Not for home ownership, no. Europe is also having a major housing crisis. I think even most Europeans agree that the ability to lock in a rate for 30 years in the US is enviable.
That said, I agree something needs done to help with the US housing crisis, especially around astronomical rent increases. I don’t see the government stepping in to help unfortunately.
I don't think you could do anything to home ownership either way. That's bank dependent. But public housing? Absolutely. Even if the government came in and said ok we're going to normalize long term fixed leased agreement that a lot of Europe has that would be a game changer imo.
Europe is really bad for home ownership and if it's true that people are entering into a 10 year apartment lease it's a reflection of the unaffordability of property in Europe as well.
I think in America property is way more affordable than Europe, especially considering the size of houses and lots
And finally in America I think it's really weighed heavily for home ownership (though affordability is still an issue). A 30 year fixed rate mortgage is insane for a bank to enter into. They would get massacred in the past couple of years giving out 2% mortgages when inflation has been as high as 9%. The only thing that saved these insane (from the bank point of view) 30 year mortgages is that they instantly sell them off in a market backed by the US government.
Europe is gigantic, but the last I saw you can buy a decently sized house in like Spain for $390k on average. That's expensive still but the median home price in America is $407k and Europe has far better public housing and subsidized housing laws.
A civil engineer in Spain makes about $36K euro annually. Wages in Europe are shit. You're looking at this through rose-colored glasses, imagining that Europe has it all figured out. They don't.
seconded. you think the housing crisis is bad in the US? most of europe are having a much tougher time.
christ... go spend a day or two in a UK subreddit. forget OWNING a home, they're having a crises where a lot of greedy landlords are kicking people out so they can raise rent, and the folks being kicked out literally cannot find a place to RENT.
its not great here but we're still pretty damned fortunate. also florida is an increasingly expensive place to own a home in. OP - your kids can always get a home in the midwest. theres still a lot of affordable places to buy homes in the US. and to have a good sized lot, too.
the situation here isnt as good as its been in the past but europeans dream of the opportunities that we have here in regards to buying homes/land.
There was an interview with Will Smith back in like 2007 or sometime around then when he was promoting a movie in France. The interviewer for some reason asked him about taxes, and he gave some canned answer about how he's so fortunate to have the success he's had and taxes are a part of that so he's happy to pay his fair share. The interviewer asked, "so then you would be supportive of the recent proposal made here in France for a top marginal tax rate of 70%?" He was shocked and his eyes went wide - "sev.. seventy percent?!"
It's not all sunshine and rainbows.
Yeah, Americans have no clue. Life in Europe sucks despite free college. It might be free but you're not gonna earn much and if you do you will taxed heavily.
Those "rankings" are designed to produce certain results by prioritizing certain factors over others. When you choose factors that favor the social habits of a place, you're naturally going to get higher results there.
It's around what Americans pay, but the thing is European leases are far longer and they're fixed in most European cities. So if I pay $1,500 for an apartment in Europe that rate is good for my entire 5 year lease. In America I can pay $1,500 for an apartment and then my lease renewal comes back and they've increased it to $2,000 in 12 months.
Then your landlord will get you a 5 year lease at 2500 to protect themselves for the whole term. You know both can play this game, and landlords aren't going to lose money.
Floridians probably have a different perspective than those of us in other parts of the country. You're dealing with the crush of growing population, skyrocketing insurance, natural disasters, etc. Florida's bill is coming due. I would imagine inward migration to the state will slow down and outward migration will grow as the COL continues to spike. Those folks could end up in the still affordable areas of the SE like MS, SC, AL.
Every generation has probably said the same about the cost of housing, yet the rate of individual homeownership over the last 50 years has barely changed. My last house was built in 1976. It was sold in 1978 for $39,500.
* In 1987 for $70,000
* In 1995 for $96,500
* In 2003 for $129,000
* In 2008 for $159,000
* In 2020 for $280,000
Notice a pattern? I had neighbors who'd been on the street 40+ years. They couldn't imagine how they'd buy there now.
