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Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

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Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#31

Post by gottorf »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5
Esophagus4 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you believed 7-8% loans were normal, you might be more likely to bite the bullet and make your move. But if you believe 3-4% is normal, then you’re probably waiting for rates to return to “normal.” I think it’s a side effect of years of low interest rates… people are conditioned now to believe low is normal, and they want to hang on until we get back to that. I was hoping rates would stay “high” for a whil…

Real estate market will soften as the economy comes off the rails [1]. 6-12 months from now should have more motivated sellers depending on market (foreclosures in Clark County Las Vegas market are up 32% year over year June 2025, for example [2]). Short sales and foreclosure auctions are also options. If you still want to buy down the road, be in the strongest financial position possible to get financing and make an…

Put in other words, in any market, there are bids and there are offers. Prices don't move until one side gets in a rush. A seller's market (like in 2021) is one where buyers are in a rush and will lift the offer. A buyer's market (like during GFC) is one where sellers are in a rush and will hit the bid.

The pressure on buyers, at least in the past couple of decades, is that the increase in the supply of housing has not been at all commensurate with the increase in population. That, combined with a great increase in the money supply, makes for tremendous upward pressure on real estate prices.

Sellers generally aren't in a rush except in times of economic crises, especially paired with a period of overleveraging running up to it; i.e. the GFC. Economic softening appears to be in the works at the moment, so buyers should get a little reprieve soon, but since there isn't the same overleveraged buyers all rushing for the exits like in 2008, a similar crash is unlikely.

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#32

Post by winter_blue »

yolovoe wrote: post #28

Just a single data point against this. I got interviews with 4 companies out of 30 or so I applied to. Cleared all the onsites. Think FAANG, famous hedge fund, popular data analytics platform, and defense. 4 different industries. Job market's not the best, but it's also not that bad if you have 5 YOE+. Offers were good, ~$50-100K over my current pay. So many people are using AI during the interviews to cheat, as long…

Was this very recent? The job markets for software engineers has been horrid, at least from mid 2022 to mid 2025. Maybe it’s changed now?

Anecdotally, I know a few engineers with 10+ YOE in NYC, Seattle, and California, all with actual FAANG or FAANG adjacent work experience, who couldn’t find jobs. One of whom even took a minimum wage job, and another who nearly did the same as well.

Maybe the tax code change is kicking off an industry revival?

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#33

Post by nlawalker »

yolovoe wrote: post #28

Just a single data point against this. I got interviews with 4 companies out of 30 or so I applied to. Cleared all the onsites. Think FAANG, famous hedge fund, popular data analytics platform, and defense. 4 different industries. Job market's not the best, but it's also not that bad if you have 5 YOE+. Offers were good, ~$50-100K over my current pay. So many people are using AI during the interviews to cheat, as long…

> interview […] AI use

Can you elaborate? People don’t do well in the interview and say they could do it if they had AI with them? Or…?

Edit: Sorry, I missed “using AI during the interviews to cheat”.

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#34

Post by charlie0 »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #25
simpaticoder wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be nice if individuals decided at the start of their career how much money was "enough" for them, and made a pledge to retire once they hit that number. Then society can give them an "I won!" hat or gold card or something, and the next guy can take the role. In this way all enterprises become an engine pulling new hires off the street, and emitting independently wealthy people to go and enjoy their lives.…

You'd have to have some guarantee that the government would never alter the amount of inflation they create for that to be reasonable

No one can guarantee that but if you place your dollars into assets, those assets will inflate.

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#35

Post by keernan »

chao- wrote: post #26
JackMorgan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're heading further into a reality where there just aren't enough jobs. All the money has been hoovered into the stock market. There's just not enough floating around to pay people, it's all going into LLM electricity or graphics cards. We should be living in a time of ease, where the whole planet is sustained with all of us only working a few hours a week. Instead most people are fighting for scraps barely able to…

EDIT: I wrote this in a rush intending to refer to general market entry. In a broad sense, what I ended up writing is incorrect. To preserve the accuracy of the comment history I will not remove my mistake. > All the money has been hoovered into the stock market. I think you might misunderstand what the stock market is. Or perhaps you misunderstand what what stocks are? When you purchase stock, it doesn't get locked…

>>That money goes to the company

When you purchase stock, your money goes to the seller of that stock. That's what makes a "market". The stock market isn't a bunch of companies selling their stock to the public.

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#36

Post by FiatLuxDave »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

There aren’t enough homes or jobs. What do?

As far as I can tell, the problem isn't so much a lack of jobs or a lack of homes but rather that they aren't in the same place. In small town America, the problem isn't a lack of housing stock, it's that it is hard to afford it with few good paying jobs. In big city America, the problem isn't lack of jobs, it's that it is hard to find a job which pays enough for you to afford the limited housing stock.

I think this is a large reason behind the polarization in America today. We aren't all facing the same aspect of this imbalance.

I was hoping that the work-from-home movement was going to help with this, but RTO seems to be in full swing. So, I think our best bet would be to stop incentivizing the concentration of job creation. Absent a fix, we will have to wait a few decades for the imbalance to even out.

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#37

Post by gottorf »

jmclnx wrote: post #15
DANmode wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you've all treated housing as a financial instrument, instead of what it should be: safety for your family.

I look at it as an expense. If you can sell and make a few bucks, great. But I doubt any new buyers will make out. I expect in the not to distant future, the only way someone will get to own a house is to inherent one.

> I expect in the not to distant future, the only way someone will get to own a house is to inherent one.

Only if the current insanity around zoning and regulation persists. In many real estate markets, it's literally illegal to increase the supply of housing; in others, price controls make it unappealing to invest in increasing the supply of housing.

I don't know what kind of toxicity is unique to the Anglophone world that exacerbates this problem, but at some point we just need to rip off the band-aid, tell existing homeowners to cry more, and just build, build, build. There's no inherent reason why the price of houses should so far exceed income in this vast country.

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#38

Post by jaco6 »

chao- wrote: post #26
JackMorgan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're heading further into a reality where there just aren't enough jobs. All the money has been hoovered into the stock market. There's just not enough floating around to pay people, it's all going into LLM electricity or graphics cards. We should be living in a time of ease, where the whole planet is sustained with all of us only working a few hours a week. Instead most people are fighting for scraps barely able to…

EDIT: I wrote this in a rush intending to refer to general market entry. In a broad sense, what I ended up writing is incorrect. To preserve the accuracy of the comment history I will not remove my mistake. > All the money has been hoovered into the stock market. I think you might misunderstand what the stock market is. Or perhaps you misunderstand what what stocks are? When you purchase stock, it doesn't get locked…

[dead]

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#39

Post by charlie0 »

bobthepanda wrote: post #18
DANmode wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you've all treated housing as a financial instrument, instead of what it should be: safety for your family.

The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, and in a world where every home is priced this way it’s not like you could go to an alternative housing market.

Of course you can, digital nomads have been geoarbitraging for a long time.

Re: Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling

#40

Post by gottorf »

eigen wrote: post #24
clipsy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if you sell your house for a million dollar where will You move to? Literally anywhere in the "bottom" 99% of the country by real estate costs?

median home price was 410k in 2025Q2 [1] so it may take most/all the net gains to purchase a median house. 1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

Very closely tracks the money supply[0].

[0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

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