《大西洋月刊》2023年5月刊
A house is perhaps the most tangible embodiment of the American dream. Millennials’ housing woes have featured prominently in media accounts of the generation’s economic and life problems. BuzzFeed ran a story last year on 24 “ways Millennials became homeowners,” filled with decidedly unique anecdotes. One described someone who’d been hit by a truck and won a lawsuit, covering their down payment.
房子也许是美国梦最具体的体现。千禧一代的住房困境在媒体报道这一代人的经济和生活问题时占据了突出地位。BuzzFeed去年发表了一篇关于“千禧一代成为房主的24种方式”的报道，其中充满了独特的轶事。其中一个描述了一个人被卡车撞了，赢得了一场诉讼，用这笔钱支付了首付款。
But contrary to that narrative, Millennials’ homeownership rates in 2020 were only slightly behind Boomers’ and Gen Xers’ at the same age: 50 percent of Boomers owned their own home as 25-to-39-year-olds, compared with 48 percent of Millennials, hardly a difference deserving of headlines.
但与这种说法相反，千禧一代在2020年的住房拥有率仅略低于婴儿潮一代和X世代在同一年龄段时的住房拥有率：婴儿潮一代中有50%的人在25至39岁之间拥有自己的住房，而千禧一代中这一比例为48%，这一差异几乎不值得登上头条。
Both house prices and mortgage rates are higher now than in 2020. That’s bad news for Millennials who haven’t yet bought a house but want to do so soon. Nonetheless, many older Millennial homeowners got great deals on their most important purchase, having passed into their 30s during the early 2010s, one of the most fortuitous times to buy a house in recent memory. It was Gen Xers, by and large, who were in their prime home-buying years as the great housing bubble inflated, and who went underwater when that bubble popped. People who bought a house in 2005, for instance, saw their home’s value plummet 21 percent over six years, on average, and not regain its purchase price until 2014. Older Millennials, in contrast, were buying into a depressed market that subsequently rebounded; houses bought in 2011, for instance, appreciated 40 percent over the next six years. Almost everyone who bought a house in the U.S. before 2019 saw its value shoot up during the pandemic years. And until the past year, just about all Millennial home buyers were able to lock in mortgage interest rates that were at historic lows.
现在的房价和抵押贷款利率都高于2020年。对于那些还没有买房但又想尽快买房的千禧一代来说，这是个坏消息。尽管如此，许多年龄较大的千禧一代房主在他们人生最重要的一笔交易中获得了优惠，他们30多岁时赶上了2010年代初，这是近年来买房最幸运的时期之一。总的来说，是X世代在房地产泡沫膨胀时处于买房的黄金年龄，而当泡沫破裂时，他们陷入了困境。例如，在2005年买房的人，他们的房屋价值在六年内平均下跌了21%，直到2014年才恢复到购买价格。相比之下，年长的千禧一代则在低迷的市场中购买，随后市场反弹；例如，2011年购买的房屋在接下来的六年里升值了40%。几乎所有在2019年之前在美国买房的人，在疫情期间都看到了房价的飙升。直到去年，几乎所有千禧一代的购房者都能够锁定处于历史低位的抵押贷款利率。
These are national figures, and the picture will vary from place to place. But on the whole, Millennials have not been economically unlucky as to homeownership—if anything, the reverse is true.
这些都是全国性的数字，各地的情况会有所不同。但总的来说，千禧一代在拥有住房方面并没有遭遇经济上的不幸——如果有什么不同的话，那就是恰恰相反。