Frustrated millennials across the U.S. struggle to afford homes: ‘It’s just not a level playing field’
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/17/frustrated-millennials-across-the-us-struggle-to-afford-homes.html
by cnbc_official
Frustrated millennials across the U.S. struggle to afford homes: ‘It’s just not a level playing field’
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/17/frustrated-millennials-across-the-us-struggle-to-afford-homes.html
by cnbc_official
3 comments
Kelcie Lesko and Tim Khalil remember the moment when they gave up on buying their first home.
It was June 2023, when U.S. homebuyers were scrambling to beat out rising mortgage rates and snatch up what they could from a limited number of units on the market. Amid [soaring house prices](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/13/the-housing-market-explained-in-6-charts.html), many buyers made all-cash offers. Lesko and Khalil, a New Jersey couple, had lost out on about 15 bids on properties in Monmouth County at that point.
“We were just getting blown out of the water,” says Lesko, 28, who works in marketing. They had stretched their original budget from $300,000 to $380,000, and had been offering tens of thousands over list price to keep up with other bids.
Their last offer was a “beautiful” two-bedroom house with lots of space and a backyard, which they sensed “was going to be the one,” says Khalil, 30, a police officer in nearby North Brunswick. They offered $380,000 on the $315,000 residence and shook the hand of the seller, who said it was between them and another offer.
When their offer was rejected, “it was like a slap in the face telling us, ‘Wake up, this is just not for you,’” says Lesko.
More: [https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/17/frustrated-millennials-across-the-us-struggle-to-afford-homes.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/17/frustrated-millennials-across-the-us-struggle-to-afford-homes.html)
US housing starts have trended down for fifty years, and sharply again after the 2008 collapse under Bush. Meanwhile, we have almost twice as many people as fifty years ago.
There simply isn’t enough housing, and certainly affordable housing. Businesses are not paying workers enough to afford to live, plain and simple. We hear about the wealth gap and the reason is that the wealthy are taking massive profits by not paying employees their worth and taking smaller profits. The stock market has effectively been used to destroy the middle class and keep all except the elite from making money.