfect utopia where nobody struggled until your parents. I always thought the story of Adam and Eve was something that took place millions of years ago but it turns out it happened in 1966.
I'm honored to meet the child of the first humans to ever suffer
_chris@lemmy.world · 31 pts · 36d
..kalshi is a news source?
LodeMike@lemmy.today · 17 pts · 36d
No
ActualGrapesTasteGreen@piefed.zip · 7 pts · 36d
Kalshi is also a game if you ask Google's Play store. It has an AO rating
nolannice@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 36d
Everytime I go to the app store I get an ad for it, and everytime I report it saying it violates my state's law
bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 36d
Google Play store is a cancerous virus. Use f droid.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com · 20 pts · 35d
Step 1 - make housing unaffordable
Step 2 - start crying about declining fertility rates
Step 3 - just keep whining and applying bandaid solutions that don't do anything to address the underlying cause of unaffordable housing
weeeeum@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 35d
Step 4 - scapegoat minorities for all of the country's issues
ThunderQueen@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 35d
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 35d
Step 6 - believe it or not, straight to jail
lemonbun@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 35d
hope the boomers die because no one wants to pick up their shit in nursing homes
CADmonkey@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 34d
This is something I keep thinking about.
My wife and I have been together for 20 years. For the majority of that time, we have been taking care of various silent-generation and boomer members of her family who decided that they will just dump themselves on the most compassionate and competent member of the family (my wife) and thats their retirement plan. Right now we are dealing with her mother, and we have made it clear to the rest of her family and my family that after her, we're done, and anyone else can live under a fucking overpass because we would like to be husband and wife, not caretakers.
My wife has become adept at finding care facilities that take medicare and placing people in them. But not everyone has the time/ability to make that happen.
Of course we are not unique in having this issue. What happens when two people are staying in a 1 bedroom apartment that they both must work to afford? They might really want to care for mom and dad but...
And we end up with considerably more homeless boomers.
lemonbun@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 34d
yeah this is on them to figure out. Hoping their end of days is no one else's problem but their own
CADmonkey@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 34d
Yeah my sympathy ran out around 2016. For some reason.
The eldery and truck drivers: two groups of people I used to respect, until I met too many of them.
lemonbun@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 34d
same here buddy, used to have alot of respect, just their actions don't deserve sympathy. got tired of the get mine attitude. our generation and newer generations just get the shit end of things and we don't get a chance to play by the same rules.
Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca · 17 pts · 36d
Yo, who be making 60k? That sounds like Gucci shit.
freddydunningkruger@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 35d
This is how the billionaires are winning, they manipulate folks into being angry at everyone but THEM. "Boomers" didn't buy $70k houses, your grandparents did.
Meamwhile, Zuckerberg is laughing his ass off while fortifying his Kauai ranch estate.
OctopusNemeses@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 35d
"Boomers" are the grandparents to most of social media posters these days. Statistically the internet stays centered at about teenager to 20 year old being the peak of the normal distribution of users. That's the Baby Boomers' grandchildren. Great grandchildren even.
Just pointing that out, but otherwise I agree. They're all angry at a strawman "Boomer". That strawman in reality is demographically a small portion of the world population who are very rich. The majority of baby boomers got fucked in their own way by the rich.
You guys are all distracted into fighting each other.
Furthermore, I'm continuously baffled at how or why people fawn over the anecdotes about those who talk about their parents having a good life straight out of college and now owning multi-million dollar homes. How can you not realize these anecdotes are from rich kids of rich boomers. You guys are so hungry to eat the rich??? That's them right there. What are you praising and fawning over them for. Start eating.
All part of the distraction. The lesser than billionaire rich hiding in plain sight, running distraction for the richest of the rich.
rekabis@lemmy.ca · 16 pts · 35d
Boomers (b. 1946-1966) bought houses long before they were $70k. Assuming a great job straight out of high school, the first ones would have been buying homes as early as 1964, the last boomers by 1984.
Taking the middle - 1974 - and in my neck of the woods the median 1974 starter home was about $16k CAD, and the minimum wage was $4k/yr. This put even minimum wage workers within spitting distance of the flip side of the one-third rule, which states the price of a new home should not exceed three years of income. Workers in good industries - such as framers, plumbers, and electricians - easily met this 3× rule even within a year or three of starting work.
So the better phrase would be:
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works · 12 pts · 36d
The only reason my wife and I could afford a house is because we live in one of the lowest cost of living places in the US. Even here it’s still almost triple what it was just a few years ago.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 35d
I saved up for my house and paid cash. It only took ... uh ... 35 years.
