Why haven’t under-45 Gen-X and Millennials taken advantage of the real estate recovery since the bust in ’08? These things never have one answer, and opinions tend to range from the get-off-my-lawn group yelling that “kids these days just spend all their money on Instabook Twitter!” while the bleeding-hearts blame high college loan debt and stagnant wages.
Whatever the cause, the result is clear: younger Americans are in a worse position to build and maintain personal wealth than the Baby Boomers before them, while inheriting an America that Boomers and Greatest Generation-ers have saddled with $21 trillion in debt as of this writing.
Home ownership rates among those under 45 have slid sharply since the previous boom. As a result, many younger Americans have missed out in a house price resurgence that has taken values up by 50 per cent from the crisis-era trough. At the same time, it has become much harder for younger borrowers to tap home equity to use for other spending.