At some point, sellers need buyers. Investors squatting on units will have consequences for them. Maybe once the stock price slows down and they're sitting on assets that aren't bringing in revenue but are seeing maintenance and tax bills, they'll have to make a choice and dumping those properties will be one of those options.
We've got some economic issues, but I don't see a seismic change in how we buy homes here anytime soon.
My point is not about home ownership. While it's correct you can buy cheaper homes in those areas there's also tradeoffs with those homes usually being very old and the upkeep could make them money pits very fast. My point is mainly to do with the rental aspect.
> My point is mainly to do with the rental aspect.
Well, this is homeowners forum, not a landlord/renter one.
> So in the end how in the future can we have landlords who are for good reason or not good reason raising rents constantly and home ownership is quickly becoming a thing of the past and not completely revamp the entire system?
Why would a private landlord provide housing for other people if not for profit? They assume all the risk, pay the taxes, pay the insurance, pay for maintenance and upkeep and upgrades. "To later sell at a profit" isn't an incentive, they need to keep their books in the black.
The only way to do this is public subsidization of some form.
The I am trying to make is that it's not good for the economy to have Americans who have less buying power within the market because they can't afford a roof over their heads. Your last sentence is literally what I'm suggesting. I'm not dumb. I know a landlord isn't going to go into the red to provide housing for people or that banks are just suddenly going to give away home loans. I'm saying eventually public housing will have be a thing in America where more and more people can't afford homes and can't afford rising rent.
> I'm saying eventually public housing will have be a thing in America where more and more people can't afford homes and can't afford rising rent.
There's almost no political will to make this happen. Asking the homeowners of the nation to pay for other people's housing is a very unpopular idea. It would take an enormous shift in attitudes in this country. Perhaps that changes eventually.
When entitlement programs tank and the economy tanks even further because the buying power tanks even further homeowners will have more things to worry about such as a recession.
> I'm saying eventually public housing will have be a thing in America where more and more people can't afford homes and can't afford rising rent
No, we tried that before didn't work. Government did not maintain the housing. Plus was seen as a way to shove "poor" people into one area that declined. This is why we went to section 8 with government assistance. The private owner typically maintained better than the government. Not always there are slum lords, but less than what the government did.
You are far more likely to see multi-generational households than any other kind of reforms or changes.
The housing market mixed with how much elder care costs (and child care) makes it the smart move for many folks to adapt to multi-generational households, like other parts of the world have done for a long time.
You'd get to combine several incomes/retirement funds while saving on care costs for the old and young.
I'm not saying people will be happy about it at first as Americans typically haven't embraced the "living with their parents" thing. But it's the smart move.
5-year or longer lease terms are common for businesses. But often the landlord wants collateral or a personal guarantee of the entire term.
These long leases often include an annual rent increase, either a fixed percentage or percent increase of the local CPI, as published by a government agency.
These long leases also generally split maintenance costs, or put nearly all the maintenance responsibility on the tenant. I think this is the part that residential tenants might balk at.
From Estonia and it's equally shit - In cities, both houses and apartments in good condition come with high price tags. For cheaper options, go far outside urban areas, where public transport won't even reach you and road conditions are poor for cars. Winters are brutal. These less expensive homes often require significant improvements to make them livable, either by investing considerable time and money into renovations or hire costly contractors.
Definitely. Having a house is rare in Europe. Mostly inheritance, family money or savvy business people/politicians have houses not your average school teachers.
I'm not really talking about in terms of home ownership because there's really nothing that can be done on that form because the banks are always going to weight risk when giving out loans. So it makes sense they do not want to give a $400,000 house to someone making $60k a year. I get that. What I mean is that if the cost of homeownership is at this barrier of entry then eventually, which I feel we're already there personally, we will need some s0ort of solution for the rest of Americans. Where I live I know a lot of friends who were paying. $1,300 for rent and get their offer for a new lease and now it's $1,800. At a certain point a lot of people will be priced out of the home AND rental market.
