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

Yep^

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We never got the real impact of the 2008 crash

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I got it. Waited a couple of years, then popped into the market. Made very good money off the transaction, and enjoyed a nice beach place in the meantime.

Pp

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Look at affordability when Trump was in office and then at end of Pedo Joe term

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Then, all the talk about affordability boils down to the policies of Biden? Great! Then all the whiners need to do is shut the frick up, be patience, support Trump and let's give him a chance to fix things

If he could get rid of Powell he'd have a better chance to manage this w/o a deep recession.

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As for "get"

- Drive a decent, non shithole car
- Not living in a shithole or have to commute 4 hours a day
- Not eating like a poor college student
- Being able to afford 2 kids

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What's the reasoning behind the entitlement to those things for the middle class?

I ask because I grew up in the 70s and we lived in a rented house that was no great palace and was no bigger than 1300-1400 square feet, with one bathroom for (by the time we moved out of it) five people.

My parents couldn't afford to buy a house until my dad was 40 and my mom was 39. They bought one new car their entire lives. We rarely ate out and frequently ate leftovers, clipped coupons, didn't call long distance until after 7 p.m. on Sunday when the rates went down, didn't have central air, we had one window unit in the den that only dad was allowed to turn on due to energy costs. We had one regular sized t.v. set (not on fo the big ones made into a cabinet that they used to make back then), no cable. We put tin foil on the rabbit ears and banged the top for reception. We'd take a vacation for a few days every 3-4 years from central Alabama down to Gulf Shores, and we'd take our own food in a cooler (bread, condiments, sandwich meat, peanut butter & jelly, deviled eggs, etc) with us because it was so much more expensive down there. "Eating seafood" was us going to the beach at night and catching crabs ourselves.

And we were considered middle class. Not upper middle class, but definitely middle class. And almost every kid I knew lived more or less the same way.

Again, this idea that young people have now that they have it worse than any generation before them is IMO because they have no idea what life before them was like, nor how much more extravagant on average their lifestyles now are.

If we had bought 4-5 t.v.s for the house with the most expensive cable package available at the time, driven loaded new cars, spent God knows how much on ridiculous luxuries like Travel Ball, eaten out 4 nights a week and every day for lunch...basically, if we did the things that "middle class" people do now, we wouldn't have been able to afford it either back then.

"Median" income?

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Im a builder that owns my company. I play tennis, have very social hobbies, travel to Europe, wrote a book on physiology, grill the best steaks in Alabama, church every Sunday, am decently charming...and I dont even bother trying to date here.

I turn on Tinder when I visit Poland and its like im on a different planet

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I'm married so I'm out of the game, but this is something they will NEVER understand. It's the "housing" talking points....but on steroids.

There was a highly illuminating OKCupid study a long time ago when this really started, and the study has been removed from existence and my thread on it was prior to the great reset, so I don't think we can find it. This is like 2005 or 2006, prior to social media even being popular yet. It's only gotten worse as social media has expanded into our lives.

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Its a damn shame I didnt use the $20 I had in my bank account as a college student in 2008 to build a real estate empire

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Right.
We bought our beach place at a discount 4yrs after that in 2012, essentially as part of our portfolio. You weren't remotely in our purchase price range though. That is neither the point, nor is it pertinent in any way but timing.

In contrast to SFP's statement about lack of a pullback, I can tell you from personal experience, real estate remained relatively depressed for four years or so after the crash, through 2012. It gradually escalated over the next decade. Then it finally popped the cork in 2022.

That was the point of the post. Not that you as a student were in the market in 2008 to purchase a home, or that you were lucky enough to even purchase tickets to the LSU Nat'l Championship Game in 2008.

However, 4yrs later, in the timeframe I actually was addressing, had you purchased a small inexpensive home as fiscally tight as it might have seemed, and had you held the place 5-10yrs, you'd have likely done quite well.

That was the point.

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He's only talking about American families whose main breadwinner is a fortune teller.

That's what Medium Income is.

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Damnit wackatimesthree!
It would have made for a much more accurate thread if you'd have just pointed that out 29 pages ago.

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What a boomer take

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Ok. I don't see what I see everyday. Be alone.

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The problem is, people are not willing to start at the bottom and work their way up. (#1) My first place was a small cheaply furnished apartment over a garage that I paid $90 a month for with water, gas and electricity. (#2) Second place was a used manufactured home that I purchased under a lease to own. Paid it off in three years. (#3) When I sold that I purchased a 3br home in a rapidly deteriorating part of town for $36k, at 8% interest on an owner financed deal. (#4) Next was a house at $87k that had a two car garage, two bedrooms and two baths. (#5) Next was a home at $165k, that had four bedrooms, 2.5 baths and 2 car garage. (#6) then the home I'm in now has 4BR, a media room, two living areas, large designer kitchen, 3 car garage and a pool for $365k. That was in 2001. The span of time was 26 years. The problem is, nobody wants to start at #1 anymore. Everyone thinks they should be able to start at #5. They aren't willing to build their future by starting small and move up as their income moves up. They want it NOW! NOW! NOW!

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A dollar is worth a fraction of what it was then.