The phrasing of all this has been a bit unclear, in part because there aren’t many young married couples who are on starting salaries at all and a lot of young people these days don’t intend to have kids until their late 20s or early 30s anyway.
So if a couple is young and married, but don’t intend to have kids for a bit, they might stay with having an in-town place, live life, and then consider the ‘burbs when they need more space/schools. Or might just not want to live in the suburbs until economics forces it.
Yeah I think folks on this thread are talking about a couple of different things.
Not to put words in his mouth, but what I think Gigem is getting at, is that in some areas of the country-- perhaps many areas of the country not named California or downtown Atlanta-- there are options for younger people that aren't outrageously expensive. California is a bit of an outlier here though and I don't really want to discuss it in this post, because even an OLD professional we know, on this very thread, has talked about his tale of loss and not being able to buy back into the market. So I'd like to remove that type of situation from the discussion because although it has similar drivers, the bubble in California is a bit of its own thing.
So anyway I think Gigem's take might be stemming from a lot of the current complaints I, too, commonly hear-- that owning housing simply isn't possible for young people, not the way it was for us, or for our parents' generation. That we were the "lucky" ones and they are just completely shit outta luck.
The reality is, that the above isn't necessarily a true take. Sure, a young professional or a young couple might not be able to afford something in downtown Atlanta. But just because living in downtown Atlanta might be desirable for them, it doesn't make it the only option.
Cincy brought up the point that they might have to commute if they bought further out.
Well, duh.
My wife and I were young professionals making plenty of money and couldn't afford to live in downtown Austin, or anywhere near downtown Austin. We had to buy in the suburbs and commute. When I was working at AMD my commute was 45 minutes each way at peak traffic times. This is true for pretty much everyone I know who is my age. To varying degrees, we all had to move further away from the center of town than we would have liked, in order to be able to afford a house that fit within our budgets.
I looked up "average home price in Austin" and the internet tells me it's $550,000 - $600,000. Sure, that's a lot. That's even more than my current house cost me 13 years ago.
But I just found this listing for a house in Pflugerville-- a suburb just outside of Austin proper, between Austin and Round Rock. $220,000 for a 1051 sqft 3-2.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/16012-Windermere-Dr-Pflugerville-TX-78660/29452004_zpid/?Sure that's not huge or glamorous. It's a STARTER home. It's sufficient for any young professional or young couple that would like to own rather than rent. It's 15 miles away from downtown Austin, 28 minutes in current rush-hour traffic. My first house was also 15 miles away from downtown Austin. It cost $125,000 and that was 25 years ago. $220,000 doesn't seem all that unreasonable given the increase in starting salaries since then.