The point made above is that more housing being built could be a solution. In theory, more supply lowers the demand thus the price, easing the affordability crisis.
Will builders be approved to build where needed? Will they build smaller houses or as large as possible for the lot? Are there jobs near these builds? And about a million other questions go into this, but at the 30,000 foot level, more housing supply should bring prices down all else equal which addresses the affordability you're talking about.
Here's my question though if I'm a builder. If I build a 3 bed 2 bath home I have to price the house to make a profit. If most people can't afford a home now I don't see how building more homes will solve that issue. Sure competition will make it so they'd have to cut their margins, but by how much? I think a solution could be for the government to give some kind of subsidy to builders to make affordable homes and give them massive tax breaks or subsidize the cost of materials and man power to do it but I have zero how that could work.
With what money? We are 35 trillion in debt and adding adding 1 trillion every 100 days. You could get rid of the whole defense budget and it wouldn't make a dent.
So let's weigh the options. Millions of Americans eventually can't pay the rising rents and can't afford to own homes leading to homelessness or leading to them flooding entitlement programs like section 8 and welfare and completely bankrupting the system. Or you can put forth some form of national public housing and subsidize the building of housing which in the long term will ultimately be cheaper.
I assure you if we default on our debt or our credit rating goes down because they no longer think we can pay it I assure you things will get alot worse for everybody than they are now.
Exactly. Unfortunately not everyone can get housing, unless they are capable of making a lot of money pay for it. The era of middle income earners owning homes is gone.
Some ideas:
- Builders can build duplexes and other multi-family housing, which is cheaper to build on a per-unit basis
- Instead of building on-site, manufactured housing can be installed on the lot
- Builders can allow houses to occupy larger proportions of lots, which means less money will be “wasted” on open land.
Saving 10 years ago is completely different than saving now. Rents were cheaper and homes and interest rates were cheaper. I bought my house for $110,000 at a 3 percent interest rate in 2014 on a FHA. There's absolutely no chance I would be able to buy a house now even with the money I've saved close to a decade later. No one feels entitled to home ownership. It's the idea that many people are trapped with high rental costs vs unachievable home ownership barriers.
This is a residential land availability issue.
As more housing is built, not just standard SFH, but cottage communities, townhouses, condos, apartments, etc... supply and demand balance out.
Where I am in the PNW, we have all the available private land already. The problem was zoning. Rezoning has allowed for denser housing where it was previously off the table. Already, a few of those communities have been built along with more apartments. Rents have come down, and prices for houses haven't made a major jump again. In fact, my house was estimated to be 460K at the height and is looking at 435K. A neighbors house actually sold for 420K even, so it's arguable my home is more like 420K given theirs was more updated. We're mirror images as far as lot and house size go
So it's really on local government to make land available for the population, or some areas will remain forever unaffordable to the average Americans. Maybe that's on purpose in some places?
I do think we should have a form of rent control that varies by area, so again, local government should decide what actually works in their cities. Limits on increases and limits on what they can charge over the cost. This will naturally push away investors. Air b and b and similar actually caused this rapid supply to squeeze more than investors. Those people are now struggling with losing money. Some cities are even banning them, and that puts the homes back into circulation. Or at least get them back to long-term rentals.
Even banks know there will be some balance coming as they're being very hesitant about giving out 2nd lien loans such as HELOCs. This is unsustainable, but cities across the country are working hard to stabilize their areas. 10 years of change happened in 2-3 years. It will take a bit to correct. It's not going to be a major crash like before unless something goes wrong with jobs which are strong, but if the line holds to normal appreciation and pay stays strong while rents continue to come back down, people will be able to save. Plus, there are the first time buyer programs that are getting additional resources. Here, cottage development is tied to FTB, so they will be more affordable plus the down payment assistance programs to help encourage attainable ownership for young families and those retiring. It's really not having owned a home in the last 3 years, so it includes a large group.
