American dream of owning a home is dead, majority of renters say

When I was in my late teens/early twenties I truly thought that in ten years I'd own a home for sure, with some hard work and dedication.

Ten years later, I don't even get to buy groceries every week or eat every day. I've lost 30 pounds in the last year just from skipping so many meals.

I can't wait to see what the next ten years holds.

And if one more person tells me I should make sure to invest for retirement... I can't even feed myself, what you want me to invest? My retirement plan is work until I'm too old/sick/injured and then off myself.

Have you tried having rich parents? That helps...
/s
- I wasn't smart enough to make that choice this time around, but next life being born into a rich family is my number one criteria :)
- It's really quite easy. Just cut out the avocado toast, stop buying those expensive coffees, and invest that cool $69,000,000 your parents left you from their work on the board of an orphan crushing factory.
- One of my friends solved this by sitting down with her parents and having them ‘help her budget things out’.
  Suddenly they shut up about it. And gave her some money. So all it takes with some people is rubbing their faces in it so they can’t pretend prices are the same as they were in the 50s.
I posted in another thread that I have nothing to save for retirement but people chastise me for getting the occasional chai latte or buy Taco Bell for my kid once in a while and I got the response, "what are you going to do about your child's future?"
Hope we can afford to feed her until (if ever) she can make it on her own?
As if I could put the $20 or so a month on "luxuries" like those into a savings account and become a millionaire by the time I'm 65.
You should at least put in as much as your organization matches because that’s income you’re missing out on otherwise.
- Sorry, I definitely might come off as rude in this comment, but this line of thought really annoys me. Do you think people are poor simply because they're too dumb to think "I should spend less money on groceries?" Don't you think they've already considered finding a better-paying job, if such a possibility exists for them? If moving is even an option for them (which is a big if), where do you suggest they get the money to rent a moving truck, as well as the money for a security deposit on a new apartment?
  Your comment is about as helpful as asking "Have you tried not being poor?"
- Oh dear, thought I recognized that name and vibe. You're not here to repeat this kind of thing again, are you?
  Missing the other big factor:
  There's a large quantity of influencers profiting off of doomsaying and convincing millennial they can't afford homes with bad math and bogus statistics. They churn out clickbait content with unfounded claims, purposefully designed to rile up viewers and drive engagement.
  This of course applies to many topics, housing affordability just being one, that turns out drive big engagement by spreading disinformation.
  It's actively profitable to lie on the internet nowadays, so lots of my fellow millennials have an extremely soured and warped perspective of reality, because if you keep getting told lies by enough different random strangers on the internet on a topic you aren't familiar with, you'll start to believe it.
  Spreading disinformation, especially about serious topics like economics, medicine, politics, religion, etc, needs to be cracked down on more. Posing as a professional online and spreading damaging info on purpose should result in jail time imo.
  https://lemmy.world/post/11830662

Off topic tanget but I'm pretty tired of being told "housing is affordable, just not where YOU want to live" I'm in a midwest state and buying a home anywhere near a city is apparently now a luxury.

All my home owning friends keep telling me to stop throwing away my money on rent, and just move somewhere the nearest grocery store is quick 40 minute drive away. There are USDA loans to help, no city tax, no homeless or crime, if I could only stop clinging to "societal interactions and infrastructure" I could have a great homestead!

What a joke.

if I could only stop clinging to "societal interactions and infrastructure" I could have a great homestead!
This is so true, and something that really gets ignored in the discussion. I don't WANT to move to bumbfuck nowhere where I have no roots, I want to stay and give back to the community that raised and nurtured me into the person I am today. Unfortunately I (and a lot of others) have been priced out by home speculators.
How is there a loneliness epidemic in all age groups of our society, and yet no one is asking if one of the factors might be people having to move for education and then work to chase affordability, while getting pushed further and further away from their social networks?
Even if it were true, which it is not, "move to some nowhere shithole if you want to buy a house" is a stupid way of framing this untenable situation.
Yeah the whole, move away from all the jobs to buy a house you need your job to afford line is ridiculous.
It's not actually a joke, it's the reality of the current housing market. If you want to own a house now or soon, that is where they are affordable. The other part of that reality to face is that this situation is not going to be fixed anytime soon, so you will have to deal with it by renting a high-priced small place in a big city, or taking the option to own your home where you can afford to buy.
I'm on track to have my house paid off about 15 years early, out here in rural USA where houses can still be bought. I would never trade this life to live in a big city, unless it was free to do so. It's 5 minutes away from 2 grocery stores, 30 minutes away from the largest city in this part of the state. Most people in my area commute about 20-30 minutes to work. All of my peers own their own houses here too.
So you can laugh all you want at that "joke" but those of us living it are laughing at you paying $2000 a month for rent.
- What you're describing is a suburb.

