The curious case of home ownership can have you feeling established or frustrated. Most young Irish people and the homeless community are unfairly subjected to the latter. The allure of home equity (percentage owned) comes with things such as independent adulthood, a base for family planning, and coexisting present prosperity with future generational wealth. A study by the Consumer Federation of America concluded that over 50% of the wealth held by low-income households comes from home ownership/equity. For example, a family could have bought a Brownstone house in Harlem for $26,000 in 1970. In 2017, Harlem Brownstone houses were worth $2 million, that’d be an increase of 7,600% — producing generational wealth.

Cryptocurrencies can be a means to home equity because the legacy bank infrastructure is now rendered obsolete by inflation every year. The legacy system is inefficient and ill-equipped to deal with the drastically inflating economy. Couples and partners can circumvent this by joining salaries as well as savings but purchasing power is lost in the lead up to mortgage agreements. Many generations from Boomers to Millenials and even Gen Z will be affected by this. The Irish housing crisis impacts the mental health of parents taking us in, adults living with parents, and siblings watching all this unfold while thinking about their future. It doesn’t take a genius to see that we are in desperate need of an alternative route to housing.

Rory Hearne, an Assitant Professor of Social Policy at Maynooth University, is one of the leading voices championing the change required to solve Ireland’s housing crisis. He’s also author of the book ‘Housing Shock’. As of Ireland’s last census in April 2016, there are 458,874 adults aged 18 and over living with parents. I’m one of them. The choices for us are few and far between; rent forever, move counties/country to buy a house or get on the social housing waiting list of over 13,000 applicants of which 2,600 people have waited on for over 10 years. I got into crypto so I could own a home and decided spreading the info I’ve learned in a blog may help others who share that goal of home ownership.

First-time buyers require a 10% deposit of the value of the house and can only receive a mortgage loan of 3.5 times their salary. The median price for a home in Dublin increased 5.76% to €349,000. It is the number in the middle of a range of minimum and maximum. A median is a better statistic to use than an average because an average is heavily influenced by high or low values but the median is not. If you wanted to purchase a home in Dublin worth €349,000, you’d need a deposit of €34,900. If you were doing it solo, you’d need a salary of €89,792. As a couple, you could achieve this if you both earned €44,871. In this blog post, I’ll discuss home equity and crypto because having a goal means nothing without creating an environment to accomplish it.

Irish Housing Market

Some generations are locked out of the house buying market. Boomers have assets and pensions. Millennials and Gen Z usually don’t due to them just starting careers. Waiting for the government to save nearly half a million infantilised adults in family homes, as well as the homeless, has been and still is a failed exercise. Government agencies don’t understand the assignment nor do they treat it as an emergency. Housing is a human right, which the afflicted groups don’t have functional access to lead fulfilling lives. The longer Ireland’s housing dilemma is neglected, the closer these groups proceed to poverty and the wider inequality becomes.

One of the main causes of the housing crisis in Ireland is the short supply. The tight market is at a record low stock compared to pre-pandemic levels with 42% fewer homes listed for purchase in Dublin and a 46% decrease in homes for sale outside Dublin. It breeds a lack of competition and exorbitant prices. The Building Control Management System is decades behind the public needs, including the 9,492 homeless people in Ireland.

The 11,233 homes on sale pale in comparison to the demand of 458,874 adults living with parents. This group can be broken down further; 350,000 aged 18–29 and 100,000 aged 30–49. 250,000 of those adults were employed and still living in parental households. This year's census will be interesting so we can gauge how the pandemic affected employment status and if more adults retreated to their parents' dwellings as a result.

You’re not alone. The average age of young people leaving their parental household in Europe is 26.4 years old but Ireland’s average is 26.8 years of age. Women in the EU typically leave their parents’ homes earlier at the age of 25.4 while men leave later at 27.4 years old. The moral of this story is to go easy on yourself and enjoy the pace of your own life. Leaving a family home can also be affected by being in college, relationship status, labour market, and cultural customs. It's not about how fast you do something but how well you do it!

Crypto Market Fall and Rise from Jan-Mar 2022

January was a tough time to be in the market — if you had paper hands. Hodling (crypto slang for holding) was easier for those of us with diamond hands that were made from pressure. The saying goes, “time in the market is better than timing the market”. This implies that being in crypto long-term is better than waiting for the “right time” to buy. Dollar-cost average (DCA) of purchases at regular intervals of your choice (weekly, monthly, etc) grants you an average entry price of the highs and lows. That draws down your breakeven line making it easier to yield profit.

There was a large sell-off across all sectors. Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Layer 1-Smart Contracts, DeFi (decentralised finance), Exchange, and Metaverse tokens all had negative returns. Hence the sea of dark red you see below. The Crypto TreeMap is useful in getting an overview of market sentiment at a given point in time. The size of the block displays dominance. Bitcoin’s block is the biggest because its market dominance in January was 33% on average. Market dominance is dictated by market capitalisation. The larger the block, the larger the market cap.

February depicted sidelining graphs, a gradual accumulation of assets. More buying than selling was present but not rampant enough to make greener pastures stay. Nonetheless, market participants saw the red zone in January as a buying opportunity. Sectors slightly bounced back making the heat map below change to green in some areas. Privacy tokens saw an 11% rise. Notice how the growth in February came from mid/low market cap coins. Luna was a notable force in February, up 39.2%, and can be seen in dark green below.

March was when the dopamine and serotonin kicked in. The days of blood on the leaves were long gone and the money trees were green again. Most coins were posting double-digit percentage gains over 30 days. If you put money on ADA at the beginning of March, you’d be up 23.93% by now as seen below. Those who kept the faith have had their patience rewarded.

Conclusion

Recovery in the crypto market showed two things; holding and buying through a bear market really pays off. The total crypto market cap fell below $2.25 trillion and nearly regained that value in 3 months. If you regularly bought or held digital assets during that period, you’re either in profit or barely lost any money. Bitcoin was $47,560 on January 1st, 2022 and at the time of writing in March 2022, BTC is $47,139. That’s a negligible decrease of less than 1%, in fact, it's a buying opportunity. Bitcoin was $37,000 from January to February 2022, so if you bought BTC in any of those months, you’d be sitting on a nice profit now. Keeping your money is just as important as growing your money in crypto and achieving both signifies you’re doing well.

Across generations, people are at different life stages. Your needs in the past, present, and future will change. If you think a house isn’t what you need right now but still desire home equity then maybe an apartment may be of interest to you. Irish apartments prices increase at a slower rate due to less demand. The apartment property may be sold at a later date when your family grows and you require the space a house will provide. You can benefit from rises in the property value from when you bought the apartment. Selling the apartment is actually selling the percentage of the property owned from deposit and mortgage payments. This is a stark contrast to paying rent for years and owning nothing from it by the time you wish to move.

As I’ve said previously, ownership secures independence. Developing and maintaining leverage can enable you to live a sovereign life. An existence built on a foundation robust to uncertainty where your choices are plentiful rather than limited. Although crypto and home ownership won’t solve every problem, both provide a great advantage. After embarking on the journey to obtain them, you’ll realise the person you become is the real asset.

*** If you made it this far it’s been a pleasure writing for you. I hope you enjoyed it and picked up something along the way. I want to simplify complex things including sustainability, economics, and crypto. Please follow, like, and share as it helps me a lot. Subscribe to get exclusive access to crypto prizes and the audio version of this article. Tune in weekly for more insights.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit escapeplanmedia.substack.com