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Pfft that’s stupid. Everyone knows millennials prefer to rent because settling down just doesn’t fit our lifestyle, bro.
Plus we aren’t “handy” enough to deal with all the work of owning a home.
Just kidding, it’s because we’d rather be driving for Uber or something, I don’t know.
Point is, we’re just lazy, entitled, inept children.
Sadly, Millennials aren’t handy. Baby boomers are famous for the idea of being able to fix it themselves. If the dishwasher broke, they fixed it. If the carpet needed cleaning, they cleaned it. They enjoyed doing these tasks on their weekend. That is not the case with Millennials. They don’t care to understand how to fix something.
These are the same people that can't use an iPad unsupervised without somehow getting tricked into sending $2k worth of bitcoin and their SSN to a scammer.
Boomers invented using several different screws in a device to make it unfixable, and then making sure it broke in a year or two
Yeah, the shit they fixed was generally just a motor and some bearings, maybe with some simple electrical switches. Everything was simple and made as durable as possible because that used to be a selling point.
Modern appliances are specialized computers with moving parts that are designed with cheap, flimsy pieces that are only meant to last until their warrenty period runs out. One minute after that and its all "replacement parts? You mean call our service dept or buy a new one, right?"
Lots of boomers fixing modern machines out there? Somehow I bet they are still talking about that one time in 1983 when they changed out the belt in a dryer that had 6 parts total and had been working for 23 years. Yeah, congrats. You did a simple thing to a simple machine.
Being the guy who owns a truck (work truck, I'd love an electric work van or teleporter since we're now in fantasy land lmao) I went with my parents to pick up a new washer and dryer for their house.
While wandering around one of those "we fixed this broken used stuff, and are now selling it to you at 70% original price" , the old guy behind the counter kept talking mad shit about how people my age don't know how to just fix something, and the whole time I'm looking around at verious appliances, I notice something pretty obvious.
All this shit is old, extremely simple, or the only issue was clearly cosmetic and was likely purchased as part of a defect lot. No smart devices, no sensors, not even microwaves. Just things exactly like you described, a belt had broken, or some very simple swappable part needed swapped.
I asked him when the last time he fixed a computer was, or the last time he worked on a car from after 2010. Because I do those all the time, and never see people his age working on their own stuff, they always come to people my age. So maybe let's just get along with our business and try to show off on our personal times, huh?
He thought that was hilarious, and I wasn't intending for it to be rude so I just chuckled with him and went about loading everything up.
Honestly I love working on older things, and I like working on my truck because of how simple it is. My truck is from the 90s, and while it's about half the size of modern trucks, I've always wanted a smaller one like an old Ford ranger or even some of the smaller pickups from the 60s/70s. If I could do an electric swap within my budget limitations on one of those, I'd be soooooo thrilled. Modern EVs are too complicated for me now. I can do electronics work, but damn.
Boomers created the current system where you can't "just fix" your dishwasher. The old dish washer at my parents can be fixed with a screw driver and a ¢25 washer from home depot. The newer ones are all glue, one way plastic clips, and stickers that say it can only be repaired by a certified repair shop. I get kinda what they are saying but the change didn't happen in a vacuum. I used to repaired computers for a living and I noticed year after year computers became more difficult to repair. For most laptops you can't just open them up and swap out bad parts. It's all glued together and has micro components that need to be resoldered to the motherboard. Great for size but impossible to repair outside of the manufacturer. I mean for fuck sakes their are billion dollar military equipment that can't be serviced without the manufacturers help. It's all a scam to keep us dependent on corporations.
The pixel watch is so bad that if you crack the screen, Google tells you to throw it away and buy a new one. Apparently even Google themselves can't repair that.
My parents' washing machine broke when I was probably like 8 or 9. I helped my dad fix it over a weekend; it cost like $20 and took us a few hours over the course of Friday and Saturday, not counting a couple of trips to the hardware store. We didn't need much in the way of tools other than a Philips screwdriver and a socket set. That washer is still working today, 30 years later.
