A staggering new analysis from Zillow highlights perfectly the unintended consequences of central banking policies that drive massive asset bubbles but minimal job/wage growth. According to the study, surging home prices and rising rents have now resulted in a record 30% of American adults, up from 21% in 2005, being forced take on roommates just to afford monthly rent payments.
As rent consumes a growing share of household income in many cities, some people must relocate or find ways to offset rising prices. An increasingly popular way to cut costs is by adding a roommate. Nationally, 30 percent of working-age adults—aged 23 to 65—live in doubled-up households, up from a low of 21 percent in 2005 and 23 percent in 1990.
We define a doubled-up household as one in which at least two working-age, unmarried or un-partnered adults live together. For example, a 25-year-old son living with his middle-aged parents would constitute a doubled-up household, as would two 23-year-old roommates who are not partnered to each other. A doubled-up household contains people who might choose to live apart under different circumstances, financial or otherwise.
Not surprisingly, large metropolitan areas like New York, LA, Miami and San Francisco saw the highest percentage of their adult populations doubling up on housing.
Source
Absynthexx: Yep. It is. I bought a house and my mortgage is less than my monthly rent. The only downside is maintenance costs which can spike suddenly. Year 1 I had to fix a busted pipe ($3k) and put a new roof on ($10k). I knew the roof cost was on the horizon during inspection but the pipe caught me off guard.
hinzmo: I live in TN and I’ve been dealing first hand with having to rent in this greedy market. Its hard to find anything even close to affordable that’s decent either. Out of town investment firms have been buying up a LOT of property. This is in a smaller town too Nashville is much worse and higher.
RunRoboRun: My 3 bedroom $800 rent has gone up to 1200$ the past few years.
User_Name13: **Submission Statement**
3 plus decades of policies that attack the middle class have finally come home to roost in the Millenial generation being the poorest generational group in America today.
Millenials have been left holding the bag for decades of irresponsible fiscal policy that has enriched the wealthiest 1% of this nation to previously unseen levels, even in the Gilded Age, and has left the husk of the American middle class trapped in a cycle of hand-to-mouth living, where they can’t get out of debt long enough to breathe and get ahead in life.
Instead, the landed gentry is taking over in America. If you own rental property in America, there has never been a better time for you, more Americans are renting now instead of owning than ever before. That means that the landlord can jack up rent as much as he wants, because he knows that there are always more teeming masses of Americans who can’t afford a down payment on a home of their own, so they have to resort to paying what the landlord wants, just to keep a roof over their head.
The landed gentry have been and are going to continue to make out like bandits in our new impoverished America. If rent keeps increasing at the rate that it does in major American cities, how long until we start referring to our landlords as simply our lords? Because with so much land in so few hands, we are on our way back to being in a system of quasi-feudalism.
Furthermore, no other generation is as regularly maligned in the MSM as millenials for their problems. The older generations love to point the finger at millenials, even though we just got here, it’s the Boomers and Generation X that have allowed the situation to get as bad as it is in America. There is a concerted effort in the MSM to blame all of the crippling inequality that millenials have to deal with on millenials, and not on the actions of previous generations.
drgaz: Just inherit property like everyone else
RMFN: Rent is a form of usury.
Antifa: Which is not kosher. And many landlords are Jews.
sniperhare: I am very thankful my parents found a cheap house that I can live in with my brother and girlfriend.
We pay off the mortgage and taxes, but the house is technically paid for as my parents took out a home equity loan to buy it flat out, as they have owned their home for the past 14 years.
We lived in apartments/townhouses when we first moved out and it was rough.
So it really helps only having to pay my half ($280) for rent and let my GF live rent free so she can work less to focus on school.
We were paying total about $950 for our last townhouse we lived in back in ’13.
EnoughNoLibsSpam: i don’t appreciate the pop up spam on zero hedge
busetgadapet: this fine example of society where being fucked up in the light, yet there’s no pitchfork going on,
LickABoss1: This is an issue where you can blame the government, regardless of which side of the political aisle you’re on. Zoning and height restrictions put into place long ago and kept in place by NIMBYs are preventing the supply of housing from keeping up with the demand. New suburbs continue to be built, but you can only build out so much before the travel infrastructure makes it unsustainable. The only solution is to loosen zoning laws to allow American cities to upzone and get denser (American cities are much less dense than European cities at the moment).
PrussianHacker: It’s all a part of the rich getting richer. Vicious cycle.
temporaldimension: Fun fact: in LA the houses are fucking tiny and so close together that there is only enough space to walk between them. So you can see why it so funny they are the most expensive.
immelol4: How much of this has to do with cohabitation rates of unmarried couples?
armorkingII: Here’s a suggestion…..get married.
fullspeedornothing-: US Dollar is by definition a ponzi-scheme.
When you introduce more money into circulation, this money acts as a sponge for prices. This is the reason things get more expensive.
Not a conspiracy, rather a mathematical fact.
Proof of ponzi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0. Only watch this if you like making money.
Solution: Use Bitcoin Cash.
**Edit: I get downvoted for telling the truth on this sub. Watch the video and try to find a single lie. You cannot.**
All fiat-money in existence, including USD, is a **ponzi-scheme** that **WILL** crash eventually.
If you downvote, you are a gravely misinformed, Stockholm-syndromed wage-serf.
yogononium: How much of this merely has to do with overpopulation? America has added almost 100 million people since I was born in the 80s, all those bodies have to sleep somewhere.
Whaddaya Say?