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mlthoughts2018

The final graph on median home mortgage payments is misleading too. That can be propped up by REITs and increasing institutional ownership of consumer homes.

There’s also the issue of more millennials living with parents and relatives, unable to afford their own homes, which can be hidden in that.

Definitely can’t conclude from it that wages and purchasing power have kept up with mortgage costs.

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Millennials can live at home because average home size has increased. My first house, built in the late 19th/early 20th century had indoor plumbing retrofitted and would fit in the garage of my current house.

Even if that was purely true, that doesn’t say anything about relative purchasing power to afford mortgage costs though. Home sizes increasing doesn’t mean home prices, relative to purchasing power and technology changes, have stayed consistent with real wages.

And it’s likely not purely true. Home sizes being larger is also a function of REITs and corporate ownership of more consumer real estate, as well as boomers using soaring retirement fund profits to finance remodels, etc.

It’s way more complex than to draw any conclusion that this means purchasing power of homes has stayed close to wages. It hasn’t.

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