File under: Nobody seems to know what’s going on
Welcome back to Millennial Watch, an exploration of the most hated generation and the people who love to hate them, by one of the people they love to hate.
One of the most common stories about Millennials I see coming through in my email is home ownership. To wit: can Millennials actually buy houses or are we worthless there, too? This subject got a bit of traction a couple weeks ago when Australian millionaire Tim Gurner got onto Millennials about spending money on avocado toast instead of saving up to buy a home.
Since starting this project last weekend, I’ve seen dozens of articles with headlines like “Millennials are propping up the housing market” and “Millennials are making X home.” I’ve also seen dozens of articles with headlines like “Will Millennials Ever Become A Generation Of Homeowners: Bank Of America Has A Troubling Answer.”
This is more of a curiosity than a genuinely cringeworthy series of hot takes about us. After reading a bunch of these articles, I don’t know if anyone actually knows what they’re talking about. It does seem to me that the subject of generational home ownership is probably more complex than other subjects of Millennial concern, but I’m not an economist.
Here’s what I can say, personally: after growing up during the housing crisis and subsequent economic slump, and after watching friends and family get squeezed out of homes they owned outright for a litany of reasons, my desire to own a home is pretty low. Like historically low. I don’t want to buy a house. But on the other side of that, I know some folks who just moved into their first home that they own outright, and I’m very happy for them.
Home ownership seems like the perfect rock to dash the trend of anti-millennial hot takes on, but I think it’s mostly just left people confused. Nobody really knows what to think, and that’s probably for the best.
What should one hundred percent go without saying is that goddamn avocado toast is NOT what’s preventing or allowing us to buy homes. Get your life right, Tim.