re: The Medium income Amercan Family now earns 1/2 the income needed to buy the avg home.

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It does pay pretty well. That's what we are all saying. Even then it's not enough.

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I tried. He doesn't understand basic concepts.

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Are you just trolling? Change careers?

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Absolutely. If you can't get what you want with what you're doing, do something different. Adapt and overcome.

How is that overcoming? You are saying give up and move to the sticks.

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but that stupid gif was? Practice what you preach or stop preaching.

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I was agreeing with your deal. Sorry that offended you. You seem to be a sensitive sort. No wonder you're so defensive here.

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My wife is a kindergarten teacher making over 60K for 9 months work. Together we would make 120K

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And?

It's not enough

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The point you seem to be missing is that the houses people were buying 30 years ago weren’t usually that desirable back then.

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Again, nobody has said otherwise. Why do you keep trying to make arguments that don't exist?

Do you not understand that to get that same level of undesirable house, it takes roughly double what it did then?

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the sacrifice is greater now than in the past

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No. But it may well be greater than it was 5yrs ago

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Looks like a nice home.

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Yeah nothing says nice like big lots LVT flooring and the cheapest stainless steel appliances off the showroom floor to "virtue signal"

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Bet if you looked 60 miles to the south you could find a similar home for half as much

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Great, so just tell all those people to go move to the 4th generation farmer and destroy the quality of life they desire, good job

This isnt hard to recognize the fact housing is just currently in a very unaffordable state for most, and that's sad. This used to be an American dream and its turned into an American nightmare for most at this point. Simply put. The solution to this isnt just boomer yell at everyone "well go live in the sticks and drive 3 hours a day to and from work". Thats just stupid. I'm sure some people love to be in their car forever and away from their family they may hate, but a lot of us dont.

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Young people want everything without sacrificing anything.

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You act like this is only affecting "young people" it affects everyone, anyone trying to buy a home right now or in the past 2 years really. Again, our own house was worth $300k back in 2020-2021 and just last year it could have sold for 50% more than that at HIGHER interest rates. Thats absolutely insane and just goes to show theres a real housing issue that hopefully can get fixed over the coming decade. It shouldnt be a pipe dream for the hardworking dual income couples out there to afford a home in a SUBURBAN area. Again, this was always the american dream, now most folks simply cant afford that. Just a simple fact right now.

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I drive 67 miles each way.

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And let me guess, there's probably little to no real traffic. Let put you on a 67 miles commute in metro atlanta and see where your sanity is after that for a week. Hint - this is why its going to be a hard sell to anyone who values a decent life.

My dad moved down to New Orleans for work back in the early 80s. Him and my mom moved into a nice 2 bed maybe 1000-1100sq-ft condo in a nice area, which he bought for about $30k in the early 80s (less than $100k today). In 1985-86 they built a custom single family 3 bed 2200-sqft house, with a lot of really nice luxury touches throughout in Metairie for about $125k-$130k. This is about say $360k-$375k in today's money.

They built that house and paid for the mortgage on only his income, and he wasnt some high flying exec or something, he just had a good solid corporate job that paid decently enough. Just a guy with a good enough paying job who was able to build a very nice decently sized house with some luxury touches on just that income in a suburban area...and very much able to afford that on just the 1 income.

This is pretty much a far long pipe dream today. Here's your $450k 1400sq-ft formal rental house with cheap LVT floors now in suburban areas. By the way, you probably cant afford that unless both you and your wife are working, which means if you have a kid or two, well now you need to find daycare for them...how much is that? Oh average price is like $1000+/mo? Our daycare just upped their prices by $200/mo per kid because they were well under market value for our area. Our kid went from $312/wk to $360/wk. Our close friends who have 2 kids there are now paying $700/wk for 2 kids in childcare. This is not some fancy daycare, they dont even speak english...

Things have definitely changed you might not know of because you never lived it, but plenty of people have to live that these days. It's pretty fk'd if you bought a house just 4-5 years ago and need to move again and housing cost will be 75-100% higher than oyu pay now simply due to rapid home appreciation and higher interest rates. Not sure about you, but not a ton of people are making 50-75% more than they were just 4-5 years ago.

May I ask when the last time you went house shopping was?

Sounds to me like you can't have what you want, where you want to have it and now you want to complain. I don't care whether you get what you want or not. I'm just saying you have to make sacrifices in life. Believe you mentioned playing music earlier (if not I apologize for the confusion). If someone wants to be Great at the acoustic guitar, they are going to have to sacrifice hundreds if not thousands of hours practicing. If they want it bad enough, they'll sacrifice. If they don't, they won't.