have you tried having rich parents?

Want to know the secret to affording a house? Work hard, never buy avocado toast, climb the corporate ladder, and pick up at least two side hustles along the way. (After all, what is Labor Day for, if not additional labor?)

Jk. It’s having parents with money.

A new LendingTree survey found that 40% of homeowners got help with the down payment on their current home, up from 35% in 2023. For younger buyers, it's way more common: 78% of Gen Z homeowners got help, along with 56% of millennials, compared with just 12% of baby boomers.

And I’m not talking about a few thousand bucks over Venmo. Half of the people who got help said it covered at least 40% of their entire down payment. Almost half got it as a gift, no repayment necessary.

Everyone loves to talk about how Gen Z and millennials can't afford homes the way their parents did (hi, guilty 🙋🏻‍♀️). But the pretty important detail being left out is that plenty of younger people are buying, they're just increasingly not doing it alone. In fact, 35% of those who got help said they couldn't have bought when they did without it. Which changes what you’re actually competing against. If you're buying without backup, you're not always just up against another couple's two incomes. You're up against two incomes plus their parents' bank accounts.

So if you're wondering how everyone else seems to be affording these houses…well, sometimes they aren't. Their parents are.

finally, a house we can (mostly) afford.

Good news for anyone priced out of the housing market: have you considered buying a much, MUCH smaller house? Maybe like, a dollhouse?

Apparently, full-grown adults are getting very into teeny tiny miniatures. People are building elaborate homes with designer furniture, art, kitchens, and presumably, tiny property tax bills to match.

The global dollhouse market is worth around $1.2 billion and is projected to hit $2.5 billion by 2032. One company creates miniature replicas of LA landmarks for $5-10k. Another makes museum-quality dollhouses ranging from $8k to $134k. (!!) There are even weeklong miniature-making schools with tuition around $2,200. (Should I enroll? Have I been selling the wrong kind of houses all this time??)

Just another reminder that humans will find a way to make literally any housing market expensive.

Fun fact: dollhouses actually started as status symbols for wealthy adults in 17th and 18th century Europe before mass production turned them into children’s toys. They had another moment in the 70s, and now, thanks to the pandemic and social media, they’re back.

Is it crazy to say I understand the appeal? You get the fun part of homeownership: choosing wallpaper, renovating the kitchen, buying furniture that serves absolutely no practical purpose other than being so freaking cute — without the mortgage, contractor delays or discovering your sewer lateral needs $10k worth of work.

So never mind what I said before, millennials and Gen Z are buying houses after all. They just happen to be 24 inches tall and approximately 5 square feet.

ai want to move to oakland

Oakland commercial real estate has had a rough few years, to put it mildly. Offices are empty and landlords have basically been standing around like, hello?? anyone???

crickets.

And then, within days of each other, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk showed up. Bezos-backed AI startup Project Prometheus and Tesla both signed leases at the same industrial complex in West Oakland. Prometheus is taking about 100,000 square feet, Tesla another 40,000. And apparently they’re not the only ones looking. One downtown Oakland property had 15 robotics companies tour in its first two weeks on the market.

AI, robotics and autonomous vehicles need power, warehouses, loading docks and big industrial spaces where they can actually build stuff. Conveniently, Oakland happens to have all of that. Plus proximity to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, the Port, major transportation infrastructure, and thanks to the aforementioned rough few years, significantly cheaper commercial space.

Does this mean Oakland is the new Silicon Valley? Please god no. But I regret to inform you that I still have to pay attention.