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Comment by ethanbond | Hacker News Reader

Not wanting to buy a house seems pretty common for younger people, at least in my experience (in various parts of the US).

I think young people realize that the suburban dream was just that.

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Young people almost always change their mind about that once they have kids. This isn't a new phenomenon.

Buying a house doesn't necessarily mean buying in the suburbs. We've got kid and live in the city, and we know other families that do as well. Probably still a minority, but a growing trend. Remember, it wasn't that long ago that people with kids lived in cities too.

This is a weird comment. Is this a Baltimore thing? American cities are full of families. With the possible exceptions of San Francisco and Manhattan, they are mostly families, aren't they?

Sorry, I meant we're in the minority of families that live in a city, not that a minority of people in the city are families. The latter is true, as you point out: 57% of Baltimore households are families.

Downtown and surrounding areas in Seattle seem devoid of families with kids. My wife and I live in Bellevue but wanted to move to Seattle. We tried finding people at our workplaces who lived there and had kids, to ask about schools and such, but found no one. Everyone seems to move to farther neighborhoods or to the suburbs once they have kids here.

Depends if you mean with kids or not. Most college educated families with kids in Chicago move out of city limits post kids to avoid the bomb that is Chicago Public Schools.

Do you have stats to back that up?

Is it origin/master or origin master?

It depends on the command of course

My wife and I are young parents (not 30 yet and our kid is going to be 8 soon) and don't have plans to buy a house, at least not in the next 10 or so years.

We like the mobility renting affords us. We can switch jobs and move closer to work. Plus, we can switch school districts if we want or feel the need to.

Also, we like not having the stress of being homeowners. A lot of people see renting as throwing money away. We see it as paying for a housing service where a lot of annoying stuff is taken care for us.

But part of not wanting to buy comes from the sheer expense. My wife and I could buy in D.C., but it seems financially irresponsible. But if prices were what they were when my parents moved here in 1990 (less than half, even adjusting for inflation), we'd probably pull the trigger too.

But is a condo affordable? When people say "buy a house" that can be a euphemism for "own my dwelling".

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