• WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    Where I’m from, the median house price has risen 600% relative to median income since the 70’s.

    That means that we’re dropping more than the entire value of their home as our deposit, while we compete against capital-heavy boomers that benefited from that growth looking to downsize.

    There’s a reason they could have a house and 12 kids on a single summer job income - they were handed a strong economy that they ransacked for their own benefit before blaming the poor schmucks that are inhereting the stripped wreckage they’ve left behind. Couple that with the cost of the massive environmental pivot we’ll need to make to survive as a species, and I’m sure you’ll forgive me for wanting to drive the nose of the next boomer that preaches about smashed avocado toast and bootstraps through the back of their skull.

  • McNasty@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    1 year ago

    I’m solid GenX.

    My grandparents bought a house on a corner lot in the northwest suburbs of Chicago for $6000. Which was about a years salary for Grampa, who worked as a welder. This was in the late 60s.

    ETA: Their mortgage was around $50.00 a month.

    • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
      0·
      10 months ago

      This is actually worse than it sounds 1 year of salary can be paid off in 2.5 paying the same amount someone pays for rent on their apartment. In 2.5 years you wont pay much in the way of interest. Over a 30 year mortgage paying the median home price of 388k means paying almost 3x the face value or roughly 1.1M or roughly 17 years of median income.

    • BigNote@lemm.ee
      0·
      1 year ago

      I’m GenX as well and I will straight up admit that my wife and I got lucky, purchased a house in a “distressed” neighborhood in Portland because it was all we could afford, and now, 20 years later, the neighborhood is fully gentrifying and our house and property is worth way more than what we owe on it.

      I’m conflicted as to how to feel about it. While on the one hand we very innocently bought the place because it was in a shitty neighborhood and was all we could afford, on the other hand I now know that we were what the urban studies people refer to as “bohemian colonizers,” meaning that without knowing it, we were, by moving into the neighborhood as poor artist types, part of a much longer process of gentrification.

      Again, I am of several minds regarding how I feel about the whole thing.

      • garden_boi@feddit.de
        0·
        1 year ago

        be poor

        move to a poor neighbourhood

        I really don’t think that you should feel bad about this personally :)

      • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, I don’t think you should feel bad. You can’t really individually control processes like this and well… you needed a place to live.

      • 31337@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        1 year ago

        Meh, gentrification is the result of bad policy, not personal, individual choices (except maybe for people flipping houses and landlords). Neighborhoods, and the people in them, should not stay poor forever. Rent controls, grants for people to start businesses or coops or whatever, allowing mixed-use zoning, and stuff like that can reduce the harmful affects of gentrification.

  • Let's Go 2 the Mall!@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I live in a small town in the SE US. I bought my house for $89,900, 12ish years ago. There are 3 vacant houses on my street and they are all listed for $250,00 or more. My house is bigger than all of them. They have all been empty for over a year.

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
      0·
      1 year ago

      They really should tax empty houses at 100%. You’ll see how fast they will sell, and how low the price will go to achieve that.

      • mayo@lemmy.today
        0·
        1 year ago

        We do that in Vancouver and it’s good. The fines are steep.

        But it’s opened a mini industry of people being paid to visit homes so they aren’t ‘empty’.

  • SacrificedBeans@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    Last month I had this random conversation with an old lady while on vacation. She mentioned that quite lightheartedly, that “we bought our house just on our salaries, we worked hard back then and needed to settle down”. I wasn’t expecting to have to explain to her that this is not such an easy option for us right now. She seemed genuinely surprised and disappointed at the facts and I didn’t know whether to feel enraged or amused by her true or not ignorance.