Context Is All

 Hmmm….

"Apollo chief economist Trosten Slok noted wage growth for the lowest-income Americans plummeted to its lowest in about a decade, while wage growth for the highest-income group surpassed all other income levels, citing data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta," she notes.

The housing market, she says, has become "frozen," because "it’s simply unaffordable to sell your house and buy another one with mortgage rates above 6 percent."

The Amherst Group CEO Sean Dobson says that “We’ve probably made housing unaffordable for a whole generation of Americans."

I bought my first house in Austin in the late ‘80’s. I bought it directly from the bank, in a foreclosure. Lots of those in Austin at the time. That was when S&L’s collapsed (and disappeared), taking much of the Texas real estate market (especially in Austin) with it. 

The “Big Short” was a repeat of that; but that one they made a movie about.

Anyway, my interest rate was 10%. My brother-in-law, then a banker himself, said it was low, and we’d probably never see interest rates that low again. 

The next generation, The Golden Child, bought a house a year ago. They thought the interest rate was high (she and her husband). I don’t remember what it is, I only remember thinking I’ve never had a mortgage rate that low, after buying three houses over time. And I’ve never paid 10%, or above, again. 

Times is bad, and house prices are high. My current house is valued at nearly four times what I bought it for, which is insane. But pardon me if I’m not overly impressed with generational forecasting and predictions of the doom that is almost certainly upon us.