Veterans get their loans backed by the government, so no down payment.

It allowed me to get a decent sized 3 bedroom house on almost an acre inside of a metro location... For $400 more than a 1 bedroom apartment down the street a decade ago. I got two friends as roommates at first, paid lower than my old rent and they saved up their own down payments and both moved out into homes they bought in just a few years because I charged really cheap rent.

I just checked, my old apartment has went up $700 in that decade.

The Down Payment is the hardest part of buying a home. You can't save up 25k while paying what's essentially a mortgage payment.

Give first time homebuyers the same program, and loads of people who think they'll never own a home would be able to do so and pay less than renting within just a few years.

If we don't do anything, those people are going to be lifelong renters.

If we don't do anything, those people are going to be lifelong renters.
Yeah, that's the current idea. We'll all own nothing and we will like it
We were lucky enough to buy in 2019 before everything got out of sight in our area. We used a FHA loan which required a 3% down payment and I got a first time homebuyer grant that covered all of that which allowed us to pay closing and moving costs since we were leaving in a hurry due to the small podunk town we lived in for 12 years stopping extra trash haul off and allowing trash burning in town instead. Almost every day my house was full of smoke. I had to choose between my home or my health. We were outbid on about a dozen houses by landlords. With the loan type we got stuck with a PMI, but even with that and extortionate Texas home insurance rates we still pay half of the renters in the house next to us. Although we'll never be able to afford moving now and if we had waited any longer we would have been stuck in the corrupt small town EPA violation. We paid 96k for a brick 3/1 and five years later it's shot up to 240k in value. I feel bad for the people that can't get one now because I fear it's more going to get any better when half the country cares more about voting for the people they believe hate the same people they do.
- because I fear it’s more going to get any better when half the country cares more about voting for the people they believe hate the save people they do.
  This is absolutely not an endorsement of fascist traitors and everyone should absolutely (1) vote and (2) pick Biden, but I feel compelled to point out that a lot of the factors causing the housing crisis (car dependency, NIMBYism, etc.) are thoroughly bipartisan.
There is a federal first time home buyer program even for non military members. You can put basically 0% down on your first house. You just also have to pay PMI until you have 20% equity in your home. So you are better off making as large of a down payment as you can but it can be as low as 0%. Of course there's still closing costs but that doesn't cost too much more than most rentals charge for a security deposit anyways. As far as PMI goes it isn't that expensive. With the PMI, taxes, and insurance included my mortgage payment on a 3 bedroom house is still less than rent on a 1 bedroom apartment in my area.
- It's better than renting, but PMI is a racket and needs to be discontinued. It's a handout to the wealthy. The mortgage insurance is the property itself. If you don't pay your loan, they take the property. It's a hassle to foreclose a house, but I think mortgage lenders do just fine overall. They must assume some risk, it's part of the deal.
- PMI is just another weight around your neck, it shouldn’t be normalized
- This is accurate, same experience here. It's a good solution for new buyers, and the PMI cost should be a small expense relative to the alternative of having the full down payment.

Corporations should not be allowed to own and rent out multiple dwellings beyond a single apartment building.

Corporations can't be trusted to run an apartment building either.
Apartment buildings should be owned by their tenants.
- There is definitely situations where renting is preferable. Ideally (imo) all rental buildings would be government owned an not-for-profit.

Renting by itself would be fine, it's just that there's barely any rent control in North America, and you're constantly at the mercy of your landlord, inflation and general greed. Put national standards for renter protection and rent increases in place and this would be much less of a problem.

Renting should never be the goal and always leaves you at a disadvantage and subject to market forces.
For decades renters were "pulling one over" on landlords and told there was no reason to ever own a home. Now it's come back to bite them in the ass.
Rent wouldn't even be an issue if everyone had been fighting for unions and min wage increases all along.
- This would still have happened with stronger wages, it just would have taken longer to get so bad. There was never sufficient supply and that was on purpose.
- Wouldn't it make sense to minimize that disadvantage then? There will always be people who have no other choice but rent, so they should be protected from exploitation. And stronger renter protection could cool down the housing market, because it makes being a landlord work multiple properties less attractive. Win-win if you ask me.

