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U.S. now short 4.5M homes as housing deficit grows

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Re: U.S. now short 4.5M homes as housing deficit grows

#11

Post by goalonetwo »

iambateman wrote: post #7

My first home (bought 2014) is up 100% and my second home (bought 2019) is up 55% over purchase price. It's unsustainable for this country to think that houses can be both (1) an appreciating investment and (2) affordable. But in order for us to find long-term price stability, people like me must make peace with the idea of our houses _never_ appreciating beyond inflation.

How much did you "make" on your investment once you account for the ton of fees that are involved in housing though? If your house doesn't go up at least 5% a year, you are already losing money once you account for HOA, insurance, taxes, repairs etc.

I would bet you would have had a better outcome renting and investing in the SP500 instead.

Re: U.S. now short 4.5M homes as housing deficit grows

#12

Post by gitfan86 »

My concern is that the market incentivizes building at the higher end. People who can "only" afford a 4m home will be helped by the home builders who will build plenty of 3m homes but the people who can only afford 400k are getting very few homes built for them.

Re: U.S. now short 4.5M homes as housing deficit grows

#13

Post by BadHumans »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #5

What's up with Raleigh NC? I used to live nearby, that's a nice place and not expensive, why suddenly 30% less housing shortage?

North Carolina in general has some of the most sprawl in the nation and hasn't kept up with the demand that tech has brought to the state.

Re: U.S. now short 4.5M homes as housing deficit grows

#15

Post by silisili »

Question for anyone who may know from experience: where are all the people coming from? It's a question everyone in my home city keeps asking after seeing all the new developments, and never really investigating an answer I guess.

They keep squishing in apartments and tract housing everywhere there's a postage stamp of land, and it's sold the next day. Even wayyy out in the rural county. My very quiet road was a traffic nightmare by the time I moved on.

The media/government report we're at or below the replacement birth rate, and while immigration exists, the people moving in aren't all exclusively immigrants by appearance. Further, the city reports modest growth on the census.

So, where are all the people coming from? I have to assume it's mostly elsewhere in the city due to census numbers, but no idea from where or how that makes sense.

Re: U.S. now short 4.5M homes as housing deficit grows

#17

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

goalonetwo wrote: post #6

Do we really have a housing deficit? If you look at prices they indeed go up because nobody wants to sell and too many people have been wrongly convinced that buying is always a good idea. If you look at rent on the other hand it has stabilized in most location. I was even able to negotiate a rent decrease last summer. I'm not convinced we have a housing deficit. But I'm convinced that too many people are blindly buy…

> Do we really have a housing deficit?

The number of new families goes up more every year than the number of new places to live. How's your algebra?

> If you look at rent on the other hand it has stabilized in most location.

This is false. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SEHA

Zoom in on the 5 and 10 year windows.

Re: U.S. now short 4.5M homes as housing deficit grows

#18

Post by headcanon »

I'm looking for a house now and the market is crazy, every house is subject to a bidding war and selling for at least 25% over asking, which sucks for folks who don't have the cash on hand to pay the difference (since the bank only covers so much). There is no way this is sustainable.

I looked into building a house and while its certainly possible its so expensive that everyone is trying to talk me out of it.

Why is it so expensive to build? is it mostly building materials or labor? Is usable land shrinking? Solve that problem and the houses will build themselves.

At the same time the new houses I'm seeing getting built in my area are a demonstration of the phrase "money can't buy taste". We have all this land to build and we choose to continue building badly-designed single family homes, mainly catering to the ultra rich in order to best recoup the building costs. I'm not against single family inherently but we should try more diverse housing options. It would be nice if we could switch it up and change zoning laws to allow mixed housing in new developments: imagine a set of small apartment blocks with retail on the ground floor, surrounded by well-planned single family units that emphasize walkable spaces and community. That would practically be as close to utopia as we could get in this country but nobody seems to have the vision to push that forward.

Re: U.S. now short 4.5M homes as housing deficit grows

#19

Post by baggy_trough »

gitfan86 wrote: post #12

My concern is that the market incentivizes building at the higher end. People who can "only" afford a 4m home will be helped by the home builders who will build plenty of 3m homes but the people who can only afford 400k are getting very few homes built for them.

When you move into a 3m home, you generally leave a vacancy in a sub-3m home.

Re: U.S. now short 4.5M homes as housing deficit grows

#20

Post by silverquiet »

silisili wrote: post #15

Question for anyone who may know from experience: where are all the people coming from? It's a question everyone in my home city keeps asking after seeing all the new developments, and never really investigating an answer I guess. They keep squishing in apartments and tract housing everywhere there's a postage stamp of land, and it's sold the next day. Even wayyy out in the rural county. My very quiet road was a traf…

Is your home city not one of the big HCOL cities? If so, I assume it's people fleeing them. I live in San Antonio and hear all the time about people coming here, often without even a job lined up. I was talking to someone in a bar the other week about how she had come in from Hawaii. Her husband had found a job before they moved, but it seems like they were going to move even if he hadn't.
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