Is it really true that previous generations didn't have to sacrifice to buy homes? That seems patently false to me.

First, previous generations were significantly more thrifty which meant more cash on hand. Don't believe me? Let's say you save 30 bucks a day starting at 20 (most of us can easily do that by controlling how much we eat out) - that means you have 110k in your bank for a down payment on your 30th birthday (ignoring interest). How much of the current generation thinks that way and cares about saving 30 bucks a day?

Second and perhaps more obviously - our parents generation and their parents traded off affordable housing for long commutes. They weren't buying 3 bedroom apartments on park avenue, they bought 3 bedroom houses in the burbs and commuted an hour+ each way every day.

Compare to that, your options of working remote or living somewhere basic for a bit sound obviously better.

If you aren't willing to trade off what you want long term for something you can give up now, you won't have anything. And neither would anyone in a previous generation.

$30 a day is almost $1000 per month, that's completely unrealistic for 90+% of under 25s, most people don't hit that kind of saving power til they are 30. And I don't see any evidence in your post that previous generations did that? My parents certainly didn't, they started saving at 30 on teacher's salaries and bought a house three years later. That house (in Cambridge, UK) is now worth £800k, I can't afford that, despite earning far more than their salaries at retirement put together.

We are not talking about "90%+" here. This thread is in response to someone who "can't afford a house on a tech salary." Tech comp has been over 100K/year out of college for a while now, and even on somewhat less you should either be saving a ton or have much fat to trim in your expenditure.

OK well tech comp is very much not that high in the UK, so I won't speak to that, but the fact remains that things are objectively, numerically harder for us, and getting a lesson in life from those who had it easier is not very convincing.

// But the fact remains that things are objectively, numerically harder for us

So I never dug into this before but I found this interesting chart from the US government [1]

It does seem like a relatively smaller percentage of young people own homes today vs 40 years ago - but not as shocking as you'd imply:

Percentage of people <35 who own a home: 1982: 41% 2021: 38.5%

Percentage of 35-40 who own a home: 1982: 70% 2021: 62%

So while the trend is down - it still seems like over a third of people under 35 own a home, and over 60% of those 35-40 do.

That sounds very far from impossible.

[1] https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf

Small sample size, but many of the people that I know that are that age and own a home inherited it, they didn’t buy it.

This happens in each generation

I suspect the numbers would be worse if you looked at households instead of individuals due to declining marriage rates (but I'm not willing to put in the effort to find numbers).

I don't understand what you're saying. To me, if the rate stays flat but represents fewer married couple, then this same rate actually means more homes are owned by people of that age.

Meaning - if guy and girl are married and own a house together, that counts as 2 people towards home owner bucket.

If they are not married, they'd need to each own a house for the same rate to hold.

It is true that good money can be made in tech, and that some companies pay > 100K/year out of college, but it's worth pointing out that even in the US this isn't true in general or in the majority of cases. There are a lot of people in tech making less than that even years out of college - it's largely a function of where you live and whether you land your first job at a handful of particular companies.

You can refer to https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/..., or https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/... - those people are all in tech, and most aren't new grads. Median salaries for "computer programmers" and "software developers" are 91K and 107K respectively.

> Tech comp has been over 100K/year out of college for a while now

The vast majority of IT work in the US pays around half that.

Even taking that figure at face value...

> or have much fat to trim in your expenditure.

Yeah, fat like exorbitant rents that landlords keep jacking up year after year solely because they have the power to do so. Fat like corporations charging more for less because they can get away with it. Fat like our federal government and the banking system it artificially props up debasing our currency and whittling away at the buying power of those dollars.

The fat to trim ain't in individual working Americans' budgets. The fat to trim is systemic - and by God are we overdue for some trimming, no matter how badly it might hurt the feelings of the ownership class.

> Is it really true that previous generations didn't have to sacrifice to buy homes? That seems patently false to me.

Take a look at average home price by year: https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-house-price...

Now compare that to average wages: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/awidevelop.html

Now look at the double digit interest rates they paid on those mortgages. You pay the monthly payment, the top line number is largely irrelevant.

https://www.atlanticbay.com/knowledge-center/history-of-mort....

They didn’t have cellphone or internet bills. Financing cars wasn’t really a thing.

Trade offs.

Those add up to <$100/mo if you do it right, and you generally shouldn’t finance cars.

Student loans though...

State schools, not living on campus, and community college though. You are going to college to learn, not to party, right?

In state tuition is well into 5 figures in a lot of places. Even Community College is more expensive than it used to be - my local is almost $3k/yr

So a 4 year degree is on the order of 30k, aka what a lot of people pay for one year on campus. That’s pretty easily achievable on entry level salary (I know, work while you’re in school, le horror). Even if you have to take loans the whole way that’s a car note.

Are there people who this is out of reach of? Yes. Would it be cool if it were free? Of course. Is it crippling debt that makes a comfortable life impossible? Don’t be absurd.

Okay. You now have a harder time at being accepted at the highest paying companies because you didn't graduate from a select few universities. Hell, in law, most companies where you can really earn a good wage don't even hire outside of harvard.

Sounds like a hidden bonus; encouraging people not to be lawyers!

Ok, if you get into Harvard, go to Harvard. Your opportunities in the long run should outweigh any sort of student loans you have to pay back. If you're going to NoName Private College that's 90% of the cost of Harvard, go to state school instead.

And apply to scholarships. Lots and lots of scholarships.

Don't forget that until about the mid 90s most people were only buying with one income. And even into the 2000s that second income was often significantly lower.

So that graphs never align that well when you look back and try to say 'in the past it was 3x salary for a house, now it is 6x'

That is as buyer are now competing for houses with two good salaries to buy with.

To add to this, the low interest rates have added the ability for these joint income purchasers to bid higher to win the property they want.

In the UK at least, the move has broadly been in line with the 3x joint salary with mild adjustment for increased borrowing opportunities, but largely driven by the increase in joint salary.