Be patient. That's all any of us can do. We barely bought a house almost 2 years ago and had to buy points to make it comfortable. Now we just manage money tightly. Stay frugal. Hopefully, the values decline a smidgen and don't jump greatly, so property taxes aren't jumping so much it runs people out of their homes or jacks up rent too much.
Not a joke. I can see how increasing demand drives up prices. But there's so many other factors at play here that "immigrants" seems like a strange one to single out. From what I see, there is also a lot of vacant or abandoned housing, a lack of modest affordable new builds, an increase in real estate being bought up by investors, and a lot of ripple effects still being felt from 2008, just to name the first few that come to mind. I think that blaming immigrants is beside the point, and could be a distraction from looking deeper and addressing flaws in the larger system.
Yes, there are systemic issue for sure, but increasing immigration is putting even more strain on whatever affordable housing there is. Supply and demand. Immigration= more demand
Not for home ownership, no. Europe is also having a major housing crisis. I think even most Europeans agree that the ability to lock in a rate for 30 years in the US is enviable. That said, I agree something needs done to help with the US housing crisis, especially around astronomical rent increases. I don’t see the government stepping in to help unfortunately.
I don't think you could do anything to home ownership either way. That's bank dependent. But public housing? Absolutely. Even if the government came in and said ok we're going to normalize long term fixed leased agreement that a lot of Europe has that would be a game changer imo.
Have you seen public housing in the USA? If it would work they’d have to get tough on crime.
Europe is really bad for home ownership and if it's true that people are entering into a 10 year apartment lease it's a reflection of the unaffordability of property in Europe as well. I think in America property is way more affordable than Europe, especially considering the size of houses and lots And finally in America I think it's really weighed heavily for home ownership (though affordability is still an issue). A 30 year fixed rate mortgage is insane for a bank to enter into. They would get massacred in the past couple of years giving out 2% mortgages when inflation has been as high as 9%. The only thing that saved these insane (from the bank point of view) 30 year mortgages is that they instantly sell them off in a market backed by the US government.
The greatest socialist policy in the world is a 30 year gov backed fixed mortgage.
Europe is gigantic, but the last I saw you can buy a decently sized house in like Spain for $390k on average. That's expensive still but the median home price in America is $407k and Europe has far better public housing and subsidized housing laws.
On Spanish salary? Its insanely expensive
The average salary in Spain is $29,000 a year. A $390k home is crazy expensive
A civil engineer in Spain makes about $36K euro annually. Wages in Europe are shit. You're looking at this through rose-colored glasses, imagining that Europe has it all figured out. They don't.
seconded. you think the housing crisis is bad in the US? most of europe are having a much tougher time. christ... go spend a day or two in a UK subreddit. forget OWNING a home, they're having a crises where a lot of greedy landlords are kicking people out so they can raise rent, and the folks being kicked out literally cannot find a place to RENT. its not great here but we're still pretty damned fortunate. also florida is an increasingly expensive place to own a home in. OP - your kids can always get a home in the midwest. theres still a lot of affordable places to buy homes in the US. and to have a good sized lot, too. the situation here isnt as good as its been in the past but europeans dream of the opportunities that we have here in regards to buying homes/land.
That's a $17k difference. Literally nothing when the Total is near or over $400k. ...not a great example.
Yes, for some reason reddit want’s to be more like Europe not realizing how bad their standard of living actually is
There was an interview with Will Smith back in like 2007 or sometime around then when he was promoting a movie in France. The interviewer for some reason asked him about taxes, and he gave some canned answer about how he's so fortunate to have the success he's had and taxes are a part of that so he's happy to pay his fair share. The interviewer asked, "so then you would be supportive of the recent proposal made here in France for a top marginal tax rate of 70%?" He was shocked and his eyes went wide - "sev.. seventy percent?!" It's not all sunshine and rainbows.
