71–80 of 704 posts
Some very clever and influential people better start finding and implementing real solutions to housing prices right now. If they don't, expect overwhelming support from Millennials for massive expansions to public housing and rent control, if not even more draconian measures.
Millenial homeownership is almost at 50% this year. The people priced out are the loudest, but it's not overwhelmingly common in most parts of the US.
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Agree. From experience, people look into how much they would pay monthly and their income. This then begs the question: what will happen once rates go up even a bit, and houses suddenly require a 50% larger monthly payment.
Most mortgages haves fixed rates
Some very clever and influential people better start finding and implementing real solutions to housing prices right now. If they don't, expect overwhelming support from Millennials for massive expansions to public housing and rent control, if not even more draconian measures.
Millenial homeownership is almost at 50% this year. The people priced out are the loudest, but it's not overwhelmingly common in most parts of the US.
I’d love to see the same charts in terms of monthly payments on a new mortgage, rather than sticker price. The price itself matters in terms of downpayment, but ultra low interest rates are a huge factor. Right now, interest rates are so low that a huge mortgage has the same payments as a small one years ago would have been. Especially when you take inflation into account.
One thing I think people overlook is that there's a hidden cost to buying at low interest rates: if rates go up that will eat into your resale value, and it's less likely you can refinance at a lower rate in the future. If you bought at a high interest rate and then rates drop you really make out, and that's less likely to happen to people buying now.
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Not the OP, but I'll guess that it's because both of them strongly erode property rights. Another, more freedom-preserving, approach is to make it easier to build build build. Planet Money had a decent introduction a couple years ago.[0] In the current NIMBY climate, my neighbor is struggling with the red tape to repave her driveway. Building a new home around here seems about as improbable as a hobbyist making the f…
Are property rights freedom-preserving? One of the most infuriating bits of my visit to the US West coast was driving up from LA to SF and a lot of the really nice bits of coast not being accessible to the public. There's compromises like germanic Jedermansrecht [0], but overall I think limiting property rights is often a net gain of freedom. I do agree on the problem of NYMBYism though. There's a funny-if-not-so-sad…
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Millenial homeownership is almost at 50% this year. The people priced out are the loudest, but it's not overwhelmingly common in most parts of the US.
That's still way lower then older generations.
I think there's a pretty critical piece of analysis missing here: inflation. An alternative explanation might be that housing prices are being driven up by inflation, and wages haven't caught up yet. There are two ways to lower the home value/income ratio: 1. Decrease housing prices 2. Increase wages We haven't seen meaningful wage increases for a long time now, so perhaps it is time. Maybe this is just a symptom of…
Some very clever and influential people better start finding and implementing real solutions to housing prices right now. If they don't, expect overwhelming support from Millennials for massive expansions to public housing and rent control, if not even more draconian measures.
1. Residential homes are no longer allowed to be 'investment properties' aka every person(or married couple) can own exactly one house. Corporate entities except for Banks(even then can only own it for the time it takes to sell it in the case of foreclosure) can't either. 2. Only actual Americans can own property in America. Single-fam, multi-fam, land,etc. doesn't matter. Exactly no one needs to rent houses if mulit…
okay, but what if I have (an opportunity for) positive cashflow, minimal savings, and want to move away from my parents' house? does it just suck to be me or what?
Why average numerator divided by median denominator?
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> If we could make things cheaper by passing a law we’d do it for everything. Price controls for medicine are proven to work, based on single payer European systems. They cost cheaper and provide better outcomes than the US system. Yet here we are.
That is an example of what economists call the free rider problem. European countries get cheap drugs only because they are effectively being subsidized by Americans. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/free_rider_problem.asp Outcome differences are due more to public health and social factors like obesity. Expensive drugs or lack thereof have only a tiny impact at the population level.
Europeans aren’t free riding; they’re paying a reasonable rate for these goods while Americans are shouldered with extraction of revenue for pharma profits and those inefficient (and arguably unnecessary) sales and marketing expenses.
Only two countries in the world permit marketing directly to consumers to promote pharmaceuticals: the United States and New Zealand.