Hello. As the title suggests, I’d like to give a more personal analysis of the current housing situation.
Me and my wife live in Arizona, and are currently renting a 1 bedroom apartment in Mesa. 1700 dollars a month for a 600 square foot, 1 bedroom apartment. I work for Tesla as a tech and make an okay living. 27.20 an hour, which seems good enough, right?
We’ve been looking for a house, and to tell you that it’s a nightmare is an understatement. 6 months of being outbid by an average of 30k dollars, cash offers of course. We maxed out our budget, and every time we find a house it gets bought out from us, always cash offers, always significantly more than the house is listed for.
The worst one we had was a 1500 square foot house, listed at 430000. Almost a half a million dollars we said, but we’d have to make it work somehow. TOP TOP end of the budget. We were viewing the home and saw many, MANY young couples trying to find a home. As soon as the showing was over, the owner told us they already had a cash offer on the table for 4850000. 50k over asking. Cash. Collectively, the 3 young families sighed, and we walked out, yet again, of a house that was probably bought out by an investment firm. No one in our age range (early 30s) has half a million in cash to blow on a house.
Every house showing we go to, it’s the same demographic showing up. Tired millennials, people in their mid 30a trying to purchase a home, getting bis out of a housing market they can’t even afford to rent.
Last night I sat down, looked at my 40k in savings and said: I’ve worked hard, yes, but I’ve also been somewhat lucky. “But what about the younger generations?”. What about the people younger than us? They are even worse off. By the time they have the purchasing power to own a home, it will be inflated to an extent that no one can even afford it.
It sucks out here, and it’s not going to get better until something changes. Gen X and older have to go away, before that, nothing will change.
I don’t want much. 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and solid bones. That’s it. I don’t need a 3500 square foot home. I just want something to call my own, and that will probably not happen.
Tomorrow, we will all go to work and hope things change. This is not how it should be. The American dream is dead, and will be buried with the boomer generation.