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Americans need to be richer than ever to buy their first home

bloomberg.com

21–30 of 68 posts

Re: Americans need to be richer than ever to buy their first home

#21
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because home loans are already government subsidized. Are they? Maybe Im more ignorant then I thought? Im still stuck looking at high intrest loans as a first time buyer who works in tech though?

Do you itemize your taxes? If so, your mortgage is being subsidized by the government.

no im single and rent (idk how to affordably buy a home, thats what my rant was about), i use standard deduction.

Re: Americans need to be richer than ever to buy their first home

#22
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe really low/no interest loans for first time home buyers so they can at least get into the market. These already exist. There are downpayment assistance programs that go as low as 0% down. We ourselves took advantage of FHA loans twice to buy homes. If anything, they exacerbate the problem by throwing cheap money at a supply problem.

> downpayment assistance programs that go as low as 0% down. I never understood these, you still have to make payments on the total loan though? 0% on a million dollar loan at 6% is a ton of money to pay every month. on top of taxes and expenses of owning a home.

You only pay the higher percentage on the amount of loan principle below 20%. So for 80% of our loan the interest rate is 2.25%, and then a few points on top of that for what we still own below the 20%.

Still a screaming deal - but a lot of restrictions on how big of a loan you can get and what kind of property you can buy with it.

Re: Americans need to be richer than ever to buy their first home

#23
post #2

[flagged]

Isn't the real problem that there are too few desirable places for people to be - state capitals and mega cities urban cores - everybody tries to cram there.

So you actually have to fix the demand problem. The phrase "flyover states" is an early precursor of the current problem. I don't know how - all of the solutions I can think about are bad, but you actually have to convince people that there are other places worth living other than thin slivers of land along the coasts, Chicago and Houston/Austin

Re: Americans need to be richer than ever to buy their first home

#24
post #2

[flagged]

This is such a common misconception that Blackrock has a webpage on their website dedicated to clearing it up: https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/newsroom/setting-the-rec...

Oh wow it is another instance of "X has investigated X and found that X has done nothing wrong".

Re: Americans need to be richer than ever to buy their first home

#25
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> downpayment assistance programs that go as low as 0% down. I never understood these, you still have to make payments on the total loan though? 0% on a million dollar loan at 6% is a ton of money to pay every month. on top of taxes and expenses of owning a home.

You only pay the higher percentage on the amount of loan principle below 20%. So for 80% of our loan the interest rate is 2.25%, and then a few points on top of that for what we still own below the 20%. Still a screaming deal - but a lot of restrictions on how big of a loan you can get and what kind of property you can buy with it.

ill dig into this. thanks! see theres a reason to rant on the comment section haha

Re: Americans need to be richer than ever to buy their first home

#27

I think this is only half of the story. There are still lots of affordable houses - in parts of the country that no one wants to live anymore. The value of my sibling's property in Illinois has barely kept up with inflation. So I think some of the national statistics about house prices vs number of units are a bit misleading. We're increasingly paying a premium because we are increasingly concentrating where we want…

People go where the jobs are. That’s increasingly in urban areas. It’s also where amenities like good hospitals and schools are located.

Re: Americans need to be richer than ever to buy their first home

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a common misconception that Blackrock has a webpage on their website dedicated to clearing it up: https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/newsroom/setting-the-rec...

I don't see how this helps the narrative. You'd expect they would. This is like cigarette companies putting out memos defending cigarettes as less-harmful.

"McDonalds sells cocaine to children!"

McDonalds: "No we don't."

"Ha! That's just what they would say".

The ridiculous thing about this set of accusations is that Blackrock is a passive investment management firm. They don't make any more intentional investment decisions than, like, a typical bank.

Re: Americans need to be richer than ever to buy their first home

#29
post #2

[flagged]

The reason institutional investors are buying old homes is because supply restrictions on new homes has made old homes an increasingly good investment. Build lots of new homes, and the old homes will cease to be such attractive investments.

Re: Americans need to be richer than ever to buy their first home

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a common misconception that Blackrock has a webpage on their website dedicated to clearing it up: https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/newsroom/setting-the-rec...

Oh wow it is another instance of "X has investigated X and found that X has done nothing wrong".

You can take it with whatever grain of salt you want, but a public asset management firm saying "we don't own any X" is a pretty categorial statement. Like if they are lying here they would have the FTC and client lawsuits crawling all over them.
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