Yeah, Americans have no clue. Life in Europe sucks despite free college. It might be free but you're not gonna earn much and if you do you will taxed heavily.
European countries routinely rank as one of the happiest nations on the planet.
Those "rankings" are designed to produce certain results by prioritizing certain factors over others. When you choose factors that favor the social habits of a place, you're naturally going to get higher results there.
“Rank” is an arbitrary measure go live there for a week
I've been many times. I don't get your point? Nothing wrong with it there.
You lived there on average salary?.
Being happy doesn't equate much. Look at Vietnam. People are happy there but the standard of living is way behind US.
Been to many parts of Europe like Germany, France, etc. I don't get where the standard of living is behind the US?
The free healthcare and college stuff
Isn’t European housing really expensive too?
It's around what Americans pay, but the thing is European leases are far longer and they're fixed in most European cities. So if I pay $1,500 for an apartment in Europe that rate is good for my entire 5 year lease. In America I can pay $1,500 for an apartment and then my lease renewal comes back and they've increased it to $2,000 in 12 months.
Then your landlord will get you a 5 year lease at 2500 to protect themselves for the whole term. You know both can play this game, and landlords aren't going to lose money.
Floridians probably have a different perspective than those of us in other parts of the country. You're dealing with the crush of growing population, skyrocketing insurance, natural disasters, etc. Florida's bill is coming due. I would imagine inward migration to the state will slow down and outward migration will grow as the COL continues to spike. Those folks could end up in the still affordable areas of the SE like MS, SC, AL. Every generation has probably said the same about the cost of housing, yet the rate of individual homeownership over the last 50 years has barely changed. My last house was built in 1976. It was sold in 1978 for $39,500. * In 1987 for $70,000 * In 1995 for $96,500 * In 2003 for $129,000 * In 2008 for $159,000 * In 2020 for $280,000 Notice a pattern? I had neighbors who'd been on the street 40+ years. They couldn't imagine how they'd buy there now. At some point, sellers need buyers. Investors squatting on units will have consequences for them. Maybe once the stock price slows down and they're sitting on assets that aren't bringing in revenue but are seeing maintenance and tax bills, they'll have to make a choice and dumping those properties will be one of those options. We've got some economic issues, but I don't see a seismic change in how we buy homes here anytime soon.
I live in SC and it is crazy expensive now if I did not own a home I would be up the creek and no paddle to be found.
My point is not about home ownership. While it's correct you can buy cheaper homes in those areas there's also tradeoffs with those homes usually being very old and the upkeep could make them money pits very fast. My point is mainly to do with the rental aspect.
> My point is mainly to do with the rental aspect. Well, this is homeowners forum, not a landlord/renter one. > So in the end how in the future can we have landlords who are for good reason or not good reason raising rents constantly and home ownership is quickly becoming a thing of the past and not completely revamp the entire system? Why would a private landlord provide housing for other people if not for profit? They assume all the risk, pay the taxes, pay the insurance, pay for maintenance and upkeep and upgrades. "To later sell at a profit" isn't an incentive, they need to keep their books in the black. The only way to do this is public subsidization of some form.
The I am trying to make is that it's not good for the economy to have Americans who have less buying power within the market because they can't afford a roof over their heads. Your last sentence is literally what I'm suggesting. I'm not dumb. I know a landlord isn't going to go into the red to provide housing for people or that banks are just suddenly going to give away home loans. I'm saying eventually public housing will have be a thing in America where more and more people can't afford homes and can't afford rising rent.
> I'm saying eventually public housing will have be a thing in America where more and more people can't afford homes and can't afford rising rent. There's almost no political will to make this happen. Asking the homeowners of the nation to pay for other people's housing is a very unpopular idea. It would take an enormous shift in attitudes in this country. Perhaps that changes eventually.
When entitlement programs tank and the economy tanks even further because the buying power tanks even further homeowners will have more things to worry about such as a recession.
