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I'm seeing a lot of friends moving back to Buffalo from larger cities (NYC and Chicago, namely) not necessarily because they want to, but they realize they'll never own a home/be able to afford to raise a family in those cities, and that's something they want to do....and obviously the COL is so much lower here. Kinda makes you wonder about the long-term. There's only so much foreign money to be invested in the obscenely-high housing markets like NYC or San Francisco.
I have friends doing something similar. The guy has a low paying marketing job that he can do anywhere.They have an apt here in L.A. that they've started listing on Airb&b. It's cheaper for them to just take road-trips while they make a little money renting their place out. They make a few hundred dollars profit + his salary which funds their life.
this is what i wonder about constantly as well. In bigger cities (i currently reside in Pasadena, CA) there is a huge influx of foriegn money keeping the real estate market hot regardless of the economy. But, what about small town USA? At some point the appreciation of homes will be stunted due to the lack of demand. Not sure where the equalibrium will be.
It's not like we're making less people. I think, long term, you'd have to own land in a really, really, really crummy location for it not to retain or gain value.
I think that for the foreseeable future, the major metropolitan areas in the US will continue to see strong housing demand. People aren't going to stop moving to NYC or Boston or San Francisco or LA anytime soon.
Yeah, when I was in my twenties I thought it was my generation (Gen X) that was going to be hosed by the Baby Boomers. Now I realize we got off relatively unscathed and it's the Gen Ys and Millenials that are really going to get screwed.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
There have been a lot of articles documenting how the M's are finding they can't afford the big market, popular cities and, as a backup plan, have started populating "new" cities that may, in time, become the new "it" places to live in this country. Places like Austin, Milwaukee, Nashville, Memphis, etc that have enough to become a new, trendy place.
To some degree, it's happening already. That said, this is such a tremendously complex and interconnected issue.... millennials will grow up and most will want homes when they have kids.... but that new suburban dream is not one where to get to a cool walkable / urban (even small scale main street) environment you need to drive 20 minutes just to get there. The drive to the mall concept is not what will survive.
It was Larkspur. I still work in SF two days per week but just moved back to So Cal. Wife hated SF and did not move up. In hindsight, while i don't hate it, we are better suited for Pasadena. SF is just too much of a rat race for me. Long commute, stupid expensive living situation, etc.
Another option is "Urban Suburbia" - for those who can not afford to, or maybe don't want to live in the "BIG" city (we are talking tier one and two cities that have a huge cost of living burden in the center city core - think NY, DC, SF, SEA even) but either work there or want to be a 30 min transit ride away the option is to return to how we originally built his nation in any case... an interconnected network of tiny, small and medium sized urban nodes, connected to one another (ideally) and the big city urban core (almost essential) through physical transportation infrastructure and innovation/knowledge infrastructure to break down the separation/segregation and silo's you see so often out in the burbs.
New Orleans is benefitting from this, as well. The housing here is dirt cheap ... probably 40% of the home prices Koya mentioned a few posts up.
I think it's a little early to be making that prediction.
Seems to me the issue started with seeing just how much profit we could take and just how little we could pay workers to get it. Seems to me a big problem is that many companies and states in trouble with pensions are in trouble because they either didn't make the payment when they were supposed to or they used the money for other things. In some cases both especially in private industry. Tens of million leveraged in ridiculous buyouts that made a few rich and screwed pretty much everyone else. So it isn't really the plan it's the lack of oversight and the shoddy implementation.
Or not adjusting for longer lifespans. Pensions/SS were never designed to be something people lived on for 20 years.
Don't agree with that. Defined benefit will only work while there is a demographic boom. When there are more receiving than paying in, funds are going to get short.
Those of you that are older, does it feel like this has gotten worse in the last few decades? I've always assumed the jobs lost in the 2008-2009 recession really gave employers an even bigger upper hand in the labor market, but I was just starting out in the real world around then so I don't really have a reference point.
Last I checked due to immigration we had more teenagers in the US than during the baby boom. Further again due to immigration we are the only first world country producing enough kids to keep a growing population. So demographics would seem to be a much bigger part of the problem in a rapidly graying Europe and to some extent Asia. We will have a younger workforce than China in a decade or so.
Oh yeah it has gotten worse for some time. Really started taking off in the 80s and has just accelerated. Wages have fallen dramatically behind where they should be given the huge productivity gains we have made.
