“If they feel like they're locked out of owning a home it colors their perceptions about everything else going on in their financial lives,” Zandi says.

Few milestones in life mean as much to the American Dream as owning a home. And millennials have encountered the kind of trouble totally befitting their generation, which largely graduated into the teeth of the disastrous post-2008 job market. Just as they entered peak homebuying and household formation age, housing affordability is at 40-year lows, and mortgage rates are near 40-year highs.

The anxiety this generation feels about the prospect of never owning their own home affects their entire perception of their finances and the economy, says Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi.

“If they feel like they’re locked out of owning a home it colors their perceptions about everything else going on in their financial lives,” Zandi says.

Millennials have long been dogged by a brutal housing market. They faced not one, but two, cataclysmic economic events—the Great Financial Crisis in 2008 and the pandemic in 2020. Both of which left them reeling financially and struggling to afford a home. The Great Recession decimated the real estate market as the economy nearly collapsed under the weight of tenuous mortgage backed securities. While the pandemic brought with it a remote work boom that caused millions of citydwellers to flee to the suburbs, sending housing prices soaring.

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  • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
    46·
    9 måneder siden

    I think the most painful thing is how nihilistic our culture has become with just…being ok with this. Like yeah, we’re supposed to think it’s normal.

    Then you look over at Zoomers and they’re gleefully making unintelligible memes about how everything is doomed. Hopelessness is their comedy. It’s sad.

    Right now, we’re pissed off and want home ownership and the concept of retirement back.

    Are they trying to wait us out until the younger working class isn’t even familiar with the concept? Look what happened to unions, until people finally started digging it up and bringing them back into fashion.

    We must absolutely refuse to forget this, and just beshruggingly accept it as normal.

    • go_go_gadget@lemmy.world
      203·
      9 måneder siden

      I think the most painful thing is how nihilistic our culture has become with just…being ok with this. Like yeah, we’re supposed to think it’s normal.

      Boomers won’t admit to causing most of the issues and keep making things worse. When the only solution for Millennials appears to be fighting Boomers for their lives it’s no wonder many choose to just… check out mentally. It’s parental abuse on a generational scale.