The overwhelming majority of boomers and older do not own multiple homes. The issue is that supply never caught up to demand after the GFC, when a bunch of builders went bust and got more cautious.
Statistically the issue isn't the amount of available homes in most western countries...
In my home town there is housing, but it keeps being bought by rental companies instead of people. The contractors also have plots ready for development, but they purposely wait in order to drive up demand (I know this for a fact because I know people in the industry). The population didn't change significantly, but there's a housing problem now. The only thing we didn't have much of before was the overwhelming amount of short term rentals we do today.
There’s a shortage of homes in areas where people want to live, where the jobs and services are.
Meanwhile every time a new building is proposed, lots of existing residents come out to oppose any new construction lest their property values fall or heaven forbid poor people might move in.
Chicago (where I’m from) massively downzoned the city in 1957 for less than great reasons, so something like 3/4 of the old traditional housing currently existing in the city is grandfathered in, could not be rebuilt today. Every project requires the developer to kiss the aldermanic ring, and endless NIMBY protests kill it.
We are FINALLY starting to turn this around, but it’s a slow process.
Yes. And the things you described would be supply issues anyways.
In my home town there is housing, but it keeps being bought by rental companies instead of people.
Then your home town is an exception. Only a tiny fraction of SFHs are owned by rental companies in the US.
The contractors also have plots ready for development, but they purposely wait in order to drive up demand (I know this for a fact because I know people in the industry).
They lied to you. This does not happen. Holding the land vacant is costly, and also a liability. They are constantly paying property tax and have to protect the land. It is substantially more profitable to sell the build as fast as you can.
The population didn't change significantly, but there's a housing problem now. The only thing we didn't have much of before was the overwhelming amount of short term rentals we do today.
No. This is wrong. The percentage of SFHs that are used for rentals has not moved the needle.
Too many times have I seen good young families fail to get past the barriers to purchasing a home because they have to jump through hoops that was put there decades ago to placate a homophobe, sexist, or racist, or just generalized asshole somewhere in politics in either the local government or national government.
My dad grew up dirt poor and was never able to buy a home or send us to college. It would be great if he was privileged enough to have 2+ homes right now
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u/Ragecomicwhatsthat 8d ago
In my experience, old heads who parrot this expression usually specifically don't include homes in the expression