Just saw a report in Georgia, cooperation owns tens of thousands of homes for lease only

And charge way more rent than necessary
I work in municipal development. For the last 2 years every single developer that's approached us about building single-family developments has been build-for-rent exclusively.

I'm currently selling my house because I can't afford it anymore. When I bought the house I made sure it was 20% below my income. Mortgage went up $600 this year along with everything else I got robbed of home ownership. I worked tirelessly to buy the house and now being forced to sell I feel absolutely defeated....

I'm curious as to why you weren't in a fixed rate mortgage.
- Maybe it's tax and insurance increases. That's what I'm seeing.
When I bought the house I made sure it was 20% below my income.
I'm not sure what you mean, but if that's 80% of (post-tax?) income, that's way too high.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/23/key-facts-about-housing-affordability-in-the-u-s/ft_22-03-23_housingaffordability_3a/
This is my fear. I've only had the house 2 years, exclusively rented before. I'm 'making it' right now, but a few years down, who knows. Sorry for you, hope it comes out okay.
You are good, game's rigged

The amount of people justifying this ridiculous housing bubble is disgusting.

So much love for landlords in this thread, on lemmy of all fucking places.

Because many users here are landlords themselves, obviously. My theory is that since many Lemmy users are IT workers, have been working for many years, many of whom are middle aged, and they make lots of money in contrast to other professions, they could easily afford a house. I have an IT friend who bought a house 5 years after he started his first job after graduation. Here in Ireland, one of the reasons for Dublin's extortionate house prices and rent is because of the tech sector. Some IT employees from the United States come over for business trip and rent some accommodations for few days. Dublin is also trying to be the "Silicon Valley" of Ireland and since landlords know how much IT workers make, they could easily increase the rent.

You know why they call it the dream right?

You gotta be asleep to believe it.

About 36% of US population rents (same as developed countries like Denmark and New Zealand), so I am confused why this is being framed as a uniquely American problem? I think the issue with real estate being sold to corporations is the main problem (which happens everywhere) as unreasonable expectations for continued growth and lack of new housing prices people out. Where I get the figures: link

For working class people home ownership was really the primary way to stabilize and build wealth. Which is important since we don't have a social safety net, most of our retirement has been privatized, healthcare and education are dramatically more expensive etc. etc. and since working class folk can't build up generational wealth we are moving into technosurfdom. I don't know if it's unique but it sure do suck over here for a lot of people.
I'm relatively lucky but shit be hard here.
Not American, but the basis of America being "the greatest country on earth" (lol) was in working hard and contributing to society would give you ownership and freedom.
If that degree of ownership is equal or lower to every other developed country, that indicates that perhaps America is no better than anywhere else. It's also worth noting that in some cultures people don't care as much about home ownership, whereas in Western culture it is highly desired to own your home. If it's as bad as places like the UK, which is currently in recession, and has had over a decade of low spending/earning, there's something clearly wrong.
So, it is a relatively unique problem for America that they are equal or worse to other countries that either struggle to buy, or don't care about buying.
- Okay, I get what you’re saying. The poll in the article is on a U.S. based population and concerns their views on home ownership. The poll specifically asks the question “The American dream of home ownership is dead”, which I think is such an emotionally laden question that I wonder about the motivation of the pollster.
  Regardless, if people have such perceptions then there’s a reason for them. My point was that we all know that countries like Denmark have better social safety nets for their population, and so that’s what I was comparing: homeownership is not any different in a country with better social safety net.
  I think the root cause here is corporate access to real estate mortgages, and no country is brave enough to policy them out of such real estate purchasing (I think someone did, I think it was Canada, but only against foreign companies?). So it doesn’t matter what perception America has of itself, or any other country for that matter, if their home ownership levels are the same despite social safety nets in other countries. The root cause of people not becoming home owners seems to be unaddressed, regardless of country
If the article was titled differently it could say American dream of becoming a millionaire is dead, majority of non-millionaires say.
Just another article creating division in America during election season.
- Creating the division?
  Aren’t you shooting the messenger a bit here?
America is the only country, am I rite?
- The article is about American dream, what’s your point?

I hope someday to be able to afford a plot of land to be otherwise homeless on where no one can legally fuck with me or put me in jail for doing it. In theory this might work as long as it's done far away from anything resembling a HOA. I'm sure there are measures in place to prevent people from doing that, maybe there's a minimum purchase price or acre requirement for land outside of population centers or something.

