261–270 of 704 posts
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The issue then becomes silly games with shell corporations hiding how many homes people own, which pushes homes into the hands of larger landlords who can afford to pay someone to play those silly games.
Make it pass through to the shareholders.
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Most mortgages haves fixed rates
Of course. But buyers still need to be able to afford houses they purchase. With higher rates that might not be true.
While it doesn't directly affect the average person's purchasing power, the same dramatic increase is happening in other asset values as well. [0] One interesting thing to note is that 2019 EV / EBITDA values were already "high," before the coronavirus was spreading. I suspect these two phenomena have different causes overall, but low interest rates are a common factor that cause all asset prices to increase. On the…
Home prices are a function of monthly costs. As much as people want to compare the value of a home from year to year, in every instance, I've seen values reflect to monthly spending power. I would love to see some estimate that takes more into account like household income, tax breaks, and interest rates. If I have a interest deduction, my relative taxes are lower. If I have children, my taxes are lower. If I have hi…
If you account for inflation and interest rates, and look at median home price, a home earlier this year was CHEAPER than home in 2005. Roughly the same monthly payments before accounting for inflation, because of the interest rates (6.X% vs 2.5-2.8%ish). That alone makes a huge difference.
People are also becoming more financially literate. Once folks are able to crunch all of the numbers on their own, start calculating how much rent costs, how much money they will make from asset valuation, how much they can save from using HELOCs instead of credit or other types of loans, they're willing to spend more, too. There's the tax deductions, but that got gutted, so it's not that big anymore.
one can say the down payment increases, but it increased slower than the market did, so if you just sat on investments since 2005, you can make a BIGGER down payment now than then, proportionally. At current interest rates, even with PMI, you're potentially better off doing a 3% + PMI than putting a large down payment (unless you're expecting a market apocalypse the likes of which the US has never seen).
We could crank up the interest rates to 10% and home values would tank. It wouldn't reduce monthly home costs any though.
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That's CPI, not inflation. CPI has a number of ways that a thumb may be put on the scale, for example hedonic quality adjustments seem to me to be highly subjective.
Right, vs REAL inflation, which is measured by whatever I think happens to be too expensive right now.
While it doesn't directly affect the average person's purchasing power, the same dramatic increase is happening in other asset values as well. [0] One interesting thing to note is that 2019 EV / EBITDA values were already "high," before the coronavirus was spreading. I suspect these two phenomena have different causes overall, but low interest rates are a common factor that cause all asset prices to increase. On the…
When it's all assets going up, it's not the assets cost more, it's the dollar is worth less. So for all the help and assistance. Housing is LESS affordable than ever before. You cannot infuse trillions of extra dollars into the economy without inflation. There's no magic pill - there must be consequences.
People worry about inflation, but forget how awful deflation is.
(And on a side-rant, it’s really bizarre how the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany is cited as enabling the rise of the Nazi party. The timing doesn’t work. They came to power during the depression-era deflation.)
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> For 99% of you that means living far away from your preferred locale among people you probably loath. Parent comment is vitriolic but not actually wrong. Myself, I take great comfort in the idea of huge swaths of liberal, well-educated millennials and xennials migrating out of coastal cities and into small towns across the South and Midwest. Can you work remotely? Want to own your own home on a multi-acre lot for $…
> Live among people you disagree with -- we're all still Americans, it'll be OK I grew up in the American south, and migrated to California as an adult. As a Black person I can say this doesn’t work as well in practice. It’s better than the old days (when my mom was growing up segregation was still legal and the military warned her parents to be back on base before sunset.) But I’d much rather live in a welcoming are…
There's "be the change you want to see", and then there's "move to a place where you're likely to murdered in the street for pointless, intractable reasons." I can't say I blame you for getting the hell out; I just hope that in our lifetime you feel comfortable going back to where you grew up.
The weather's great (except for the hurricanes) and the barbecue is amazing (except in the Carolinas). Maybe one day you can get back here and we can all work together on fixing whatever the hell is wrong with (some of) the people.
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Yes, because nothing would ruin Albania or Georgia more than a few tech workers siphoning profits from US into their local economies.
Of course it wouldn't ruin the countries themselves, the countries would profit somewhat, but it would however hurt the middle class since now they have more competition on the housing market that's much wealthier so you're increasing inequality. Just because the country is profiting from your megabucks, doesn't mean the average Joe is. Look at Austria. The most touristic areas are profiting a lot from all that forei…
If the middle class are the ones buying the properties, then they're the ones selling them. Therefore it actually injects money into the middle class, foreign capital that never existed in that country.
>he most touristic areas are profiting a lot from all that foreign tourist money, but a lot of the locals can't afford to live there anymore as all that tourist money
Those who move to a country to work and live there on anything but a very short term basis on not generally considered tourists. Most of the money flowing into the rich is a function of capitalism, not just tourism. You can examine virtually any industry and make the same statement. Yet, some fraction of money is usually better than nothing for the middle class people benefitting.
The US has your Austrian analogue, it is called Hawaii. In Hawaii most money is made from tourism. The common person there is mostly employed in tourism. Housing prices are high, because lots of people want to live there. The result when it was mostly closed off for coronavirus was that although demand for housing decreased, unemployment skyrocketed without tourism, making the middle class worse off.
No doubt housing is expensive and getting more expensive. But I’ve always wanted to see the mortgage payment plot too.
How much of this is a result of our "don't tax the rich" policies that created a staggering amount of wealth at the top that has nowhere else to go? So many ultra rich investors are looking for something, anything, to invest in. Plus there is the feedback loop of massive growth you get as the bubble inflates. Is this a direct result of our fiscal policy? Have we destabilize the economy in order to create the richest…
What "don't tax the rich" policies? 61% of Americans pay zero income tax. Why are the rich getting tremendously rich? Because the Federal Reserve has printed money at an astonishing rate, which inflates asset prices. Who owns the most assets? The rich do. People are so focused on taxation (because it's something the average poor or middle class understands) when the real issue is the Fed (something most Americans are…
The top 10% of Americans own about 85% of the wealth in America, and the entire bottom 90% only own around 15% of it.