this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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i don’t know wages then, so this doesn’t tell me anything except hey, prices go up.
You can tell by the average income (2nd line), it being almost 50% of the price of a new house says pleeenty
Homes were much smaller then and homeownership rates were lower.
Avg Size of homes: 1920: 1,048 square feet 1930: 1,129 1940: 1,177 1950: 983 1960: 1,289 1970: 1,500 1980: 1,740 1990: 2,080 2000: 2,266 2010: 2,392 2014: 2,657
Historical Homeownership Rate in the United States: 1940: 43.6% 2023: 66%
Is that home ownership rate the % of houses owned by the people living in them or the % of people who live in a house they (or their immediate family) own?
Sounds like neoliberal apologism to me.
If "homes were much smaller" is the problem, why can't people still buy a 1,048 square ft house for half an average income?
How has "historical homeownership rate" changed the affordability of houses, especially with your statistic existing in a vacuum, completely isolated from things like "number of houses available"?
To put it bluntly, you've clearly just grabbed two statistics at random and claimed those are the reasons people can't afford homes any more because "houses have been allowed to become high return investments" and "executives are fucking workers out of every cent they can and obfuscating it by getting foreign slaves to product cheap tat".
Sorry if the data disagrees with you.
And I thought the MAGA people hated facts...
No need to be sorry then, since your "data" is just random nonsense.
It says average salary
ok thx
It easily tells you that an average salary could buy about half of a house or two cars, per year.
An important thing to note, though, was that single income families were commonplace. Nowadays most (traditional in-tact) families have both parents providing at least one income stream. Worth mentioning that the millenials that are settling down and starting families, even though doing so later, are also sticking together at a much better rate than our boomer parents. Millenials have a significantly lower divorce rate, especially millenials with kids. Partly because…we can’t afford it lol. We could totally hate our spouses but there’s no way we’re both affording a home suitable for our kids to be spending a night at.
There’s also a lot of other factors than having a higher percentage of people active in the workforce. Some have a significant impact on the costs of these things, but even with that in mind, the shift in ratios is huge.
That said, we can compare modern median individual income to 1938 individual income. In my state of Massachusetts, median income is about $40k.
We can then compare the price:income ratio of modern medians to the 1938 prices/values.
New house in 1938 was 2.25. Median home value in MA is $570k, modern ratio is 14.25. Counterpoint is that average homes (and lots) are larger, and there’s less undeveloped land. 1938 was scantly over a couple dozen years after the US finally manifested its destiny and claimed the lower 48. There’s no way in hell that accounts for a nearly 7x jump in the ratio, but it is a component.
1938 car ratio 0.49. 2023 average car price $66k, ratio 1.65. Counterpoint, cars are car more technologically complex, and infinitely better engineered. Aside from the creature comforts, you’re still comparing almost a century of development in safety, aerodynamics, and efficiency. Does that mean the ratio should increase more than 3x? Doubtful.
1938 rent, 0.015. Median 1BR in MA is $2500, ratio 0.062. Counterpoints are roughly the same as homes, since rental properties are, essentially, homes.
1938 year at Harvard, 0.24. 2021 (before aid) a year (incl books and room and board), $83538. Ratio 2.08. I guess you could say there’s a lot more to learn? I’m not seeing how that gets to be an 8x relative jump though.