Millennials Discover Secret to Affording Houses: Time Travel to 1987
Real estate agents baffled by sudden influx of buyers with frosted tips and shoulder pads
SACRAMENTO, CA – Local real estate offices are in chaos this week as dozens of house-hunting millennials have mysteriously appeared with outdated hairstyles, vintage clothing, and suspiciously thick wallets full of what appears to be authentic 1987 currency. Industry insiders are calling it the most bizarre housing market phenomenon since the great McMansion boom of 2003.
The strange buyers, all born between 1981 and 1996, have been spotted at open houses across the city wearing acid-washed jeans, neon windbreakers, and sporting frosted tips that haven’t been fashionable since the Reagan administration. Most unsettling of all, they’re actually purchasing homes – with cash.
“I’ve been selling real estate for thirty-five years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said veteran agent Martha Hendrickson of Century 21 Golden Valley. “This kid walks into my office yesterday wearing a Members Only jacket and Reebok Pumps, pulls out a roll of bills, and buys a four-bedroom colonial for $89,000. When I told him that house was listed at $750,000, he just laughed and said something about ‘temporal market arbitrage.'”
The phenomenon appears to have started three weeks ago when 28-year-old barista Dylan Chen was reportedly seen emerging from a mysterious blue mist behind a Starbucks on J Street. Witnesses claim Chen, who had been complaining about student loan debt and sky-high housing prices just hours earlier, suddenly possessed an authentic 1987 Buick Grand National and a briefcase full of period-appropriate documentation.
“One minute he’s crying about never being able to afford a house, and the next he’s driving around in this vintage car talking about ‘leveraging temporal economics,'” said Chen’s roommate, Jessica Martinez. “He keeps muttering about something called ‘The Flux Capacitor Investment Group’ and won’t stop listening to Def Leppard.”
Government sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirm that the Department of Housing and Urban Development has quietly opened an investigation into what they’re calling “chronologically displaced real estate transactions.” Several federal agencies, including a rumored division of the Department of Energy, are reportedly involved.
Dr. Reginald Timsworth, a theoretical physicist at UC Davis who specializes in temporal mechanics, believes the millennials have discovered a way to exploit what he calls “housing price differentials across time streams.”
“The mathematics are actually quite elegant,” Timsworth explained during a clandestine meeting at an abandoned RadioShack. “If you can transport yourself back to 1987, the median home price was roughly $127,200. With today’s wages – assuming you can somehow maintain your income stream across temporal boundaries – you’re looking at purchasing power that’s approximately six times greater. It’s the most logical solution to the housing crisis I’ve ever encountered.”
The time-traveling house hunters have formed what appears to be an underground network, communicating through coded messages on defunct social media platforms like Friendster and MySpace. Intelligence sources suggest they’re using a combination of vintage electronics, crystals purchased from abandoned New Age shops, and what one report describes as “weaponized nostalgia” to power their temporal displacement devices.
Real estate markets in other major cities are reportedly bracing for similar invasions. Portland agents have reported unusual inquiries about “flux-resistant foundations,” while Miami brokers claim to have received earnest money deposits written on checks from banks that closed decades ago.
The Federal Reserve has issued no official statement, though Chairman Jerome Powell was seen frantically consulting with a team of physicists and what appeared to be a DeLorean DMC-12 parked outside the Eccles Building last Tuesday.
As more millennials master the technology, housing inventory in 2024 continues to plummet while 1987 real estate records show impossible spikes in sales to buyers with anachronistic identification documents and inexplicable knowledge of future events.
The characters and events depicted in this story are entirely fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events is unintentional and purely coincidental.
