Chuck Barberini Real Estate

     “Just Thinking” There I was last night, working on my newsletter and struggling to come up with a topic for this week’s “Just Thinking”, when there was a knock at the door, followed by another and another. It’s Halloween, Superheroes, Villains, Ghouls, Ghosts and Goblins knocking at the door for this year’s treat. Our number of visitors is way down when compared to our old neighborhood, where traffic jams of cars, vans and buses dropping of their excited bounty hunter starting at dusk and culminated with teens in hoodies and masks carrying 7/11 plastic bags traveling in packs, knocking loudly and begrudgingly mumbling out “Trick or Treat”. This was typically followed by a turning out of the porch light and blowing out the candles in the jack-o-lanterns. What a great time to get into character as Charles Dicken’s Ghost of Halloweens past, thoughts of a simpler time when Dad would take us the 2 streets on either direction to get our buckets filled by neighbors and friends that were

  Almost half of all renter households in the U.S. are rent-burdened—meaning the cost of renting swallows up more than 30% of their income.  That’s according to a new analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey (ACS) by Zillow and StreetEasy.  Gen Z renters (ages 18-25) are the most affected, with three in five spending over 30% of their household income on housing costs. In some metros, like San Diego, Los Angeles, and Sacramento, that share is even higher, with nearly three-quarters of Gen Zers struggling to pay rent.  The situation for Gen Z renters is similar but slightly better than what Millennial renters faced in 2012, when 60.2% nationwide spent over 30% of their income on housing. Among young adults, the rent burden peaked at 62% in 2011 before steadily declining to 55% in 2019.  Fast forward to the COVID pandemic, and surging rental demand, paired with decades of undersupply, drove up rents nationwide.  The experience of struggling to pay rent on an en