This is for Gen Z and Millennials. How hard is it for you to buy a home?

The only way I can afford a home at this point is if I buy raw land, harvest and process the trees on it and build it myself.

This is a dream for some people, but in the UK, land is expensive, and we have to buy slash import most of our wood because wood foraging is illegal without a license.

Because of course it is.

I can afford the month-to-month mortgage. I cannot, however, afford a down payment. My parents'

house's mortgage is like half of the rent in my area. I can afford that, and probably most of the

utilities and such by myself. That being said, the price of the house has almost tripled in value since they

bought it. I could probably swing the down payment by myself, but it would definitely make me

uncomfortable. I honestly feel like I need to get married just to get a house. Here's a detailed

example. Wife and I bought our house in 1998 when our first child was born.

The house sold for $10,000, and we put $10,000 down.

We hadn't done anything major to the home, and we cleaned it up in 2007 to secure a refinance to a lower interest rate and get cash to top off a remodel.

Appraisal was $180,000.

That's value growth fueled fully by the loss of so many independent

home builders after the market crash. We brought the kitchen and bathrooms up to modern standards,

stone countertops, new cabinets, and fixtures, refurbished the wooden floors, added a door off

the dining room and a large deck. We got the house appraised in 2021 for $290,000.

Two houses on our street sold for over $300,000 last year, and one of them was in rough shape.

Banks here are requiring 30% down for new buyers right now. For my oldest son that is two years out of college,

he would have to provide a down payment that is nearly as much as we bought the house for 25 years ago.

For a thousand square foot home, let that sink in.

A lot of small construction company owners, the kind that would build small homes, went out

...