Out in the country you see people doing this with campers sometimes. Never talked to any of them though.

Most cities have habitability rules. Outside city lines it's far more common. Good news is if you own the land throwing up a basic shed to receive utility hook ups is far cheaper than building a whole ass house. And most states won't let an HOA force you to join if you're already there when they start.
Its what most people in Canada do; buy land and drop a 5th wheel on it until they finish the cabin.
- I'd guess that people in Canada are probably already familiar with the issue, but I'd note that trailers often don't have great thermal insulation, and it can get pretty cold in Canada, so one may need to do a lot of heating (well, and cooling, but that's probably less-vital).
  You can add insulation, but they're pretty space-constrained.
You can buy a piece of land and put a trailer on it -- cheaper than a camper/RV if you don't plan to move it.
But it's got some drawbacks.
My sister did that for a while, but if you don't have a house on a foundation, at least where she was, you also didn't have a postal address, so you can't get mail or packages. IIRC also couldn't get an electrical hookup to the grid (though if you're far enough out in the boonies, that point may be moot anyway).
The bigger problem is, at least in the US, not the price of land. Land is cheap. The problem is land near desirable jobs.
If I were going to live somewhere and wanted to minimize housing costs and I had no location constraints, I'd probably choose a city or town which has seen population outflow, which lowers housing prices. Then you still get municipal water, sewer, access to the electrical grid, maybe natural gas service, stuff like snow clearance from roads, high-speed Internet service, nearby stores and amenities, etc. Lot of stuff that one takes for granted if living in a developed area.
I used downtown Huntington, WV, as an example in a previous comment:
https://www.zillow.com/huntington-wv/?searchQueryState=%7B%22pagination%22%3A%7B%7D%2C%22isMapVisible%22%3Atrue%2C%22isListVisible%22%3Afalse%2C%22mapBounds%22%3A%7B%22west%22%3A-82.460912051591%2C%22east%22%3A-82.39087420979412%2C%22south%22%3A38.37258334248018%2C%22north%22%3A38.45369011178824%7D%2C%22usersSearchTerm%22%3A%22Huntington%2C%20WV%22%2C%22regionSelection%22%3A%5B%7B%22regionId%22%3A12012%2C%22regionType%22%3A6%7D%5D%2C%22filterState%22%3A%7B%22sort%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3A%22globalrelevanceex%22%7D%2C%22ah%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Atrue%7D%7D%2C%22mapZoom%22%3A13%7D
- holy telemetry, that's a long link.
- Maybe this is state dependent? I have visited many trailer parks that have natural gas and electricity.

Very easy to own a home. Just buy a house in the middle of nowhere, and then have a campervan

