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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

The average age of first home owners has risen to 38. In another decade or two the American dream will probably be to buy a house when you're 50 and then settle down, get married, and have a family. I wonder how that's going to work out?

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Part of this is simply a function of the average age. There's a much bigger squeeze of life events when everyone dies at 60 instead of 90. We become older, meaning our life events are stretched out further, we leave school later, begin work later, buy a house later, have kids later, retire later, die later. Secondly, within the population the share of old is becoming bigger, meaning the average buyer is older, and also the average age of first buyers is older.

If you look through the statistics we are actually richer in terms of housing than ever before. There's two stats: home size, and persons-per-house. In the past half century or so, home size doubled while persons-per-house dropped by 25%. So we live in bigger homes and share them with fewer people, housing-per-person has been increasing decade after decade to the point it's almost 3x what it was since the war.

> have kids later

This doesn't work for women.

Yes it does, women have been getting children later and later. There is a natural limit to this of course, but that's true for everything and everyone.

That seems to be working out really well.

Technology is already changing this, although it's still expensive. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3wne86ex9qo

This ignores many things. Legal requirements have pushed up home and lot sizes. In the suburbs of NYC a drive will take you from 1910 era suburbs with 800 square foot homes where 80% of the lot is building or useful infrastructure that are now illegal to build, to just built 4000 square foot mansions on lots large enough for apartment buildings with a mandated 20-30% lot coverage maximum. You are also ignoring the fact that even with modern power appliances and automation it takes a lot of time money and people to maintain those new lager homes.

Narrator: It did not work out.

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