Why the American Dream of Homeownership Is Dying and What You Can Do About It | Tom's Deepdive

In 2009, after a historic housing market collapse, the median home price in The US fell to a reasonable $208,400 But since then, prices have more than doubled. We now have the lowest home affordability since 1984, even worse than at the peak of the 2006 housing bubble. In 2024, the median US home price hit $420,000 an all time high while real wages stayed flat for the fifth year straight. In over 99% of US counties, the average home is now officially classified as unaffordable for the median worker. In 1985, the typical first time buyer needed just five years to save a 20% down payment. Today, that number is thirteen point five years. That's the longest timeline ever recorded. The average mortgage payment has jumped a 113% just since 2020, and that is the fastest affordability collapse in American history. Boomers are sitting on roughly $12,000,000,000,000 in home equity. Most of it, though, is locked behind sub 3% mortgages that they are never going to give up. Institutional investors like BlackRock and Invitation Homes have spent over $60,000,000,000 quietly hoovering up homes the public never even saw listed. For the first time in US history, the majority of adults 40 believe they will never own a home. And here's the part no one wants to say out loud. This isn't a collapse of prices. It's a collapse of opportunity. A society where 70% of future adults will never own property is not a stable society. When people don't own anything, they don't feel invested in anything because they're not. And when they don't feel that they're invested, when quite frankly they aren't invested, they walk away or they just burn it all down. This isn't a housing bubble that's gonna pop that you can take advantage of. It's a financial choke hold created by money printing, policy failure, boomer era incentives, and corporate consolidation. And it's all already causing problems. Just not in the way that most people think. This is worse than 2008. But for those paying attention, there's always going to be a way to make the situation work to your advantage even if we can't help everyone. We're gonna cover that in part three. But if you don't understand part one, you're not going to do what's necessary. And if you wanna know who to blame, I've got you covered in part two. So welcome to part one. What the hell happened? And how did housing kill the American dream? Home building has fallen 39% since the nineteen seventies even though America added over 130,000,000 people. Single family housing construction is down so badly that The US is short an estimated 3,200,000 homes, and that number is growing every year. Private equity firms now own one of every six single family homes in many major cities. Due to fifteen years of near zero interest rates, the older people who were already able to afford a home locked in a historically low interest rate and multiplied …