Sir_Premiumhengst@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 35d
Meaningful change will only happen when fewer than half of all people own houses. Now, more than half owns a property, and, if the system was to change, they'd lose money. More than half the people will uphold this status quo.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 35d
It hurts homeowners who aren't interested in ever moving as well. Property taxes are based on home value.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 35d
Or those who do wish to move, and upgrade while doing so.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 35d
That depends on a few more factors.The fact that their home values have skyrocketed does go a long way to alleviate that.
Yeah, what may have been a $60,000 upgrade is now $250,000, but they're also getting another $200,000 for their home when they sell it, which makes up the difference.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 35d
I don't know how evenly houses go up or how much consistency there is, but going from $100K to $200K is easier than $300K to $600K.
Housing price increases are almost certainly making the gap wider for upgrades.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 35d
The thing is they aren't going up evenly everywhere. A $400,000 house from a few years back in my area is now selling for $600,000, but a $100,000 house from that same time is now selling for $300,000. So the price difference between the 2 has actually stayed the same.
The institutional investors are targeting the cheaper houses, so they're the ones skyrocketing the most in value.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 34d
So still a net loss for those wishing to upgrade.
As you said in another comment:
COASTER1921@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 35d
Ya but property taxes are still significantly cheaper than rent, and most states have some exemption for a portion of the valuation your first home. The same doesn't apply to renters, and in many municipalities multifamily zoning has significantly higher property tax rates to begin with. Many conveniences of cities are built around homeowners since they're the majority of voters. In my old apartment despite trash at the property being taken by the city, apartment residents did not have access to the city dump for recycling and large trash items. Meanwhile residents owning a single family home did and could even get them picked up as part of their regular trash bill, which was $5/mo less than what we in the apartment paid for trash.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 35d
Do all the math please.
Home ownership includes property taxes and maintenance. New roof, new furnace, new water heater, etc. These are big bills every 12-15 years. Boomers did this with HELOCs, but HELOCs are gone as housing values in my region are going down from the peak in 2022.
Another big problem is contracting is unregulated and out of control, before 2020, contracts were typically materials x2 for labor, now they have no upper guidelines, just a rolling scam and they learned in 2020-22 that it's better to work less and charge more.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 35d
I'm not saying homeowners are in a worse position. Just that increasing values also hurt them.
My parents had to move out into the country into a smaller house because their taxes got so high they couldn't keep up after retirement when they quit getting raises.
And of course they'd taken out extra mortgages on their house to try and keep up with the increasing costs so they could stay in the town they'dlived in for 60 years, so they didn't actually have a ton of equity despite their home having massively increased in value.
And with all the other old people moving out into the country, the property values where they moved are skyrocketing, so they're already getting upside down and I'm already having to pitch in to help them pay the mortgage on the smaller home.
LodeMike@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 35d
Extremely few people in this country own houses. Nearly zero children do.
Sir_Premiumhengst@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 34d
Are you sure about that? https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf
LodeMike@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 34d
And that doesn't include children.
wasabi_noir@lemmy.zip · 11 pts · 36d
Anyone using kalshi as a news source can eat infinite shit. Anyone using kalshi period in fact.
doingthestuff@lemy.lol · 11 pts · 35d
Wages really need to go up if prices won't come down. Even food is unaffordable.
rekabis@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 35d
LOL 😂 in Canada, if minimum wage - currently $18.25/hr - was indexed to home prices starting from 1972, when median homes in my city were $16k and minimum wage was $4k/yr, said minimum wage would currently be $150/hr, or $300k/yr.
That’s an 8.22× jump in minimum wage.
I would love to see most people being faced with this fact.
doingthestuff@lemy.lol · 7 pts · 35d
I realize the Canadian dollar is weaker than the US dollar but $18.25 is a pipe dream for tens of millions of Americans. Our minimum wage is $7.25. As of today that is $10. 29 CAD. Wages in my area are a little higher, places generally pay $13-15 and maybe $20 for skilled jobs. But I know a ton of people making around $13. Even that is basically right at Canadian minimum wage after converting. Our housing isn't cheap either.
rumba@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 36d
And they bought a house worth at most a couple of years of income with a 25+ year loan
doingthestuff@lemy.lol · 7 pts · 35d
You can still buy homes in US cities for under $150k. I just looked up my first home. I paid $37k in 1996, sold it for $74k in 2007, it's worth about $125k now. It's not a great location, but there are good jobs around St. Louis. If you want to live in an Instagram home in a big coastal city, I have no sympathy.
