Housing is a dead end. Skyrocketing property taxes to pay for the union thugs, higher and higher insurance premiums, etc etc.
Energy prices are skyrocketing.
Etc. Young people are learning how the new rules work and want no part of it.
Agree with you 100% - home ownership allows government to put the shackles on you. Parking fees, wheel taxes, special assessments, property tax hikes.
In Milwaukee, the housing market has been crushed in part by runaway property taxes. An extra $200 a month in property taxes means almost $40,000 of principle that can’t be paid on a mortgage.
Most people budget on total monthly payment, so seemingly small hikes in government overhead have huge impacts on the market and housing “investments.”
Because most of the young don’t have stable jobs.
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?
We don’t own our homes or our property, we rent both from the tax man and insurance company.
All of these factors are passed on to renters but renters are accepting less and less, smaller and smaller to just stay even.
The home in the suburbs will eventually become a relic of the past for the most part. The collective block apartment will become the norm. Less is becoming the norm for young people. They have learned to live in a fish bowl much easier than we have.