Yeah... I've been looking in a lot of "the middle of nowheres" and I can't find work anywhere even remotely close (1hr drive) that doesn't pay complete dogshit that wouldn't cover the bills. Not to mention the houses I keep finding are in bumfuck nowhere and yet are asking $150k+ for a house that is listed as a "teardown."
...$150k for the luxury of having to build a new home over it... It's absolutely fucking disgusting.
But yes, if this advice is for the lucky tech bros that can move wherever the hell they want, then sure. There are houses to "buy."
- Another user just posted a beautiful home for 180k. Sucks that your Google skills suck so much u can't find them.
Even the houses in the middle of nowhere are $400K in my state. Rundown, off State Route X, nearest neighbors are all poor trash house? Still $400K.
I’m looking to build in the next year, and just expect that housing will be 50% of my pay or more because I’m sick of renting and being unable to prepare for when the rent shoots up $300 a month like it did last year.
- Unless you're in California or some other very high CoL in a city area that's pretty doubtful.
  In 2018 purchased an 1800sq ft 3 floor town home in northern Virginia in the fair fax area (very wealthy area) for 420k. 2 bed room 2.5 bath, built 2005.
  I sold it in 2021 for 550k, probably could have made a bit more but we wanted to move . So there was definitely a big increase. But that's a very nice, 2 BR, etc. there were cheaper ones. Down in the 300 range would get you a smaller home. Bought a nicer home in 2021 in a wealthy ish town of a small city. 2300 sq ft, 2 car garage, good schools, half acre to relax on. 450k after a second round of 3 way bidding.
  The idea that you can't purchase a decent home in a nice area for 400k is entirely incorrect. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5908-Founders-Hill-Dr-UNIT-302-Alexandria-VA-22310/51919565_zpid/
  And to be clear, 400k isn't affordable, we should drive that down, I just didn't think what you said is realistic for most areas. It sounds unique ish to your area.
Maybe even down by the river.
A cardboard box can be a home!
Doesn't even need to be middle of nowhere. Just needs to be ~30 minute drive away from city core. Cheaper suburbs are still very much affordable in every city I have seen.
Sometimes you gotta go out to that 20-30 min away "next nearest" smaller town that's right next to the big city but isn't actually in it. It has all your amenities and plenty to live off of, but if you wanna go to the big city's malls, theaters, concerts, etc, you gotta drive 30 min instead of walk there.
Usually you can get very decent starter homes for 250k to 300k in said places, and usually in said "one off" towns the renting industry is much more slow, so you don't have that "you have to buy NOW" pressure. Homes stay up for sale for a bit and you have more than 3 hours to make an offer lol.
Downside is now you need a car... though often even then the smaller towns have some form of public transport to the bigger city you can use, though it can be on a rarer schedule. IE your bus may only come every 2 hours so better not miss it.
I prefer "edge of the city suburbs" over "one town over" personally. Access to public transport means I skipped buying and paying for a vehicle and skipped straight to saving up for a house.
- I'm gonna have to call bull on almost all of this, at least in my state. (The low listing times are real though.... big money buying anything they can rent out)
  To get to a starter home at $250,000 my commute would be 1hr and 50 miles minimum.
  350k only gets me about 45 minutes and 30 miles.
  And these time estimates are on a good day, because fuck good freeway design where I live. One goes north south, one East West, and that's it. Everyone commutes on them and if you need to go anywhere in rush hours it's three times as long
- Just needs to be ~30 minute drive away from city core.
  I skipped buying and paying for a vehicle and skipped straight to saving up for a house.
  It's not just this. Everything you said is objectivity bad advice.
- Try looking in CO. The only house within 30 min of my job under $300k that isn't a trailer or a tiny condo in this one old shithole building says, "everything needs to be repaired including structural repairs" in the listing. Trailers are still pretty much rentals and lot rent is outrageous ($800-1200 at basically every park that isn't located directly on a hellmouth). Oh wait, I could go 90 min out and get a sweet deal of just $220k on a house that's basically just a rotting outside and interior framing and insulation. What a great opportunity!

seems about right. at this point my plan is to buy a small bit of land somewhere and plop some modular/tiny homes on it and call it good. not that it's just that easy, but i'd rather try to find some resemblance of normalcy than play the rigged game.

My mother did this. Used her disability backpay to finance a little double-wide trailer, and the plot it's placed on is like $150 a year plus utilities. Yes she lives in a trailer park, with all the associated things that come with that, but her monthly expenses are basically nothing and she owns the building under her own name.
- The real trouble with trailer parks is when they get bought up by a REIT or something and the residents get forced out (and lose their trailers too, because they're too flimsy and worthless to move again after they've been sitting in place for a few decades).

How is the average kid going to afford a home? They can't afford college, cause that's super expensive now, and none of the high school diploma or GED level jobs pay anywhere near enough for them to afford to live on their own, never-the-less afford their own home.

This is what class warfare looks like, and I'd also debate that this is what economic terrorism looks like, either way we need something better and we definitely aren't going to get any better under Trump and his GOP's leadership, because they're the ones helping cause and exacerbate the problems, and they have no intention on solving them, because solving problems is expensive and the Christian Nationalists among them see poor people as being "inherently sinful", and the racists among them see poor people as the minorities they hate.

The left needs to take the House back, keep the Senate and then do something about the corrupt supreme Court, while having a left adjacent President, which is certainly not Trump.

Poor Ron lost his tennis court and his property value may fall. Have a heart guys.

There is a major disconnect between home prices and rent prices. Normally renting is more expensive because of maintenance. Right now homes are significantly more expensive, either home prices have to come down or rent prices have to go up because this economic environment isn't going to stick long term

Perception doesn't meet reality in this case.

Admittedly we are at a high point and prices are strained, and we should work to reverse that trend. However, home ownership is still very much obtainable. Gen Z is already doing better than millennials.

https://fortune.com/2024/01/17/redfin-baby-boomers-gen-z-housing-market-homeownership/

Gen Z already is at 26%.

