If you want to live somewhere and be able to afford it, then here's a thought to you youngsters...don't move out of your parents house until you've saved up enough $$ for a down payment on at least a condo or small single family home. If you have to move away for college or a job, do it with TONS of roommates. Sure it'll be uncomfortable either way (living at home or with roommates) but you will be able to save your $$ faster than living by yourself all those years and THEN you can buy what you want when you DO strike out on your own. Maybe by then you'll be getting married too.

Part of the problem of "housing prices" is that people who have not bothered to SAVE any money also want to LIVE ALONE in the prime area$ and yeah, there is not enough housing for all single people to live alone in spacious, desirable locations. There are too many people who want to live alone, compared to prior generations where you doubled and tripled up with roommates OR got married and were at least living 2-to an apartment.

Another problem as I see it, is that so many homes are being sold (through reverse mortgages) to investors, and they transform them into high-priced rentals. In the "old days" when grammy and gramps died, either someone in the family bought or inherited the house and then they moved THEIR family into it...OR..it went on the open market where another family had the opportunity to buy it. NOWadays, many homes never hit the market after a death because the home is already owned by the reverse mortgage company..thus artificially restricing the # of homes that are available for sale.

Young and old alike who are looking to purchase a home to live in have been dealing with this artificial limit of available homes and the prices go up up up! WHich only makes the rental rates go up up UP!

Thank GOD for Prop 13.

If you want to reverse this trend, please don't sell any residential property to an investor.

Please don't get a reverse mortgage. (you can have a family member who wants the house make payments to you, which will slowly pay you for the house which they want to buy anyway).

Otherwise, we will live in a society where all the residences are owned by a few entities and everyone is a renter...at the whim of the landlord conglomerate. Did you ever read "the Jungle" by upton sinclair? I envision housing run like THAT will be commonplace in about 20 years.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3925397&forum_id=2#35659475)