I wonder if population stabilisation will mean there will simply be a lot less demand for new homes. People will mostly live in what they inherit, just like they do in Europe where the same thing happened a generation earlier. With U.S. population set to grow by only 20% by the end of century (same growth as it had from 2000 till now), how many new homes will at all be needed? So i agree that they don't plan to buy real estate. They will not need to. There are as many children 0-5 years old in America today as 50-55 people. By the time the former will need to buy their first home the latter will be dying to leave it to them.
I don't know where in Europe you experienced people mostly living in the homes they inherited. I've lived in Austria and Germany since 2005 and 2013 respectively and I think I know maybe one person who lives in the apartment their grandmother left them after she passed away? That's in no way standard/expected.
Also despite most/all of Europe having had low fertility rate for a long time, there's still a lot of growth in some places and decline in others (mostly people moving from rural areas into the big cities, and from the poorer countries into richer ones). So stuff isn't static even if the total population number didn't change much.
>I don't know where in Europe you experienced people mostly living in the homes they inherited.
In present Austria. The one you lived in till 2013 doesn't exist anymore.
Buying something decent today in one of the "major" cities is impossible even on tech wages.
Just got offered 2600 Euros take home salary for a product owner position while people are asking for 700k Euros for 20 year old houses outside of the city.
So you know many Austrians your age that live in inherited homes? I still visit Vienna 3x a year (my in-laws still live there), nobody I know there lives in inherited homes, they mostly rent (old contract if they're lucky, new one if not). The same is true in Berlin, those that can live in an inherited home are a tiny minority.
>So you know many Austrians your age that live in inherited homes?
Not directly, but in various forms yes, the young can only afford to buy property if helped out with funds from their wealthy parents . It's not directly inheriting, but it's still generational wealth transfer. My ex, her parents bought her an apartment in the city center when she moved to study (not Viena, another big city). When I went to a house visit to see who can afford to pay 700k on a run down old house, it was moistly Zoomers with wealthy parents there to purchase a nest egg for their kids.
And the whole new vs old contract situation is again a generational wealth transfer. Those long ion the market sitting on cheap old contracts are swinging the balance the other direction for those new on the market who must pay exorbitant prices if they enter the market now.
Renting and being dependent on a landlord your whole life is also not ideal, especially if you didn't luck out to get locked into an older rent controlled contract at a good price, which is putting pressure on people wanting to move to a bigger palce and start families. Move to Vienna now and check out the rent prices.
>The same is true in Berlin, those that can live in an inherited home are a tiny minority.
Because Berlin demographics are mostly foreigners, but Germany is a lot bigger than Belrin, and housing there, like in Austria revolves around getting funded by the mom and dad to get intot he market.
I don't refute anything you say, it just sounded like OP thought something like "well in Europe they all just live in their inherited ancestral homes" where as the reality is that people mostly rent, and of those that own a lot of people bought new homes via parental support (which is still not the same as the supposedly hobbit-esque family domicile that passed from one generation to the next for the last 400 years we all supposedly live in).
I'm sure there really are centuries old farmhouses in Tyrol that really work like OP mentioned, but it's not the common way for Europeans to live.
Given that we're already at the limit with regards to housing supply, I'm not sure that demand-side changes will make housing affordable unless the population very actively shrinks. Even in Latvia, a country with one of the fastest declining populations in the world, housing is getting more expensive, and has been getting more expensive basically every year since 2009. Consider also how strong immigration to the US is. How is it not just cope, to have confidence that there will simply be enough housing one day due to only demographic concerns and no other action?
> Given that we're already at the limit with regards to housing supply...
That's a patently false statement.
There is room for exponential growth in housing. There is money for that exponential growth.
Those with the monies to do so simply aren't spending it on housing for median income families, single persons, elderly persons, homeless persons, etc.
Those with the financial ability simply don't spend in that manner.
There is no 'supply shortage' of housing. There are, however, discriminatory housing policies, practices, procedures, and fees.
In a way we are. If you take the satisfaction survey among Americans, while overall life satisfaction numbers today are mediocre (about average or even slightly below average from 1980), among particular categories, satisfaction with housing situation is among the highest ever, much higher than satisfaction with income, family life, health, etc.
Which means, because U.S. is a democratic country, it will be incredibly difficult to build any new housing as most voters are satisfied with theirs so for them, getting more housing is a lot less important than getting more equity on existing - and precondition for that is limiting new supply.
On the flip side, it probably suggests that perception of housing problem in the U.S. is mostly because of, just as with many other things, a small but very vocal minority for who it's indeed the case. It doesn't shake the economy nearly as much as it seems to be shaking public perception.
I mean sure, that counts as a limit, as it is something that limits the housing being built. We can probably learn a lot from asking why it's not profitable to build certain kinds of housing. That said, the US is not building zero housing, so some kinds of housing _are_ potentially profitable to build.
While there is population stabilisation, there's also changing demographics. Immigration, more single people (or people waiting until later in life to move in together), and an aging population that prefers to live at home will still put pressure on the housing market even though we are over "peak child" - that was the conclusion I reached when I researched the housing market in my EU country and why I decided to buy an apartment this year, coupled with low mortgage rates.