The sad part is that I make less money today than I did in 1996, not even factoring inflation. Inflation isn't so terrible if wages move with it, but wages are completely stagnant even as prices double. I can't afford to move. I've been stuck in my current home since I bought it. I just hope I'm able to pay it off before I'm no longer able to work.
YaDownWitCPP@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 36d
To be fair, there are far more entrepreneurial opportunities to generate wealth these days. If you're not on Onlyfans, are you even trying?
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works · 14 pts · 36d
I’m sure you’re joking, but for the record the vast majority of people on OnlyFans don’t make any money.
DahGangalang@infosec.pub · 11 pts · 36d
Yeah, that's why I drive for Uber while doing my Door Dash Deliveries. I also tie some dogs to my bumper to I can get some cash with Rover. The best part? I can also fill out surveys the whole time too to eek out an extra 0.5 cents per hour!
I figure if I save it all, I'll be well in range to make a 5% down payment on a 2 bed/1 bath house from the 1940's by the time I'm 75.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 35d
I just stopped buying Starbucks coffee and became a millionaire overnight. It really is that easy.
DahGangalang@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 34d
Damn, why didn't I think of that one
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 36d
it's the multi level marketing of sex!
idiomaddict@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 36d
Do you even know what I would have given to be able to make money streaming? /s
captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 35d
The clothes off your back?
idiomaddict@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 35d
You kids don’t even realize that you could double dip and make money on only fans at the same time, when you give the shirt off your back!
MrSulu@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 34d
Not all boomers, just the loud ones. I'm surrounded by boomer neighbours who own their properties and are vocal about the complete lack of options for current generations. I meet more of the loud ones at work though
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works · -14 pts · 36d
The reason housing isn't affordable is because of:
When you say "boomers," are you meaning the people in power? Cuz yeah, they're old and making these decisions to let this happen. Most normal people don't have the power to stop this shit. Stop complaining and start working towards getting rid of 1) and 2).
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works · 14 pts · 36d
When I say boomers and I’m talking about this, I’m talking about the retired couple still living in a four bedroom house in the suburbs refusing to sell it because it’s going to be worth just a little bit more next year meanwhile there’s a young family who can’t afford a fucking house due to none being available. Yes corporations are a problem, a big one, but the number of neighborhoods that used to be filled with kids that are now filled with retirees is also a problem.
jj4211@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 36d
For each long-held boomer held household there's a half dozen other houses that are out of reach for other reasons.
We don't have to be advocating kicking old folks out of their homes they have lived in all their lives, and even if they freed up their housing, it probably wouldn't help.
You would have a house for sale for almost the same money as new construction, but in need of tens of thousands in repairs and probably significantly smaller than construction done in the last two decades.
There's stories starting to come up about inheriting from boomers being more trouble than boon. Houses that ostensibly should go for a lot being hard to sell unless they spend a lot to fix it up to make it appealing.
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 36d
Either I’m not understanding you or you aren’t making the argument you think you are, you are talking about repairs that should’ve been done years ago when it was cheaper to do those repairs and it’s those same boomers who chose not to do those repairs.
And most new construction houses aren’t going to have the longevity of a well repaired older house. Shrinkflation and enshitification have hit the building market as well.
At the end of the day you aren’t totally wrong, but I feel like you’re missing the point that I was very specifically answering the question of the person I replied to “when you use the word boomer…“.
jj4211@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 36d
Yes, often the repairs should have been done years ago, but either way you slice it, the typical boomer house is not exactly super enticing stuff. A family member looked into buying a boomer house after the owner died, and before even delving deep the ductwork was shot, termite damage visible, warped subflooring, cracked foundation. On top of all this it was a 1500 square foot home when pretty nearby houses of comparable room count were about 3000 square foot and not much more expensive list price. Even if it were in mint for the era condition, the windows were single paned, the insulation thin, and various other updates you'd want.
I'm not so sure "they don't build them like they used to" applies to houses. Shrinkflation for the yards to be sure, but in terms of the house itself, the houses tend to actually be smaller. In terms of durability, you may have bottom dollar sentiment but it's competing with a lot of engineering advancements. They can be relatively cheap but still be a very robust structure. Even mass-market plumbing fixtures are generally better than fixtures you'll find in 40 year old construction. That old house might have a lot of Polybutylene plumbing, for example, instead of PVC and PEX, for example. The old house probably has a higher chance of usable attic storage space versus modern trend of engineered trusses using up the space, but can probably take more of a beating structurally.
