Past Family Models Help New Home-Buyers Adjust

• Author: Jorge Garcia
• Posted: 2024-02-20

The housing market in America isn't doing so great, and that bit of information isn't exactly new news.

Home prices are higher than they've ever been at any other point in history.

No need to adjust for inflation either; home prices have never even been close to this high, and they're only continuing to climb higher and higher.

Though for many different homeowners in America, they have found a way to combat these inflated prices. They're actually living with multiple generations of family under one roof, which means they have a lot of help in paying high mortgage rates.

In America, this is something that seems odd with the current sort of housing culture.

Though a long time ago in America, this was a very common practice, if only to keep families together.

In many different countries around the world, like Italy, Germany, Pakistan, etc, you will find the same thing happening. Grandparents, parents and grandchildren all live under the same roof.

It's also not some unique or unpopular idea in general when you really look at the rent-share philosophy. In big cities like New York, you can find multiple people sharing apartments in order to split the rent. These are usually people who've answered ads or co-workers, and they don't even have family ties to bind them.

Americans deciding to buck the culture of "personal independence" are doing a lot better in a housing crisis than those that insist on buying and paying for their own home.

Advertising in America really changed toward the end of the 1960s. Birds were supposed to leave the nest, according to all popular media and a variety of advertisements.

This really changed the culture to the point where kids in their early teens were already trying to make plans on how they would live alone as soon as they hit 18 years of age. This sent them out into the world to get a job, a mortgage, and responsibility.

In a market where people can afford homes, this is a great thing. In a market like today, when housing is over 100% more expensive compared to two years ago, it's something that's crippling people's entire finances.

Americans willing to live with family under the same roof are cutting their expenses and are able to pay their inflated mortgage rates. They're far less likely to end up homeless, and they also provide stability to the market since their houses are kept for so much longer.
 

No End in Sight

At least when the entire market crashed in late 2008, economists and politicians had some sort of idea when the economy would start bouncing back.

Most people believe average citizens should have been bailed out instead of huge corporations, but it's demonstrably accurate that bailouts and stimulus spending did help the economy.

The kicker, of course, was that the stimulus spending was very small and based on money America had in circulation. In other words, they didn't create trillions of dollars from thin air to help the economy, and that's likely the difference between then and now.

Back then, America didn't print itself into inflation. So, basically, there is no end in sight for America's current "recession" and housing crisis.

This is a very scary thing for millions of Americans.

The multi-family model is nothing to be ridiculed and nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, a lot of people suggest that it was corporations funding propaganda campaigns to push the idea in America that every 18-year-old citizen should be on his or her own, taking on a new mortgage, because it helped the banks trap people in debt.

So this way of life is nothing to be ashamed of. However, it's not exactly sustainable for a lot of people. Newer families tend to grow with children, and older people end up out of the workforce and need care as they age.

So, eventually, people saving money via the multi-family model are going to find themselves in trouble, and that's why having no real end date for the housing issue is causing so much worry and panic among people.

The best people are hoping for today is that they can afford to keep their home, and that's a very somber note.

Fewer people are dreaming big and making plans for their lives now; they're too busy worrying about how they're going to keep a roof over their heads. Something needs to change in America's housing market, and it has to happen sooner rather than later.