Unable To Break Into the Housing Ladder, Millennials and Gen Zs are Turning To Digital Ownership

Across the globe, the past decade has been economic crisis after crisis. For Millennials and Gen Z, a once-in-a-lifetime event now seems to be something we experience every single year. With uncertainty at an all-time high and the cost of living growing year upon year, people are beginning to wonder if the same future our parents had is impossible for us to reach.

For many Baby Boomers and those born in Gen X, a single job was more than enough to support a family, save up, and eventually buy a house. This is now a ridiculous notion, with the average home values being over 125% of what they were in 1975. Despite this astronomical rise, the average household income has only risen around 19-20%.

That’s not to mention how much more expensive it is to live today, with both costs of living rising and inflation increasing impacting countries across the globe. Faced with the near-impossibility of buying a house as was once typical, Gen Z and Millennials are turning to other ways of ownership.

In this article, we’ll dive into the current housing crisis, demonstrating its negative outlook for future generations. We’ll then move into discussing the current solutions that Gen Z are encountering, with blockchain alternatives like those proposed by Metatime being a potential salvation.

Let’s dive right in.

The Impossibility of Housing Ownership for Gen Z and Millennials

Nearly 75% of both Millennials and Gen Z believe that owning a home is their highest priority, representing the final point of achievement on the “American Dream.” While this dream was alive and well 50 years ago, many believe it has long ceased to exist.

Even since the COVID-19 pandemic, house prices have increased by over 33%. Yet, despite this, wages are hardly moving. If we take a long-term look over the last two decades, house prices have moved up at nearly 200% in some parts of the world, while wages remain much more stagnant.

When we then throw in other factors, like the high rates of student debt, the high cost of living, the continually rising rent costs, and the inability to get approved for a mortgage, the situation only becomes even more dire.

Especially considering how strong the desire is from younger people to own a house, the blatant inability to do so for the vast majority of the population only serves to further exacerbate existing generational wealth inequality issues.

Digital Alternatives – Moving Toward TokenizedReal Estate

For many young people, the central factor that makes buying a house an attractive idea is the fact that real estate offers a stable return over time. Especially with our current economic downturn, this economic stability is highly desirable. The ability to have an asset that appreciates in value over time is something that the housing market is notoriously good at providing.

One of the leading solutions that many younger people are currently turning to is looking for alternative methods of getting into the housing market. One of these, provided by Metatime’s MetaRealEstate, works by tokenizing real-world properties, allowing users to then buy shares in properties.

Metatime buys or builds properties in the real world, then tokenizes it into lots of smaller shares. From there, on the MetaExchange, users are able to buy shares equivalent to however much available capital they have. Anyone with shares will be able to benefit from any profits generated by the property, delivered as a regular dividend.

While not owning an entire property, this allows people to fractionally buy properties, gathering the same consistent return and promise of an increased asset value over time. This solution is fantastic as it allows people to invest as much as they have available. With the same ROI that they would receive when buying the whole property, this is a catch-all solution.

As we previously established, younger people do not have the huge quantities needed to buy entire properties. However, with the strategies that Metatime has put forward, users can start to build their real estate empires fractionally, buying shares as and when they can.

Final Thoughts

Faced with an uncertain economic future, rising costs of living, and an impossibility to save, many young people are disheartened about the possibility of home ownership. With this in mind, blockchain companies like Metatime have begun to suggest alternative solutions that still allow young people to get similar returns as they would when buying a house.

As we move further into the digital age, solutions that stem from and utilize technology will only become more popular and impressive. The movement into digital ownership is an exciting new proposal that could represent a new frontier for the real estate market.