Just saying that getting all fixated on the Boomers personal residences isn't really that big of a part of the problem. Now if you say they are tossing their retirement money toward contributing to the rental racket, I'm with you, but I'm not going to think it's worth it to see about trying to get those boomers into apartments just to free up housing stock that isn't generally as great as folks might think it should be.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works · -5 pts · 36d
Do you have statistics, cuz we have statistics on what I'm saying. Let's say what you're saying is true, why are they holding on to it for pricing? Because the fucking corporations are buying up all of the stock.
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 36d
Here you go. And maybe next time try not being an asshole.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 36d
I'm being an asshole because you guys are just sitting around complaining about generations, which is a distraction from the real greeds.
AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 36d
Yup. Keep the left mad at the right, bottom mad at top, country mad at city,, all the while shit gets worse. Well, not for the pricks starting shit in comment sections, they'll have plenty to keep themselves distracted with.
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 36d
This is Lemmy, we keep the left mad the left here.
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 36d
I was just answering your question…
GreenBeard@lemmy.ca · 6 pts · 36d
While speculators driving up prices is a problem, the bigger problem is your small scale landlords with half a dozen revenue properties 3 of which are only being used as AirBnBs, and the rest managed using price fixing software to gradually break renters backs.
We've known since the beginning that Rent Seeking is anathema to free markets. It's the dirtiest word in economics, because it breaks the whole system and is accountable to no feedback mechanism on a macro-scale.
makeshift0546@lemmy.today · -15 pts · 36d
There are homes in most areas that are well under 400k. Housing obviously needs to be cheaper but it's not nearly as bad as the fediverse memes make it seem.
qarbone@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 36d
That's still nearly 7 full years of salary, in a world where people struggle to save even 10% of their take-home salary.
makeshift0546@lemmy.today · -3 pts · 36d
Not the point. It's making shit up.
qarbone@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 36d
Is everyone making shit up? Or are there places with expensive homes? Do you even know where the OP in the image lives to claim that they're making shit up?
I don't think anyone is saying the minimum house price is now $700k. But, living in Massaschusetts, even cities besides the uber-expensive Boston have more houses closer to $700,000 at list price than $400,000.
makeshift0546@lemmy.today · -5 pts · 35d
It's okay when my side uses cherry picked edge cases 🤷♂️
qarbone@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 35d
I could list the multiple cities I surveyed where capping the maximum price at $700,000 filtered more houses than capping the minimum at $420,000.
Unless you have research data that documents the median house prices for urban and near-urban locations, your $400,000 is just as much an anecdotal, "cherry picked edge case" as any other value.
You came in, gave no supported facts, but complained that someone's anecdote is false and biased while fully refusing to engage in contextualizing the tweet.
TachyonTele_Esq@piefed.social · 10 pts · 36d
My father told me with a straight face that a 3k a month apartment is ridiculous, because you can buy a house with that.
So yes, the memes are out there for a reason.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 35d
Well, you can...
But you may not like where you can buy a house for that much.
TachyonTele_Esq@piefed.social · 2 pts · 35d
Ah very true
makeshift0546@lemmy.today · -1 pts · 36d
Because people make shit up.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 35d
As someone who just bought a house..
400k is nearly untouchable for most people right now.
My partner and I had to scrimp and save for years, and then borrow money from my family, and then go into a bit of CC debt to secure a house for 317.
And we're two working professionals with no kids.
Median household income in the US ~80k. Your mortgage is supposed to be no more than 1/3rd of your income.
So that means the median household has about 2300 a month for housing expenses. My 317k house right now is running ~2700 a month (~2100 for the house, 600 for PMI and escrow).
So you're probably only getting ~270k at most on the median income. 400k is way out of the typical buyer's price.
makeshift0546@lemmy.today · -2 pts · 35d
30% of Gen z and 50% of millennials own homes. Stop blatantly making things up.
Homes are too expensive and should come down. Wholly agree. But majority of the population, even projected gen x will own their home. The median rate that they are selling at is about 420k +/- who you talk to.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 35d
Posts real numbers from an actual recent home purchase
Also, this...
https://www.nar.realtor/press-releases/first-time-home-buyer-share-falls-to-historic-low-of-21-median-age-rises-to-40