Exclusive: most renters surveyed by Harris Poll say the areas they live in have become so unaffordable they are ‘barely livable’
The poll, conducted by the Harris Poll Thought Leadership and Future Practice, asked survey takers to identify themselves as renters or homeowners, along with other demographic information. Those polled were asked their opinion on home ownership in the United States. For many, especially renters, the outlook is bleak.
Though the vast majority of renters polled said they want to own a home in the future, 61% said they are worried they will never be able to. A similar percentage believe no matter how hard they work, they’ll never be able to afford a home.
“When you think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and housing is right at that foundational level of security, the implications on consumer psyche when things feel so unaffordable is something that will impact everyone,” said Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at Harris Poll. The American dream of owning a home “is looking more like a daydream for renters”.
Some houses shooting up in price due to various (shitty) factors does not mean every single house has. Only a small portion of them have which has biased the average price up.
If 10% of houses go up x5 in price, the average price will now calculate significantly higher even if the other 90% only change a small bit.
This is a common thing people try and cite. “Yeah but some house skyrocketed in price so that must mean house prices are fucked across the board”
They aren’t, that’s just a fact.
The following are fucked areas:
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Major City cores as the west’s renting markets are unhinged atm.
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Closer to the core suburbs of tourist destinations for the Airbnb markets
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Pockets of speculation areas that are being heavily gentrified.
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Properties with land large enough to be potentially capable of being split into 2 smaller properties legally, as a speculation market. (This us why sometimes you see big old spots suddenly skyrocket, they satisfy the conditions to turn into 2 properties which can be lucrative if leveraged by a rental company)
Everything else had been fairly well in lockstep with inflation from what I have seen.
Nice anecdata and all but I bought in 2020 and my place has almost doubled in value already. It’s a run of the mill condo.
The (already high) rent prices have also approximately doubled over the same time span.
Buying in early 2020 was the difference between me easily living here and likely having to move to a cheaper area of the country.
And I’m a debt-free, child-free elder millennial who has a large salary and whose parents paid for my college.
The problem isn’t that they aren’t scraping together enough of their $30k a year to save due to buying too many bon bons, it’s that they gross $30k a year and $15-20k of their net goes to the landlord.
Nice anecdata and all but
proceeds to provide their single anecdote
That sounds 100% like your property fits roughly into one of the groups I outlineded above then.
It doesn’t, but you’ll keep believing anything you want no matter what the data says because you’re dug into an anti-reality position.
Rents have gone up rapidly across the country, and that’s after a long period of wage stagnation that didn’t keep up with inflation for three or four decades. But yeah you’re right, I’m well off not because I timed the real estate market and had all of the other advantages I listed, but instead because I didn’t buy avocado toast. 🙄
Except I have bought basically whatever I wanted and from the look of things (e.g. mega yachts and private planes) so have other people who are considerably richer than either of us.
It’s math dude, if your rent is $2k a month and you net $25k a year you aren’t going to be able to save your way out of that hole.
As an aside, people like yourself who told me to move to lower COL areas also provide extremely bad financial advice and pretend it’s universally applicable. Lower COL areas usually also have lower salaries, and you may be able to get a better dinner out in lower COL area, or get a slightly better house or something, but you aren’t going to see the $20-$40k in additional salary you receive in a higher COL area.