WTF? Aren't the oldest Gen Zers only like 25? Never mind doing better than millennials; 25% of 25-year-olds owning houses is surprising for any generation.
- Yeah it's almost like it's bad in certain parts and most of the complainers are trying to live somewhere super popular like Cali or Colorado and wondering why it's expensive in more popular places...

My wife is selling her first home now that we're in our first joint home. For reference, she's 26, I'm 28. I have some thoughts about this whole thing because the house is not selling and it's generally for stupid reasons:

Interest rates are high, so the monthly payment is going to be twice what ours used to be when the house was bought in 2020. Interest rates are never going to be that low again and anyone without a sizeable down-payment just can't afford it. Young people generally don't have sizeable down payments, because they're not selling a home to get their first.
People continually complain about inexpensive cosmetic work like cabinet doors and floors. They walk away from a house with zero real issues because they don't want to fix things like that.
Builders are offering great deals on new homes. No closing costs, paying lawyer's fees, etc. The problem is that new build quality has been fucking awful lately. Before my wife and I bought our current home, we took a look at a new-build neighborhood and even the example home had glaring issues.
Investors. We had an offer for cash, as is, and took it because people with loans just can't compete with that. Why wouldn't we take someone who can pay cash and doesn't care about inspections or cosmetics?

My take? Young people have no money, interest rates suck, but when a home becomes available that is affordable, they don't want to put in the work to fix up cosmetic issues. They expect new-build appearances, but don't realize that comes with poor new-build quality. It's a multi-faceted issue.

So you sold your house to investors that will use it to add to this pretty obvious problem because you did not want to be bothered to wait 2-3 weeks extra to close? Thanks for doing your part to eleviate the larger problem.
People continually complain about inexpensive cosmetic work like cabinet doors and floors.
Complaining about paint is petty, sure, but floors are expensive. I didn't walk away from a house with shitty floors, and a decade later I still haven't replaced them.
I hope you also realize that, at your age, you and your SO are major outliers. Most people your age will never be in a situation even close to what you describe.
- Oh I know. If my wife hadn't done the prep work to save for a house, then buy during COVID when rates were crazy low, we wouldn't have been able to afford our next one.
  I got lucky, she was smart
My take? Young people have no money, interest rates suck, but when a home becomes available that is affordable,
We had an offer for cash, as is, and took it
Sounds like an issue of being unable to get into the market (that you continued to propogate). Young people are poor, so they're unable to compete.

Weirdly, the other half of millenials that do own homes weren't asked at all, I guess they won't have any useful input on how affordable homes are
This article is about how affordable homes are right now. The fact that I was able to purchase a home in 2019 is irrelevant because I'd be talking about market conditions that haven't existed for several years.
- Because everyone knows people all just stopped buying houses between 2019 and 2024 lol.
As a millennial that does own my own home, I'll chime in and say houses are absolutely not affordable these days.
My wife and I put off getting married and out all of our money towards buying a home less than 10 years ago. A shitty 100 year old house in a rough neighborhood of a rust belt city. Terrible school district, but we were hoping to at least break the rent cycle and be in position to upgrade later on.
My career has gone better than expected, but the housing market is absolutely insane. The house I got for $85k now estimates over $165k, and that's not even factoring in the home improvements we've done. Completely given up on ever having kids and pretty much given up on ever moving. We did everything right, followed the rules, and had pretty good luck. No major car accidents, no layoffs, no medical bankruptcy. Generally disciplined in our spending (I'm an accountant). The closest we've had to vacation in 15 years was a 2-day mid-week trip to Cleveland to see a band play. The only bad luck was neither of us were born into wealth.
If you only own and live in one home at a time it doesn't matter a ton how the market is doing at any given moment. Low prices mean I get less for my house, but I can upgrade more cheaply. High prices means I'll get more cash, but buying a new house costs more. There's relatively minor differences to things like taxes and insurance, and you could dive into the math for exact examples, but for the most part it's a pretty minor consideration as long as you have a house to sell and will need to buy a replacement. The people most affected by housing price changes are people who have 0 houses and people who are looking to sell without buying (owners converting to renters, retirees, landlords cashing out, estates, etc).

I dream of owning a ~1300 Sqft home with like a decent little yard. Those are also basically unaffordable where I live.
- Then you have to move. Those homes are available in many towns all over America.
Or maybe because in most places with jobs it's illegal to build anything else.