Real estate prices are skyrocketing, increasing 10% annually, and banks are buying up homes in all-cash deals to profit off of the current housing boom. The economic realitiy for millennials is grim. That a housing “boom” would arrive at the tail-end of the pandemic is strange. “Real estate” has become a get-rich-quick scheme, adopted by Americans as a potential hack to wealth- the usual adage is that you own a property and rent it, thus generating passive income. As we move further away from an economy built on the manufacturing and selling of physical goods and more on pencil-pushing office jobs, real estate- homes and the offices that we push pencils within- are the most stable assets.
The rise in housing prices is the devastating blow to the millennial generation. The small number of millennial homeowners have accomplished that feat primarily through inflated wages from tech and finance conglomerates, which have streamlined constant 24/7 entertainment and disorienting political discourse, allowing us to stalk everyone we’ve ever met and broadcast our jumbled thoughts daily and produced more advanced forms of pencil-pushing and abstract digestion of siloed culture. Experts claim that there are not enough homes for sale, that lack of inventory explains the rise in prices and that there simply isn’t enough room in our country. The rich and well-to-do have access to capital to reinvest in assets like property, and there’s popular entertainment geared toward real estate investment- Flip or Flop, Masters of Flip, Flip This House and Zombie House Flipping are all television shows watched by wannabe landlords. The rapacious throwing of capital in the real estate market has created a bed of thorns that covers the land and dictates how both humans and culture are dispersed- it is why so much culture is generated from major cities: ownership and capital beget more ownership and more capital. Power and control have become even more entrenched and the average American millennial is left scrambling in a mess of usurious housing options, meaningless work, and the constant call to enjoy it all because that’s what everyone else is doing and life is short.
The real estate crisis for millennials is a harbinger for a crowded, inflation-laden country. While the intellectual class choose to focus on the minefields of cultural issues and emotions and taste, physical reality is the deciding factor for “winners” and “losers”. Even so-called leftists online won’t touch on the already-completed seismic shift in property ownership and value because it is intractable and unfunny. The entire home ownership system has reached a bubble never before seen, benefiting abstract financialization, elite university degrees, and resume-obsessed conformity (and rapid and edgy tweeting) over any beneficial contribution to society- it is an intentional disorientation tactic undertaken by users to muddy the waters. The treatment of manufacturing and industrial jobs by outlets like the New York Times and WaPo reveals a bias towards the bubble knowledge economy that prizes the appearance of expertise over all else- it’s why we get cryptocurrency and NFT’s and meme stocks as well: we buy into the simulacrum, and the average person is absorbed fully into it by clumsy osmosis.
Real estate is speculative and based on a concentrated demand that begets itself, in that prices chosen dictate what the market “is”, and home equity benefits from rapacious assessments. The pressure to drown in debt or fudge the numbers is ingrained in the system. The managerial class is already overpaid based on labor value. The further out-of-control valuations and surveillance capital of FAANG will further necessitate the silent conformity of the citizenry: shut up and obey the law of the markets and you may be given your pellet of social currency. Accept new concepts and ways of living without question. Real estate dictates lifestyles and decisions for Americans. If home ownership becomes more difficult, even for the educated and well-meaning, an integral aspect of the American Dream will have been extinguished, and a real reckoning regarding value will begin.
mantis fists 