Contrast that with the washer I bought when we moved into our home five years ago. It broke a month ago, and I didn't even have the tools required to open it. The defect was with the motherboard, the tech discovered; and it would cost $550 to get a replacement made since the part was discontinued three years ago. That replacement would be ready in a month. Or I could spend $600 to buy a new machine.
We live in a very different world.
That last article comes sooo close to figuring it out.
Finally, renting allows millennials to live in more desirable or “happening” parts of cities that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive for home ownership.
That sure sounds like a fancy way of saying we can't afford to buy houses.
I thought we couldn't afford a home because we bought too much avocado toast?
And Starbucks. Remember had we invested in Starbucks instead of buying it, we'd be bagillionaires like heroes Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos who totally got rich the same way.
A boomer I know blames young people being in house debt because "they all buy houses with quarts and granite counters, hardwood floors and heated tile floor bathrooms. They skip the starter homes and go right to the forever homes".
He doesn't consider the fact that no one is building starter homes anymore. Everything has heated tile floors, granite counters and hardwood floors because the contractors are demolishing all the older "starter" homes to build luxury houses and 55+ only condos to sell to boomers who throw all their money at it. There's no profit in building starter homes anymore.
Around me all the 55+ condos are dirt cheap and price controlled, while the regular condos and sfh are 2-3x price. So, when the boomers want to downsize they can just sell their that the vigorously fought to keep zoned without density to a millennial for a huge profit and then buy a cheap condo (conveniently dense and conveniently 55+) and live off the rest of the proceeds. It’s as if the boomers get to use their kids future earnings as a piggy bank for their retirement. It’s the same story with offloading the climate change impacts of their gluttonous lifestyle to their kids as well. They really did pull up the ladder.
At least in our area, most of the starter homes were purchased and then completely redone internally to fancy up and then flipped. All of the homes went up about $100,000 at minimum because of people trying to profit off the housing market.
Ehhh, I disagree with this a bit. People are still putting LVP instead of hardwood in new builds, with granite instead of quartz countertops, and no fancy heated floors, and the cheapest carpet they can find at Home Depot. I feel like most new builds I see going up are more on the "starter home" side of things, but maybe it's an area specific thing.
The real problem though, is even these cheaper options still end up being unaffordable.
I was going to but then I saw an avocado toast and now I can't afford a house. Silly me.
Wait, why didn't you get a 34k gift from your grandfather to buy your first property, like avocado toast dickhead did?
Youre just doing it wrong, bro
Mmmm... Avocado toast sounds yummy... Here I go again wasting money on silly things like food. I can't help myself 😭
Obviously, everyone just prefers to give their landlord 2/3 of their after tax salary. /s
Ooh, I feel like rent payments should be pretax or tax deductible and it would help a ton of people out.
Someone tell me why that would be a bad idea, I'm genuinely curious.
Home owners get to write off interest, so us renters should get something.
The real bitch is that I could totally afford a mortgage. I've lived in the same place for 11 years without missing a payment on my rent, but because it's rent it doesn't count towards my credit score, so fuck me right?
Why is it a bad idea? Because it's basically subsidizing landlords. Instead of paying for public infrastructure you'd be helping out landlords to increase the rent, since you know, you have more "disposable" income
Someone told me recently that one should only spend max. 1/3 on housing. After showing them the price for housing and the average salary, they connected the dots. But they didn't seem to realize the Elephant in the room. I wonder when society is ready for the elephant.
Obviously it was because we were trying to kill the housing industry.
GenX here. Why haven’t I bought a house?
Probably the same reason I didn't - waited too long, and missed the window of affordability.
To be fair, there shouldn't be a "window of affordability", that is a symptom of an ill society. Our ability to acquire shelter, one of the most basic of needs is being stolen from us.
