Does the state of the housing market affect your FIRE plans if you have kids?

[Blackeagle]

My husband and I are 42 and 45 and might be able to FIRE in a few years if things go right.  We have a 6-year-old daughter and have a plan for college for her, and it fits in with our FIRE plan.  What we don’t have a plan for is paying for housing for her once she is an adult.

What do you think would benefit your daughter more: having FIREd parents who can be more present in her life while she's growing up or assistance with housing when she's an adult?

[Swish]

The housing component of this discussion is just supply vs demand. If you instantly create supply that outpaces growth rate you do not solve the existing problem just prevent it from getting bigger. In order to curb current demand or reduce costs you need to increase supply above and beyond population growth rate. This is something governments that need positive growth rates to prop up services that depend on perpetual growth financial models are desperately trying to backfill with immigration as most first world nations are experiencing negative organic population growth. These same government bodies either intentionally or accidentally did very little to address the housing requirements when trying to boost population growth.

I think the bigger part of your question is related more around a feeling of insecurity about the future and this issue is a focal point of that deeper issue. Your kids generation will be fine. Humanity has survived worse. It might be hard but most of the world lives in a way to accommodate exactly this fear. Travel Asia at all and it is very common for 2-3 generations to be working together as a single family unit all contributing to the same household.

[former player]

The expensive housing problem has been ongoing in Europe for a couple of decades.. I am surprised it has taken the US so long to catch up, but now we are all in the same boat.

Yes, we have a situation now where house price to wage multiples are so ludicrous that kids can't afford to get onto the property ladder without assistance from their parents.

Unfortunately this is what happens when everything becomes about money and top dollar billing. If you want your stock market to be valued at nosebleed multiples don't be surprised when other asset classes get bid up to nosebleed levels too.

However it creates huge social problems. We have a generation of adults from the young gen-x'ers and down who still live at home with their parents. It's f'ed up.

A significant number of people owning the house they live in is a relatively recent thing: my parents became houseowners in the 1960s but both sets of my grandparents were lifelong renters at reasonable rents.  No-one knows what the position will be in 20, 30 or 40 years.

The (un)affordability of housing is even more recent, in my area it's gone from local wages meaning not being able to buy a house on the open market 10 years ago to not being able to rent a house on the open market post-covid.  Fortunately there is now some increase in social housing to help with this.

At the moment it looks like there is a big social and financial divide coming between those in younger generations who will benefit from family wealth and those that won't.  But even that is subject to future economic conditions and tax policies: if the money to provide necessary services to keep a country running in decent order becomes more scarce then heavily taxing the wealth that some are storing up for their children is going to look like a viable option.