GenX are parents of GenZ. Older GenX started work in the early 90s and bought houses before the runup. Later GenX entered job market in dot.bomb and bought homes at peak of housing bubble (that was us, we are not rich).
Also some millennials entered the job market around the 2009 crash and it was brutal. It would set your career back years behind and it was a tough damage to undo later.
Yeah I entered job market right after dot.com crash and 9/11; GFC was definitely worse overall across all markets. I made choices based upon that time that i really wish had gone another way (mostly risk aversion since everything seemed dicey).
We definitely own a house and it’s not all terrible. But where we live house prices have probably doubled in 20 years; if we had bought 5 years earlier (when we were in college), we would have seen our home value quintuple.