RV Irony

Why are Millenials buying RVs and moving into them instead of buying houses? The housing market is inflated, that's why. About 4x inflated.

Housing is market based. They sell for what the buyer can pay, not what the seller is asking. The seller, of course, does not sell for less than they want until they have to sell because they've run out of options. This is key to understanding the whole dynamic market because those who own houses, Baby Boomers and their remaining elders, have caused a whole series of boom and bust economic cycles and the last one, the Housing Boom, they managed the collapse on and stopped it halfway by unemploying the largest number of people ever, mostly through shipping their jobs to China, and gutting the "Knowledge Economy" by shipping that to call centers in India, currently famous for both interrupting your dinner and trying to con your computer password out of you. Spammers, mostly.

Who has money to buy a house? Who gets paid that much to afford at mortgage where the jobs are? Even where the jobs aren't, houses are still too expensive. The entire market is inflated. Buying when the bubble is still going to lose 75% of its value is just stupid, and even obsessive Facebook posters know this. Somebody told them to wait, so they're waiting. And the Baby Boomers, who planned to sell their $680K houses they bought for $40K back in 1983, continue to sneer at the younger generations who won't pay $350K much less the $680K asking price, because know the market is still collapsing and anything over $70K is ridiculous. Especially since these places also need repairs. So, most of us rent an apartment, but that's throwing away money for a place to sleep, and apartments are often leased, rather than rented, to stop the apartment companies from jacking up the rent every month till you leave, in retaliation for the tap water so full of rust it looks like its bleeding and the electrical system that shuts off when that one switch is flipped because it corroded thanks to the cheap Chinese drywall full of sulfuric acid in the walls. And they want to charge the renter for the repairs. Yeah, don't think that doesn't happen.

Instead of being a captive market in a massively fluctuating economy, more and more Millenials, with nothing to lose, are shifting into RVs and moving with the jobs. Not just pot growers, though this is the dominant model for them. You'd be surprised at how many don't read Thoreau while sitting on the mountainside tending to pot plants.

No, RV living makes sense for IT and for contractors who are there to do a job, get paid, and leave for the next job. RV living makes sense where the climate isn't horrible, but can work even if its bad when they're installed with sufficient insulation. This includes field work, from botany surveys for National Forest or growing industries. In the 90's, most "bioremediation" was a con game, where the result of millions was a report telling you how f'd everything was in a given area. Often, this meant nothing further was done since the assumed cost was shifted to the Fedgov and why would they care about your local problem? However, some volunteer organizations are starting to actually fix these things. Unemployed veterinarians donate time for wildlife rehabilitation, and now we have more peregrine falcons, more owls, more red tailed hawks, all of them eating the mice which reproduce in a few weeks. So it isn't all bad. I suppose this is better work than giving coffee for $5 each to bored soccer mom's frantic to restart their careers after birthing 2.4 children and getting them to school age. I have no idea how women make that choice without guilt. Kids who come home to an empty house don't turn out right, ya know. Is your career worth so much you can sabotage your kids? Why have them at all if you are that selfish?

Another job that rewards houses on wheels is fracking. Fracking may be banned in several California counties with oil underneath them, but that still leaves others, and a mobile city of RVs and trailers that follows the fracking drill sites is still better than building homes or living in tents for a year. There's little point in boom towns when you KNOW the work will end. Better to leave. I also see RVers camped in car lots, acting as security. A good job for a veteran with all the job experience they got peace keeping in Iraq or Afghanistan. Most public storage companies offer housing on site, which also means they are a good place to restore an RV or trailer. Use it or sell it when you're done. If you have the skillset for restoration or updating a crappy old run down one with mice in the walls and give it Wifi and 6 inches of foam insulation and wrapped pipes so everything still works in the winter, it becomes a home that can be unplugged and put away and hauled off in a few hours to a better town that hasn't committed suicide by legal means, which far too many towns DO, often through short sighted greed. But Greed is a defining feature of the Baby Boom generation, even if individuals can be less horrific, overall the generation has been the worst in Centuries.

I am proud that Generation X hasn't sold out yet. I hope we don't. I think having the Boomers for parents insures we have excellent examples of bad people not to emulate so when the time for choices comes, we shudder in memory and do the right thing instead. Until the housing market corrects itself, and employers stop being sadists, we are better off driving away from dead end towns where all the vested money is in decay and abuse. Leave that behind. Any place is likely to be smarter. And a house with wheels is a definitive rejection of the abuse that crams us into them. We can't fight the fires lit by the Baby Boomers, burning down our civilization, but we can certainly drive off into the sunset to get away from the smoke, thanks very much.