You’re correct. But there’s an even more profound reason they aren’t buying homes. Taxes, as you’ve pointed out, are one major consideration; they recognize that with the property tax burden no one ever actually “owns” a home; even if the mortgage is paid off, rent must still be paid to the gov’t.
A bigger reason, in my opinion, is that they’ve seen what their parents have gone through and are going through and want no part of it. And what they’ve seen is specifically this: in the county in which I live and in and around every major urban area in the state, the Feds and the State/County Housing authorities have been and are continuing to build MILLIONS of Section 8, Low income housing projects. Even in this crap economy, as I type, another huge project is being built in the northern part of our county.
And these projects follow a pattern: they are always constructed on major streets next door to middle and upper middle income residential subdivisions. There are two effects immediately felt; 1) the middle and upper middle income people can’t leave their neighborhoods without passing the Section 8 housing and 2) crime in the area immediately soars. Long term, i.e. 9 to 12 months after construction of the Section 8 housing, homes in the adjacent neighborhoods can’t be sold and end up being sold to investment buyers who turn the homes into Section 8 housing; the thing so few know is that Rental Homes have become an industry because under the programs administered by HUD, if you place your house up with HUD, they’ll pay the rent regardless of whether its occupied or not!
What we’ve experienced is that entire swaths of the county have been economically devestated by this phenomenon. My daughter who is an EMT responded two nights ago to a shooting/drive by just blocks where she grew up; the house we were forced to sell because of the growing crime problem. What I’ve seen is that her 20/30 something generation can’t even return to their high schools for re-unions because the schools are now in high crime areas.
With that example of Gov’t induced property value destruction on a scale this massive, the last thing these people want to do is sink a large sum of money into residential housing. Would anyone want to buy a home in Beirut/Bagdhad/Somalia?
Back in the 60’s and ‘70’s we called that “blockbusting”.
But is is all part of a plan. It is of a piece with the outrageous energy prices that Energy Secretary Chu talked about early in the administration. They plan to make it impossible for people to live in a nice quiet suburb and commute to a job. They MUST force everyone back into the cities where the combination of social dysfunction, and corrupt and incompetent government has forced every productive person and enterprise out. It is the UN Agenda 21.
Also, it represents the death of the corporate career employment model. Hardly anyone starts in the mill at 18 anymore and works 45 years to collect a gold watch and a pension. (That’s for government workers.) Companies today look at workers as ‘human capital’ - they have no loyalty to the employees, who are fired at will and in mass numbers to meet narrow short-term financial targets. In return they get none back. Entire career fields and occupations rise and die in a matter of a few years (Look at IT). People continually have to re-invent themselves and move to where the jobs and opportunities are. We’ve become 21st century nomads. Being tied to a mortgage and property isn’t workable in this environment.
Finally, it is also the death of the nuclear family. Almost half of all births are now outside of wedlock. That is the number one guarantor of poverty and dependence. Government subsidizes it to the tune of hundreds of billions each year. For the most part, you can’t own a home and get the full boat welfare package, which I’ve heard calculated at about $60,000 a year. Four bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths and a nice yard are for dad, mom and 2.8 kids. that model of the family is just about dead for half of the population.