Right idea, different trend: The boomer generation coincided with the suburban boom, with its emphasis on car culture and mass produced goods. But the sheen of an industrially produced life has worn off, to a large extent: Long commutes and the expense of owning and regularly driving a car don't look as good as they used to. We're seeing a massive move back into the cities, contrary to the (white) flight from the cities in the sixties and seventies. And this means higher real estate prices.

Either way though, it means we live in very different times than even as recently as our parents, which makes "what my parents could afford" a poor rubric. We are looking to live very different places than they were.

it's not that our appetite for coveted real estate has grown. the real problem is that our alternatives to big cities are not good enough. here are your choices. you either live in an environment devoid of culture and community where nothing happens ever, where you live in a split-level townhome across from a stripmall across from a shopping center ... or you find a way to live in the city, where life is happening, even if you have to live in a bathtub.

america's brand of suburban development created this situation. and now everyone has the internet, so they can be in touch with cutting-edge culture and painfully aware of how little is happening in their suburban town. of course, all people want to do is get out of these horrible places.

Firstly the problem is not the location of the house. A similar rise in house prices has occurred outside of expensive suburbs. When your parents bought said house is was worth ~15 years of rent. Today that number is pretty much 60 nationwide (after-tax rental income, disregarding repairs to the house). Same is true expressed in wages. When your parents bought that house it was around 5-10 year's wages of ONE person working, easily payable from 10-20 years of savings. Today, we're talking 15-20.

We're fast approaching the point where mortgages can effectively not be expected to get paid off anymore, because the holder will die before collecting the capital + interest in wages.

It's scary that millennial are the first generation in probably 300+ years for whom, on average, children can't afford to buy their parent's house. Some claim 1400 years, because this has essentially been true (you have to be very flexible with definitions though) in one way or another since the dark ages.

[1] http://www.kiplinger.com/article/taxes/T054-C000-S001-where-...

I'd like to add that in my specific area of the United States, Washington State, we've seen a huge move from international buyers swooping in on investment properties that became available on the market post-2008. There's a big move on Chinese and Canadian investors moving in on foreclosures, low interest rates, and honest to god: cold-hard-cash buyouts (it's extremely rare but in my market it's happened a few times). I'm in my mid-twenties and I feel like my significant other and I have to both be working full-time jobs at $20+ an hour to afford a 3 bedroom house anywhere near a reasonable commute from work. We also don't want to be stuck with the burden of upkeep maintenance, property tax, and unpredictable economy. Back on the topic of marriage; we're still iffy on the idea based off of fear that if our marriage went south we couldn't imagine dealing with the divorce; both psychological and financially speaking... However, our financial situation is a bit different in terms of debt and interest rates. We are both afraid of being to far sunken in debt.