The problems are many. First, real income has not grown but 4[Trump years] of the past 30 years. With low cost foreign labor, both blue and white collar workers have suffered with no real income increases.
The UGLY TRUTH is that the pouring of legal and illegal aliens into the USA has frozen incomes, and what little increase has occurred gets eaten by inflation. Add four years of Biden Economics, better known as HYPER-INFLATION, and people are lucky to afford food to eat and survive to the next day.
When I bought my first house, I bought from an owner that financed the mortgage with my 20% down. I literally had a mortgage that placed me with an 80% debt to income ratio. But back then, in 1979, everyone I worked with said take on as much debt as you can, because everything will cost considerably more the following year. It was a struggle, but I juggled my finances and made it through the first year, and then the next.
Three years in, I was offered a job by a client that put me in a city 700 miles away from my house. I could not sell the house for years because interest rates were 17%. I rented a room for $50 a month while my family was 700 miles away in my house that would not sell, no matter the price. That went on for 2.5 years, until I got a job with another company making 40% more income, and the company I was working for, to keep me, broke down and bought my house. I stayed at that job.
Best advice I have is for young people to continue to live with parents until they save enough for a 20%+ down payment on a house, and have a buffer for unexpected expenses, and then buy a house, or begin by buying a foreclosed house needing some TLC, where you can work on the house to restore it to a solid value.
Our primary house now, was a foreclosure. Originally it sold for $340,000 in 1993. We bought it for $187,000. It was stripped of almost everything. Light fixtures, doors, sinks, all appliances in the kitchen, garage door opener, banisters and spindles on staircases and a bridge on the 2nd level, and so on. I dumped $30,000 into the house before we moved in, and it is now worth $600,000.
We paid the mortgage off in 10 years and bought a 2nd house on a lake. If you manage your money, you can accumulate wealth, you can buy a house.
I am tired of the whining. The young today want everything handed to them by their parents. I paid 100% of my university education. I did not get one dime from anyone. I paid for 100% of my first car. It can be done if one has a work ethic and is willing to save to get ahead.
