I wouldn’t blame any consumer under the age of 35 or 40. When you’re young, you don’t know so much. You go by what your parents taught you, and everyone has brainwashed us to believe that homeownership is a ladder on the life of success.
I was thinking back today to when we bought our first house in Phoenix in 1987. We barely eked into the payments. A year later, I found out a coworker was upside down on her mortgage. I had never heard of such a thing before. What if we had bought a few years earlier, and ended up that way? We bought after the market had already cooled, but I had no idea of that either.
It seems obvious to us on this board that prices are too high. But how will a 30-something couple, wanting that new house to start a family, know about the housing bubble back in 2003, 2004, or 2005? Even today, most people don’t believe it.
I agree with you Josh that people should be informed, but what would be the catalyst for them questioning the decades-old promotion of homeownership (even by the IRS)?
