Why buying a house in the US is so hard right now
We charted America’s homeownership problem.
This video is presented by Secret. Secret doesn’t have a say in our editorial decisions, but they make videos like this possible.
Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Homeownership in the US is basically synonymous with the idea of the American Dream. Owning your own home, the story goes, confers both self-determination and security — instead of paying a landlord, you own a growing asset that will form the base of your wealth. Homeownership is ingrained in US society; the majority of American adults are homeowners.
But somewhere along the line, something changed. Homeownership has been way less accessible to millennials and gen Z than it was to their parents, in part because of dwindling housing supply. But even within that generational disparity, 2023 was a uniquely bad year to try to become a new homeowner. Watch the video above to see exactly how bad, and why.
Sources and further reading:
The US Federal Reserve’s economic data was the basis for a lot of the charts in this video. Here’s median home prices: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
Here’s the homeowner vacancy rate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHVRUSQ156N
And here’s mortgage rates: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US
The US Census provides historical median income data: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html
The Urban Institute publishes a monthly housing chartbook, which is where we got some of the data on “price tiers” in active housing listings: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2023-07/Housing%20Finance-%20At%20A%20Glance%20Monthly%20Chartbook%20July%202023.pdf
Zillow’s “affordability index” comes from this dashboard. In the time since we finished this video, the affordability index has gotten even higher: https://www.zillow.com/research/understanding-affordability-32538/
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com.
Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o
Or Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H
This video is presented by Secret. Secret doesn’t have a say in our editorial decisions, but they make videos like this possible.
Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
Homeownership in the US is basically synonymous with the idea of the American Dream. Owning your own home, the story goes, confers both self-determination and security — instead of paying a landlord, you own a growing asset that will form the base of your wealth. Homeownership is ingrained in US society; the majority of American adults are homeowners.
But somewhere along the line, something changed. Homeownership has been way less accessible to millennials and gen Z than it was to their parents, in part because of dwindling housing supply. But even within that generational disparity, 2023 was a uniquely bad year to try to become a new homeowner. Watch the video above to see exactly how bad, and why.
Sources and further reading:
The US Federal Reserve’s economic data was the basis for a lot of the charts in this video. Here’s median home prices: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
Here’s the homeowner vacancy rate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHVRUSQ156N
And here’s mortgage rates: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US
The US Census provides historical median income data: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html
The Urban Institute publishes a monthly housing chartbook, which is where we got some of the data on “price tiers” in active housing listings: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2023-07/Housing%20Finance-%20At%20A%20Glance%20Monthly%20Chartbook%20July%202023.pdf
Zillow’s “affordability index” comes from this dashboard. In the time since we finished this video, the affordability index has gotten even higher: https://www.zillow.com/research/understanding-affordability-32538/
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com.
Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o
Or Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H
Vox
Vox helps you cut through the noise and understand what's driving events in the headlines and in our lives.
Vox video is Joe Posner, Mona Lalwani, Valerie Lapinski, Dion Lee, Ashley Sather, Joss Fong, Estelle Caswell, Adam Freelander, Kim Mas, Coleman Lo...