Reply to The median Boomer has a housing cost of $612. That includes taxes and insurance.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The premise is dumb. Of course housing costs are lower because boomers are older and many have paid off their mortgages. When they were in their 30’s they had big mortgages (helped by much higher interest rates than today). [/quote]

Boomers and elder Gen ZX had a much lower income-home price ratio throughout their child raising and home buying years than pretty much any other generation:
https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-income-ratio/

Mortgage payment to household income ratio is at historic highs:
https://twitter.com/Barchart/status/1618079832730132482

Look, it was easier for Boomers - especially white Boomers - to get rich and acquire assets. There’s no shame in admitting that. Even during the Volcker years - the high interest rates still didn’t outweigh the low principal balances for homes back then relative to today. 
[/quote]

This. May parents bough my childhood home with a 14% interest rate in 1981. But it was a 60k house they bought with an income of 45k (with a SAHM). Yes, that's a high interest rate, but it was actually possible for them to buy because they only needed 12k for a down payment (not a small sum back then but not some crazy sum either) and the monthly payment was not onerous even with multiple kids. AND it was in a good school district AND it was a safe, walkable neighborhood. It wasn't this horrible burden.

They sold that house for 500k 20 years later. They still had 10 years left on the mortgage but it didn't matter because they were getting over 400k in equity. Their next home was a custom build that they did not finance -- built for about 350k including land, they sold it for over 600k in 2006. Then another custom build (about 500k for land and construction) that my dad still talks about them "losing" money on because they wound up selling after the subprime cash for about 1.1m (it is now worth upwards of 2.5m). They downsized and invested, which worked out great. They recently bought what I think is probably their last house, for 850k in cash. They've got millions in the bank and it's largely from real estate and investment proceeds -- my mom has never worked and my dad has never had a salaried position that paid more than 100k. I'm happy for them, that's great.

But they cannot understand why I haven't been able to do the same thing despite low interest rates. They are confused as to why we still live in our "starter home" which needs some updates we can't presently finance, mediocre schools, more crime than we like. The reason is that we can't afford the upgrade. We are 15 years in on our mortgage and it's manageable, but even if we pulled out all our equity, we can't actually afford either the same house in a better school district, or a nicer house in the same school district. There's just no point. We'll stay and keep paying it down, and I do think in the next 10 years or so we'll be able to move (we pretty much have to by the time our kid hits high school). But we're not amassing a fortune based on real estate -- the market does not work that way anymore, but my parents don't understand that because it's all they've ever known.[/quote]

What was the 45k income from? I bought a house in 1981. 2 incomes- teacher ( 13 k) and computer engineer (22k) Suburban DMV. If there was 45k income on one salary, that was higher income.

Your problem is 
1. What you think a "good" school system is. And that is pretty loaded,  btw .
2. What you think a house is.

Buy a house, you can do it, and your salaries are MUCH higher in 2024. Too bad you missed lower rates by thinking it was all the wrong places and wrong  houses.[/quote]

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