If the capitalists (the psychopathic hoarder class) do it with our homes, you better bet they'd do it with air if they could and watch those that "missed the window of air affordability" suffocate and die.
It's our duty to put a stop to them, there's nearly 8 billion of us and their numbers are a rounding error yet we let them drag us over the waterfall. How? They invented something called "the state" and use another invention called "money", which when combined with marketing allows them to be able to pay others to back them up. This fact is why police are bad people at the most fundamental level.
It was a quick window that's for sure.
And here I thought they wanted to live with their parents until they were 40.
ah, you see, the trick to getting into real-estate is to have been born earlier ... and not live in Canada, some Canadian boomers are learning about that requirement now as more of them are choosing to go homeless rather than pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
This is one of my favorite genres of journalism. See also: why is everyone so mad about the economy? Meanwhile, the economy: 3 chicken wings, a carrot, and a 1/2 lb of lentils is $37.
Some folks are able to buy a home but choose to rent because they can also afford a landlord that'll actually do the job a landlord is hypothetically there to do and fix the place up if there's an issue
Weird to me how hypothetical a landlord's "job" is compared to, y'know, any actual job.
Wait that's what landlords have to do. Idk how it is in America. But in Europe is pretty much a law
The u.s. mostly only uses civil enforcement. If your landlord isn't upholding their end of the contract then the contract is void and you can move somewhere else. There's rarely any mechanism to make them do anything.
It's law in Canada too, but the Landlord Tenant board is so backed up with complaints that you'll have to wait ages for a response to anything but emergencies
Actually this does make sense, because remember reading articles about how Millennials and gen Z we're not buying groceries or eating out, which led to some article writers wondering if younger Generations even ate food.
The boomers are believing their own PR department about how lazy we are, they think that if we just walking to an office somewhere, shake the manager's hand, and just cut back on whatever it is that brings us joy, that this surplus of cash will just come flowing in and we can buy a house.
Like they really don't get it, I remember watching an old video where they were interviewing Generation X and Baby Boomers about why they thought Millennials were broke all the time, and the answers were just ridiculous. One guy who I just could not get out of my head, gave the answer that we were all lazy and trying too hard to get noticed on YouTube because being a pretend celebrity mattered to us more.
Even though at the time becoming a YouTuber was one of the fastest growing and well-paying careers. Like it never occurred to him that maybe YouTube actually was a job for some people. And it was around that time that Youtube Partnerships were a thing so yeah....
Well they finally connected dots 1 and 2, huh.
It doesn't help that companies like Blackstone are buying up homes at auction, lightly flipping them and putting them back on the market as high-priced rental properties.
News flash, the vast majority of people want to purchase a home, not continually rent forever. Yet, many can't even afford to do so. More at 11.
swear as a culture we're not just headed toward being only renters, but we're being primed for the cultural dialogue around home ownership to be about what a pain in the ass it is and how renting is just so much better. This weird, Deleuzeian dystopia where the thought of owning land is just completely foreign to most people.
I’m a millennial and own a home and can fix things. I do get experts in sometimes when I am less familiar with the job. What I found was that the previous boomer owner did a lot of things wrong. I can find the code violations, but may need an expert to come up with better solutions. I shadowed my electrician and don’t need him anymore. Still have my plumber in a bit for now.
The previous owner of my place "fixed" the front door handle by gluing the mechanism into it. Now if I want to change my locks I have to replace the entire door. Cheers mate.
Acetone removes glue typically. Sometimes, when you think something is glued in hard, there is an extra screw that you missed.
My garbage disposal just broke. Turns out that the previous owner rigged the dishwasher drain in-line after the disposal, so that there is a chance that disposal water can kick-back into the clean dishes. Fixing that currently.
The kitchen hood vents into the attic, so have to fix that. The owner created a nest of electrical wires in the attic as well, so ended up creating a channel for them and organizing them so they are fastened nicely to the joists.
They created an unstable loft in the garage, so had to demo it since it was ugly as well. The list goes on and on.