Actually, if I were in the same area as my folks, being able to take over the ‘old homestead’ would be fine by me; however, I moved to a different part of the country decades ago, and I expect there will be an extended period between when Mom passes and I am ready to retire.
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Enlightened self-interest might be “hold onto that house and vote for better transportation and other features for livability” but that requires that most of the neighbours act the same way. (Prisoner’s Dilemma writ large!)
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Very true. Plus … America. Our civic culture and default economic philosophy would have to change radically in order to see the enlightened self-interest that’s been so lacking (especially with most GOP voters).
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Yeah it’s not an everywhere thing and there’s always luck. And while what I described is only the default in places like the New York Metro Area, its spreading along with the luxury housing plague.
But just by way of what’s common among people I know my own age (30’s, prime millennial territory).
My brother got “lucky” and managed to snap up a foreclosure for a shockingly low price in our area. $400k for a house in need of a full renovation. Not quite a shell but not initially livable, in one of the more affordable and outlying hamlets in our area. They put an additional $50k into the house and sold it to purchase a house in a better area. They made a grand total of $10k in profit for the down payment on the new house over the 5 years. And they could only afford to do that because some one was willing to hold the mortgage privately for them, and my brother is in construction so almost all of the work was done at cost.
My cousin works for credit card companies in Delaware. He had wanted to rent in Philadelphia, just 30 minutes from where he worked. But found he could buy a condo on the Delaware side of things, also 30 minutes for work, for something stupid like $60k. His maintenance fees were identical to his mortgage payment, but the total was less than rent in Philly. So this is your build equity outside downtown and trade up right? When he sold the unit he made… $60k. Exactly what he paid for it, after 10 years, adding a garage and assorted other work. That was the plan, but still.
A couple I know got genuinely lucky. While casually checking real estate listing while in the early stages of thinking about buying a house. Trying to figure where and if there was a communtable area near their city with affordable real estate. They ran across a small house in a small, little heard of town about 40 minutes out, newly renovated, and listed for well less than the average for that town. Good schools too.
They were expecting a murder or something. Turns out the owner had just lost her husband after a long illness. And was deliberately selling the house for less than it was worth. She didn’t need the money and wanted a young couple planning on kids to be able to afford it, as she and her husband weren’t able to have kids thanks to the illness.
So they got in on the American dream because a well off widow was kind.
Other than stories like that, almost every one I know rents or lives with family. I also know at least 3 people already taking care of parents.
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Not everyone wants to live in the city, for sure. As long as you’re looking at the house in the burbs as a place to live rather than an investment, and the costs make sense, it’s a workable option.
This is another factor to consider. A lot of people have moved away from their hometowns and have no plans (and perhaps no ability) to return anytime soon.
That gap is probably where private equity and landlords will swoop in to buy up the properties on the cheap.
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Oh, I hadn’t thought about location, you’re right. LDoBe reminds me too that a lot of houses built post WWI are basically crap quality, even the big McMansions. Lots of drywall and vinyl that won’t last another generation. So the houses in question may not be worth much in themselves regardless of supply questions.
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I don’t know who coined “the precariat” as the new proletariat, but the word perfectly describes the situation for more and more people in this brave new world. :-\
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If the framing work is sound, replacing drywall and vinyl is a LOT less than the cost of the house. The pre-WW1 houses will also need major work, because $DEITY knows what their electrical wiring is like. The old knob&tube is probably sound, but someone probably put in cloth Romex in the 1950s or aluminum in the 1970s, both of which are fires waiting to happen.
By the way, construction was no better in the ‘good old days.’ It’s survivorship bias. The jerry-built houses of a bygone era have all been torn down by now; only the soundly built ones are still around.
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Yeah. As one of those evil Boomers approaching retirement, in financial planning I can see only two possible outcomes: I leave my daughter quite wealthy, or I die destitute. Moreover, it appears that no amount of planning on my part can steer things to either destination; it’ll be a matter of sheer luck. Oh, well, I’ve enjoyed a ton of undeserved good luck up to this point.
I am seriously looking at re-titling assets in her name sooner rather than later. “Do the giving while you’re living so you’re knowing where it’s going!”
Even the top decile haven’t left the precariat. Having a million bucks to your name isn’t really enough for a secure retirement if you should happen to live a long time, spend a lot of that time in a bear market, and then die of an expensive illness. It might be only the 0.01%ers who are really secure.
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I bought a house a couple years ago for… hell I don’t even remember. $20k? $30k? Something like that. Small, two bedroom house with a small kitchen. Needed a couple thousand dollars to make it livable. In a midwest town of 10k people. The idea that you can’t go anywhere in country without needing $1 million for a house is ridiculous.
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If I want to keep working in tech then living in east jesus nowhere midwest isn’t going to help.
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It seems to me that everyone in these comments is discounting the rather large voting Bloc that millenials are and will soon make known. Nobody acquiesces in their own starvation. They will make themselves heard, I’m sure.
Their needs will be politically met, somehow. The New Deal didn’t happen because the economic royalists suddenly became enlightened. They were pants-shitting scared of losing all.
The millenial generation will learn how lions roar also, and how they claw…or there won’t be a United States, I think.
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Due to an extremely well managed co-op telephone company, the area at one point had faster internet speeds than anywhere else in the country save the Bay Area, because the co-op had a bunch of money made off long-haul microwave relay towers and plowed into fiber. Get you a remote job and you’ll be fine. And it’s just 45 minutes from Kansas City, the Paris of the Plains.
Where did I say that? I said where I’m at. Real estate is absurdly expensive here, so like I said. If I want to consider home ownership I need to leave.
You want a house for a couple thousand bucks, you can go off to some rust belt town and get a house for a couple thousand bucks. But fact of the matter is most work is not that portable. And more broadly the issue is that inceasingly the work is in cities. Because of that people, younger less established people particularly, are moving towards cities. Most US cities will or already are experiencing the sort of run up in property values that are pricing younger Americans and working people out of more major cities (towards smaller cities).
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Sorry but this is just you telling yourself stories. It may surprise you to find out that “tech” happens all across the nation. Might not be Surveillance Capitalism Unicorns but there’s banks, insurance companies, universities, hospitals, law firms, media companies, real estate brokers, logistics, a mess of state and local governments, all across the country and they will all pay tech talent significantly above the local median income.
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And 45 minutes from all things I like to on a regular basis. Yeah no.
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You can’t go anywhere there’s work and art and shit to do after 6PM and your friends.
Anybody can go buy an acre of dirt and a house for 100k as long as you don’t mind living in an economically and socially dead place.
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It already is. A large proportion of those kids who wouldn’t leave are supporting their parents.
Really, this whole “leave home young and never go back” thing is a modern white, western phenomenon, anyway. Through most of history, and still in a lot of places, homes are multigenerational affairs. Three or four generations might live in the same place. Everybody supports everybody else.
Not every living situation works for every person. But we shouldn’t rag on someone who does it differently than we do, if that’s what works for them. IDIC.
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Who said anything about tech?
And my “stories” are a well documented trend in the US. Work and populations are concentrating in and around cities. As are the young. Whether they work in tech or not (I don’t). Whatever the sort of work. Major industries have also long concentrated in particular areas. That a few jobs of that type might exist anywhere matters less than how many people there are seeking them, and what sort of compensation local demand brings. If there’s one opening for a paralegal my town (population around 8k) and there are 10 paralegals seeking work. Well 9 paralegals are gonna have trouble finding work here.
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