I had the same issue, @Hoggirl, and it cleared up last week. No idea what happened.
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Off topic, but this issue seems to be happening since the site upgrade a few weeks ago. No solution yet, but a page refresh fixes the issue for most people.
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S2 and DiL are 4 yrs out of college, renting a tiny 1BDR outside Philadelphia for $1700/month and buying is out of the question, with flippers and investors buying up any starter homes for 20%over ask with cash.
S1 was renting in our college town for $1400/month and has moved away; he and his SO are paying almost 2K for a small home. None of these late 20’s people make more than 40k and have had no raises since they graduated. The excuses from employers are legion.
My nephew and his wife managed a tiny house in Seattle years ago (maybe 9 or 10). Their family of 3 became 5 with the unexpected arrival of twins. It is so expensive there that instead of trying to buy bigger, they had their basement LOWERED by several feet, enough to make code as living space. Can you imagine? There’s a reason so many people are homeless!!
My oldest started grad school this fall in an area that is in the top 5 of the USNWR list for highest cost of living areas in the US and she has been extremely fortunate to have a subsidized housing guarantee for on campus for up to 6 years and is currently paying $1125 a month for a 2 bedroom apartment that she shares with a roommate. She is lucky that there are also no utilities, cable or WIFI expenses because the rent is 45% of her grad school income. She has no other expenses besides food (no undergrad loans) which allows her to contribute the max towards a Roth IRA each month.
We looked at off-campus housing to see what was in the area, but the cheapest we could find for a single was $2100 for a 400sf studio. 1Br apartments were from $2400-$3500, 2Br apartments were $3,200-$6,000 and we saw 3Br apartments/houses for rent range from $6,000-$12,000 close to her campus.
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Years of low interest rates → High home prices → High rent prices
There’re consequences for everything.
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My son finally found a house with 3 friends 7 minutes from us, but in a different county with lower property taxes, $1000 a month each (I haven’t seen it yet, lease starts 11/1). My daughter pays $1000 a month in Allston/Boston in a 4 bedroom apartment. My 26 year old’s bff was just here with her fiancé talking about saving up $100,000 for a down payment for a starter house. It’s crazy.
Mine doesn’t want to live like a college student with roommates any more hence spending big chunk of every paycheck on a tiny place but loves peace, privacy and convenience. Its worth it but limits available $ for hobbies, travel and dinning out etc.
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$1,800/month would be good in Portland, Maine. My daughter looked for months. She and two other young women finally found a place for $2,700/month. It’s the downstairs of a large house. Fortunately, there was room for a fourth roommate. It was tough for her when she had to pay $900/month on a starting salary as a a photographer.
There is a small driveway, but to use it the girls would have to pay an extra $200/month! Good grief.
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5-6% realtor commissions, every time a property changes hands are a significant factor in inflating house prices.
I feel so lucky that my daughter is not in one of these areas where prices are going crazy. She and her boyfriend are renting a three bedroom, two bath townhouse in the city, nicely renovated with a fenced in back yard for $2000/mo. No parking which is the only downside. They have to park on the street which can occasionally be a challenge. They are both making decent money and have been saving up for a down payment on a house. Houses that they are looking at seem to be in the $300-$400k range. This is Pittsburgh in case any of you are wondering.
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But “most” college graduates are not in high income professions. And those are the ones feeling the pinch. No wonder anxiety is rampant among young people.
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Yeah, it’s tough to see the anxiety in my D and her friends. One of them felt like she and her new husband were just starting to catch up when they learned they would have to replace two tires. It’s hard for them to catch a break.
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Well that comment was originally in the “six figure salary for new graduates” thread, prior to it being split into this wider discussion of rent. I completely agree that most young people would struggle to pay rent, let alone buy a house. That’s why the percentage of 18-25 year olds living with parents has been increasing steadily in recent years.
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If you think about it, FED got it wrong again and again. First they tighten too much too fast during Trump adm. They had to reverse. Then, they were too easy far too long. Now, they are hanging on to 2% inflation rate no matter what. They look pretty dumb at the moment.
Yes, the national debt is sky high. $31T. It is about $100,000 person including babies and dying seniors. $100,000! People can’t even pay their students loans and they have additional invisible debt, $100,000.
The Fed loosened during the last administration. Cutting prime to zero during Covid was largely viewed as an unnecessary political giveaway. That put us as deep as you can get in the hole.
Then they were slow to react, as in any normal world, one where we didn’t overhead and shut down shipping lines and close manufacturing, disrupting supply chains, a war in Ukraine, and gross profiteering, it would have been transient.
The biggest problem though was thinking that they could manage it without a recession, even a short one. That’s always the bargain you make with a big stimulus.
Now, those who had money, have even more and are eating up single family homes for rentals. Those that remain, are unaffordable due to several factors.
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You might want to split comments about the FED to a different thread.
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The super high rent costs that are truly “boxing out” millennials seems to be mainly on the coasts and big cities, so choosing a lower cost of living area can make all of the difference, especially when it comes to renting or buying a home.
My nephew (early 30’s) was able to buy a beautiful 2,900 square ft home 4 years ago for what I consider an affordable cost (170K) in the Southeast after living in a high cost area (Washington DC) early in his career. His mortgage is $500 less than his 1st apartment. And he happened to have perfect timing (low interest rates, and home value has almost doubled) which is not the case of those renting right now.
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All of my relatives are firmly planted in California. My nephew and niece were in the Northeast for medical school and they are now back here, same for my kids. In fact we never even visited anywhere in the Southeast, so why would they want to buy a house there.
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I understand not coming to the Southeast. But what about Nevada or Arizona which is a lot closer and definitely cheaper than most of California. I would not want to live in a state even as beautiful as California if I thought I would be priced out of the housing market indefinitely.
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Put another way, we are resigned to our kids not coming back here after college. If they did they would most likely be living at home for years. They don’t want that and neither do we. And spouse and I likewise expected to move away after college (though in that case it was because we grew up in economically depressed areas not the opposite). But it’s surprisingly common amongst people we know that their kids are expected to come back home after college, and then they end up living with parents.