Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,
The doom feed says home affordability locked a generation out. The math on the payment you actually write says something the headlines won’t.
Here are the “facts” that the media tells you about home affordability.
Let’s start with a recent survey. Two out of three Americans now say it’s a bad time to buy a house, the most negative reading Gallup has ever recorded. Another study showed that a record 25.2 million adults under 35 are living with their parents. Scroll any feed, and you’ll hear that home affordability has priced an entire generation out for good. Those are the “facts” according to the media.
However, here’s the problem with that story. When you measure home affordability today against the metric that actually governs the check you write each month, the picture flips. By that measure, buying a home may be easier now than it was for the Boomers and Gen Xers who get blamed for everything.
Let me be clear about what’s real, because I won’t build an argument on a false floor. Since 2019, the median listing price has jumped about 34% to roughly $430,000. The payment on a median home went from near $1,700 in early 2020 to about $3,100 by late 2025. Rates tripled off the 2021 lows. That shock was real, and it landed in five short years.
So the frustration makes sense. Wh
