From skipping meals to working more to moving in with mom and dad—that's how Americans are trying to afford housing
We had the least affordable housing market in decades last year, and it hasn’t gotten much better. Home prices, rents, and mortgage rates are all still high, and Americans are feeling the pain. “Half of U.S. homeowners and renters sometimes, regularly, or greatly struggle to afford their housing payments,” a Redfin-commissioned survey found.
More than 42 million households spent more than 30% of their income on housing in 2022, the latest available data shows, making them what many call “cost-burdened.” It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Home prices and rents skyrocketed during the pandemic-fueled housing boom; the former are still setting all-time highs, while the latter have fallen slightly. Mortgage rates reached a more than two-decade high last year, but have come down too. Incomes, on the other hand, haven’t kept up. So people are making sacrifices.
They’re either taking fewer vacations or none at all, skipping meals, working more hours and more shifts, selling their belongings, borrowing money, dipping into their retirement, delaying or doing without medical care, working a side hustle, or getting cash gifts, according to the Redfin survey.
“Housing has become so financially burdensome in America that some families can no longer afford other essentials, including food and medical care, and have been forced to make major sacrifices, work overtime, and ask others for money so they can cover their monthly costs,” Redfin’s economics research lead, Chen Zhao, said.
Mortgage payments are close to an all-time high, and it’s no longer clear when or if the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this year, especially after today’s hot jobs report. “More jobs also mean the interest rate decline could stall as the Federal Reserve reevaluates inflation risk,” National Association of Realtors’ chief economist, Lawrence Yun, said in a statement, adding that “mortgage rates are likely to remain unchanged, with no further measurable declines in upcoming months.”
Moreover, the salary needed to afford a starter home has almost doubled since the pandemic, and buyers need to make $30,000 more than they do to buy a typical home. Housing affordability is literally influencing how Americans are planning to vote in the upcoming presidential election.
From the survey, we know that millennials, baby boomers, and Gen Xers dipped into their retirement money for housing costs or skipped vacations. Gen Zers worked extra hours, sold belongings, and skipped meals, Redfin found.
Separately, a couple of outlets published stories this week about multigenerational housing; Vox said it was “coming back in a big way.” The publication included an anecdote from a 23-year-old woman who works at a nonprofit in Nashville, makes $50,000 a year, and is moving back in with her parents. It also referred to a 2022 Pew Research Center analysis that found a quarter of American adults, from 25 to 34 years old, lived in a multigenerational family household in 2021—that’s up from 9% in 1971. And as Fortune has previously reported, moving back in with Mom and Dad is so common, it has pretty much lost its stigma—but it’s never really had a stigma outside of America; if anything, it’s the norm in several countries.
Additionally, a RentCafe analysis from last year found that 20% of millennials and 68% of Gen Zers still live with other family members. In fact, California was the state with the most millennials and Gen Zers living in multigenerational households. That shouldn’t surprise you—California’s average home value is roughly $765,000, and its median rent is $2,775; the former is 120% higher than the national average, and the latter is 34% higher than the national median. More recently, a generational trends report from the National Association of Realtors released this week revealed that 24% of younger millennials between 25 and 33 years old moved directly from a family home to their own.
Last year, a 24-year-old woman told Fortune she moved into a tiny home in her parents’ backyard in College Station, Texas. She lived there for five years rent-free, and it helped her buy her own $250,000 home. “If I had to rent, there’s no way I would have been able to purchase a home,” she said at the time. “I don’t think I would [have been] able to purchase for another five to seven years.”
