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Her parents bought the house in the 1980s for $60,000. Now worth $800,000. When she brought up the impossibility of affording anything similar, they told her to “save more money” or “stop wasting money.” This advice makes sense if you assume nothing has changed, but not if you’ve looked at the mortgage calculator of the century.
She posted the question on Reddit’s r/NoStupidQuestions: “Why do so many older people insist that buying a home is just a matter of ‘working hard’ when they bought it decades ago for a price tied to normal income?” She’s not asking for pity or a fight – she’s hoping someone can help find a way to explain the disconnect without seeming ungrateful.
One commenter analyzed it mathematically. Their parents bought a house for $27,500 – about two years’ total income at the time. “Granted, interest rates were 12 to 14 percent,” they wrote, “but they still paid it off in about 12 years.” In other words, even high interest rates couldn’t stop ordinary people from buying and owning homes outright. Not fast. But reasonable.
Another noted that maintaining the same affordability today would require an income of $300,000. Someone else replied: “Buy a house with two years of total income? This really makes me speechless.”
One self-described baby boomer responded with rare clarity: “They can only see what works for them. They can’t understand why it doesn’t work for you.” He concluded: “I’ve made up my mind, don’t confuse me with facts.”
Other users pointed out that the struggles now don’t match the struggles then. One person said: “Old people see young people with beautiful smartphones, looking fashionable and carrying takeaway coffee, and they think we spent our down payment on entertainment.” But mobile phones have become cheaper. Housing does not.
At one time, the average housing cost in the United States was about 2.5 times typical annual income. In 1985, for example, the median home price was about $82,800, while the median household income hovered around $33,600. Fast forward to today, and that ratio has tripled. The median price of a home is now about $420,000, while the median household income is just under $59,000, nearly 7.3 times. In major metropolitan areas, this ratio often exceeds 10 times. This is not a gap. That’s a gap. And the number of canceled streaming subscriptions won’t exceed that number.