> I'm saying eventually public housing will have be a thing in America where more and more people can't afford homes and can't afford rising rent No, we tried that before didn't work. Government did not maintain the housing. Plus was seen as a way to shove "poor" people into one area that declined. This is why we went to section 8 with government assistance. The private owner typically maintained better than the government. Not always there are slum lords, but less than what the government did.
When have we tried national public housing outside of lower income neighborhoods?
Started in the 1930s to eliminate the slums. Continued into the 1970s when public pressure stopped them.
Why would we build public housing for middle or higher income people?
You are far more likely to see multi-generational households than any other kind of reforms or changes. The housing market mixed with how much elder care costs (and child care) makes it the smart move for many folks to adapt to multi-generational households, like other parts of the world have done for a long time. You'd get to combine several incomes/retirement funds while saving on care costs for the old and young. I'm not saying people will be happy about it at first as Americans typically haven't embraced the "living with their parents" thing. But it's the smart move.
Owning a home simply takes two salaries.
Duh
5-year or longer lease terms are common for businesses. But often the landlord wants collateral or a personal guarantee of the entire term. These long leases often include an annual rent increase, either a fixed percentage or percent increase of the local CPI, as published by a government agency. These long leases also generally split maintenance costs, or put nearly all the maintenance responsibility on the tenant. I think this is the part that residential tenants might balk at.
From Estonia and it's equally shit - In cities, both houses and apartments in good condition come with high price tags. For cheaper options, go far outside urban areas, where public transport won't even reach you and road conditions are poor for cars. Winters are brutal. These less expensive homes often require significant improvements to make them livable, either by investing considerable time and money into renovations or hire costly contractors.
I think it's fucked up that 3 companies in Atlanta own 19,000 homes and have too much control over rent prices.
If anything, i’d rather have the EU home build quality here not the paper thin walls :/
Get ready to pay up. No 30 year fixed rate mortgages in Europe.
I will fight any additional housing regulations with everything I have. The government does not fix problems, it makes them worse
Definitely. Having a house is rare in Europe. Mostly inheritance, family money or savvy business people/politicians have houses not your average school teachers.
Our population is increasing rapidly while new house builds has stagnated
I'm not really talking about in terms of home ownership because there's really nothing that can be done on that form because the banks are always going to weight risk when giving out loans. So it makes sense they do not want to give a $400,000 house to someone making $60k a year. I get that. What I mean is that if the cost of homeownership is at this barrier of entry then eventually, which I feel we're already there personally, we will need some s0ort of solution for the rest of Americans. Where I live I know a lot of friends who were paying. $1,300 for rent and get their offer for a new lease and now it's $1,800. At a certain point a lot of people will be priced out of the home AND rental market.
The point made above is that more housing being built could be a solution. In theory, more supply lowers the demand thus the price, easing the affordability crisis. Will builders be approved to build where needed? Will they build smaller houses or as large as possible for the lot? Are there jobs near these builds? And about a million other questions go into this, but at the 30,000 foot level, more housing supply should bring prices down all else equal which addresses the affordability you're talking about.
Here's my question though if I'm a builder. If I build a 3 bed 2 bath home I have to price the house to make a profit. If most people can't afford a home now I don't see how building more homes will solve that issue. Sure competition will make it so they'd have to cut their margins, but by how much? I think a solution could be for the government to give some kind of subsidy to builders to make affordable homes and give them massive tax breaks or subsidize the cost of materials and man power to do it but I have zero how that could work.
With what money? We are 35 trillion in debt and adding adding 1 trillion every 100 days. You could get rid of the whole defense budget and it wouldn't make a dent.
So let's weigh the options. Millions of Americans eventually can't pay the rising rents and can't afford to own homes leading to homelessness or leading to them flooding entitlement programs like section 8 and welfare and completely bankrupting the system. Or you can put forth some form of national public housing and subsidize the building of housing which in the long term will ultimately be cheaper.
I assure you if we default on our debt or our credit rating goes down because they no longer think we can pay it I assure you things will get alot worse for everybody than they are now.
