The de-risking has come in the form of artificial scarcity caused by zoning gatekeeping and outdated fire code, amongst other things. It’s time North America took a hard look at the root causes and fixes them before there is a crisis of confidence in leadership (which is already happened to me - I’m moving out instead of buying in to the insanity.)
Arguably the '08 crash was bad long term too. As far as I've read, a lot of people got out of the industry after that, which made it even harder to build.
fify,
the problems are class-based, not age/generation-based. the intergenerational conflict is fed by the 1% to keep us from paying attention to how they are robbing us.
At every age baby boomers were more likely to own a home than millennials at the same age.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops...
We need to double the number of bedrooms in most major cities.
No. I mean double the total number of bedrooms.
It is absolutely necessary public policy to completely gut the price of real estate across the country. I am aware that it'll be painful.
Right now.
But that's because it's too expensive to live there, so people move to outlying areas. But if the cost of housing starts to drop, people will start moving in, which will stymie the cost declines.
I'll admit that I'm not intimately familiar with all of the large cities in the US, but Seattle would be a slam dunk. The suburbs are way more populace than the city itself.
Same with San Francisco, although that city has more problems than just a shortage of housing.
I'm not sure to classify New York City, but Manhattan could easily double its bedrooms with no shortage of demand.
For anyone in their 20s or 30s.. you only have so many years even if it seems life is long. If your current city makes it impossible to have the housing you want you have two choices. Try to change it, which is noble but can take many decades. Or move.
I can't fault anyone for trying to change it since improvement is a great cause. But do you want to find yourself 60 years old, still waiting for those changes?
I'm on the younger side of GenX so not in my 20s anymore. But when I was in my 20s I wanted to desperately live in my chosen city (Manhattan). I tried everything but it was way too expensive to reasonably rent, forget buying. I gave up and moved and bought a nice house for less money than a closet in Manhattan.
