Reverse mortgages: scourge of millenials

I don't what the deal is with house prices these days...all I know is that my parents bought a a decent house for a family of 4 in the late 1980s in eastern Washington for like $55,000, and then sold it in 2005 for like $200,000. And they didn't add-on to it or restore it or anything fancy like that , and it wasn't in some tourist hot spot either. That was just how much the general price of houses went up in 20 years.

So that's almost quadruple the price. Now, I don't know if this is the right way to do the math, but wages certainly haven't quadrupled in that time frame, either. And it's more costly to get a job these days, too. My dad bought that house on a truck driver salary...a job he got with no experience, no schooling, and no special license. He got it by simply walking into a place that said "hiring truck drivers", going on a drive with an experienced driver, and having that driver tell his boss "yeah, he did good, you should hire him", and the boss saying "okay, be here tomorrow at 7". And it wasn't no high-stress trucking job, either. They were short runs in-state, he was home by 6pm every night, and he had weekends off. With that job, he was able to buy a decent house and raise 2 kids while m y mom stayed home and raised us, cooked for us, cleaned, etc.

I'm not saying baby boomers had it easier overall, but in some ways they did.

Fenderbender123 said:

I don't what the deal is with house prices these days...all I know is that my parents bought a a decent house for a family of 4 in the late 1980s in eastern Washington for like $55,000, and then sold it in 2005 for like $200,000. And they didn't add-on to it or restore it or anything fancy like that , and it wasn't in some tourist hot spot either. That was just how much the general price of houses went up in 20 years.

So that's almost quadruple the price. Now, I don't know if this is the right way to do the math, but wages certainly haven't quadrupled in that time frame, either. And it's more costly to get a job these days, too. My dad bought that house on a truck driver salary...a job he got with no experience, no schooling, and no special license. He got it by simply walking into a place that said "hiring truck drivers", going on a drive with an experienced driver, and having that driver tell his boss "yeah, he did good, you should hire him", and the boss saying "okay, be here tomorrow at 7". And it wasn't no high-stress trucking job, either. They were short runs in-state, he was home by 6pm every night, and he had weekends off. With that job, he was able to buy a decent house and raise 2 kids while m y mom stayed home and raised us, cooked for us, cleaned, etc.

I'm not saying baby boomers had it easier overall, but in some ways they did.

Interest rates were in the double digits in the 80's and lenders were more stringent than when they sold the house in 2005. They literally wrote stated income loans that allowed for no income verification.... At all and it only cost you half a point to do so in 2005. So in reality your income only needed to increase 50% as you could buy that house at 4.5% in 2005 with $0 down as opposed to the 15-19% that your parents had on their loan.

I will ask real estate expert Kent Griswold his thoughts.