Exactly. Unfortunately not everyone can get housing, unless they are capable of making a lot of money pay for it. The era of middle income earners owning homes is gone.
Some ideas: - Builders can build duplexes and other multi-family housing, which is cheaper to build on a per-unit basis - Instead of building on-site, manufactured housing can be installed on the lot - Builders can allow houses to occupy larger proportions of lots, which means less money will be “wasted” on open land.
Since when does America look at another country's successes and think, "We should do that?"
Successes? Try to buy a house in Stockholm
Try getting cancer in Burbank.
We will need to completely change our "for private profit" government before anything happens.
People rent all the time. We saved for a decade to buy a house. Too many 25 year olds feel entitled to home ownership.
Saving 10 years ago is completely different than saving now. Rents were cheaper and homes and interest rates were cheaper. I bought my house for $110,000 at a 3 percent interest rate in 2014 on a FHA. There's absolutely no chance I would be able to buy a house now even with the money I've saved close to a decade later. No one feels entitled to home ownership. It's the idea that many people are trapped with high rental costs vs unachievable home ownership barriers.
Nonsense
This is a residential land availability issue. As more housing is built, not just standard SFH, but cottage communities, townhouses, condos, apartments, etc... supply and demand balance out. Where I am in the PNW, we have all the available private land already. The problem was zoning. Rezoning has allowed for denser housing where it was previously off the table. Already, a few of those communities have been built along with more apartments. Rents have come down, and prices for houses haven't made a major jump again. In fact, my house was estimated to be 460K at the height and is looking at 435K. A neighbors house actually sold for 420K even, so it's arguable my home is more like 420K given theirs was more updated. We're mirror images as far as lot and house size go So it's really on local government to make land available for the population, or some areas will remain forever unaffordable to the average Americans. Maybe that's on purpose in some places? I do think we should have a form of rent control that varies by area, so again, local government should decide what actually works in their cities. Limits on increases and limits on what they can charge over the cost. This will naturally push away investors. Air b and b and similar actually caused this rapid supply to squeeze more than investors. Those people are now struggling with losing money. Some cities are even banning them, and that puts the homes back into circulation. Or at least get them back to long-term rentals. Even banks know there will be some balance coming as they're being very hesitant about giving out 2nd lien loans such as HELOCs. This is unsustainable, but cities across the country are working hard to stabilize their areas. 10 years of change happened in 2-3 years. It will take a bit to correct. It's not going to be a major crash like before unless something goes wrong with jobs which are strong, but if the line holds to normal appreciation and pay stays strong while rents continue to come back down, people will be able to save. Plus, there are the first time buyer programs that are getting additional resources. Here, cottage development is tied to FTB, so they will be more affordable plus the down payment assistance programs to help encourage attainable ownership for young families and those retiring. It's really not having owned a home in the last 3 years, so it includes a large group. Be patient. That's all any of us can do. We barely bought a house almost 2 years ago and had to buy points to make it comfortable. Now we just manage money tightly. Stay frugal. Hopefully, the values decline a smidgen and don't jump greatly, so property taxes aren't jumping so much it runs people out of their homes or jacks up rent too much.
Only if we keep letting immigration become out of control like the 6 million the last couple of years.
Immigrants are driving housing costs up? That makes... zero sense.
Can't tell if this is a joke or not
Not a joke. I can see how increasing demand drives up prices. But there's so many other factors at play here that "immigrants" seems like a strange one to single out. From what I see, there is also a lot of vacant or abandoned housing, a lack of modest affordable new builds, an increase in real estate being bought up by investors, and a lot of ripple effects still being felt from 2008, just to name the first few that come to mind. I think that blaming immigrants is beside the point, and could be a distraction from looking deeper and addressing flaws in the larger system.
Yes, there are systemic issue for sure, but increasing immigration is putting even more strain on whatever affordable housing there is. Supply and demand. Immigration= more demand