Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

At some point, The American Dream included owning your own home. It used to be that your house factored into your self-image. Part of this was probably due to America's abundant space, inexpensive building materials & lax regulation, which made modern, fully-equipped houses relatively inexpensive. However, after the 2008 crash, largely as a result of a housing bubble, plus the modest prospects of the Millennial generation, the ideal of owning a house, especially a large one, is no longer as important. In fact, many Millennials eschew home ownership, and denigrate people who have what they call “McMansions.” This attitude is reflected in the Millennials' iconic television programs: Friends, How I Met Your Mother, and endless other narratives of single people living together in apartments. A status shift has occurred which will impact cities & suburbs in the future.

The traditional value of single-family home ownership comes from after WWII, which was a couple generations ago, and there is special income tax deductions as an incentive to buy a house. Certainly construction is good for the economy, but home ownership may no longer be a valid redistribution of wealth because Millennials don't own homes; well-off Gen-Xers & Baby-Boomers do. Millennials are more into Urban areas, apartment living & mass transit but these things don't get tax incentives. The anger from Millennials & their call for getting rid of all deductions is because they can't take advantage of them. Millennials, by-in-large, were never able to enter the Middle Class, even with college degrees, even after doing what society told them was good & proper like owning a house. There will always be new home construction in areas where people migrate to but the boom of previous decades is over. Home ownership simply does not make sense to the average young American.