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Americans don't believe middle class can afford homes

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Re: Americans don't believe middle class can afford homes

#121

Post by dragontamer »

earthling8118 wrote: post #119
dragontamer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Houses that are good for wealthy retired people are not so good for young couples raising children. In particular, the school systems that are around such homes. Location, Location, Location. Secondly: those houses have tenants. They're not sitting empty. Thirdly, for the young couple. Being tied to your parents financially basically makes them a slave-owner of you. When the parents drop by or use the yard to store p…

The houses have tenants, so they can't use them for their children? It sounds like they prioritize the income stream over their child finding a home. Yeah, it isn't fun for the people who need to relocate but that isn't some impossible hurdle.

Did you see point#1? The homes aren't in locations ideal for raising children in any case.

You need a good school district if you want your child to growup smart. Retired folk having 3x homes in lower-educated areas is fine for retired folk. But that doesn't mean that those homes are immediately useful to a new family.

Building new homes (and cheaper homes) in the better school districts makes more sense overall. Some neighborhoods naturally become "retirement communities" but kind of a ghetto for education (ie: young couples try to escape those areas due to poor schooling).

Re: Americans don't believe middle class can afford homes

#122

Post by spacemadness »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #74
burlesona wrote: post #6

We spent 40 years believing that house prices were fine because the debt load didn't matter because interest rates would go down forever. Prices are based on the seller extracting the maximum ability to pay from the buyer, so payments were effectively fixed, and every drop in interest rates was perfectly offset by an increase in the purchase price. Then we hit interest zero, there was nowhere left to go. Now we're fi…

> We're going to have to have a cultural shift towards housing as shelter, not investment. I've been saying this for years. Real estate investing is an absolute cancer on society. It is utterly unreal to me that people think their house should go up in value over time higher than the rate of inflation without doing any improvements. But it's not even just that, but people and corporations buying up houses for the sol…

The problem is a lot of people that want to purchase a home know it’s a scam and the owners of homes want to perpetuate that scam because they bought into it. Guess who has more political clout.

Re: Americans don't believe middle class can afford homes

#123

Post by spacemadness »

bugglebeetle wrote: post #37
burlesona wrote: post #6

We spent 40 years believing that house prices were fine because the debt load didn't matter because interest rates would go down forever. Prices are based on the seller extracting the maximum ability to pay from the buyer, so payments were effectively fixed, and every drop in interest rates was perfectly offset by an increase in the purchase price. Then we hit interest zero, there was nowhere left to go. Now we're fi…

> We're going to have to have a cultural shift towards housing as shelter, not investment. Good luck with that one. We’ve been dealing with this since the 70s when Prop 13 passed in California. The primary responses have been to vilify the homeless for their own plight and funnel billions into “affordable housing schemes” that are little more than graft engines for local politicians.

Many fellow Bay Area Californians apparently like to sit back and watch their cities crumble into a neoliberal hellscape as long as its profitable to them. Folks in Berkeley pretending they’re progressive while fighting housing initiatives for instance. It’s becoming a nightmare fueled by pure greed.

Re: Americans don't believe middle class can afford homes

#124

Post by sixstringtheory »

whatindaheck wrote: post #99

I just turned 30. If I can’t afford a house in the next 10 years I’m going to be a lifelong renter. Why get a 30 year mortgage at 40, to only pay it off at 70 and then die in two decades? It feels like the wrong thing to do but…I really don’t know how else to look at it. Sure. I could afford a house today where I grew up. But I’d have to surround myself with the highly undesirable culture (in my opinion) in those pla…

If you pay a mortgage till the day you die, how’s that different than paying rent till you die?

If you can find a home you like more than places you can rent, and the payments are similar enough, seems like it’s still better to get a mortgage.

A mortgage payment can’t increase like rent can and most likely will, forcing you to move every X years if you decide you can find somewhere more affordable.

Of course there are tradeoffs in the other direction, like if you need to move to a distant location for job/family/health, I just don’t think it’s as one-sided as you present it.

Re: Americans don't believe middle class can afford homes

#125

Post by bugglebeetle »

spacemadness wrote: post #123
bugglebeetle wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're going to have to have a cultural shift towards housing as shelter, not investment. Good luck with that one. We’ve been dealing with this since the 70s when Prop 13 passed in California. The primary responses have been to vilify the homeless for their own plight and funnel billions into “affordable housing schemes” that are little more than graft engines for local politicians.

Many fellow Bay Area Californians apparently like to sit back and watch their cities crumble into a neoliberal hellscape as long as its profitable to them. Folks in Berkeley pretending they’re progressive while fighting housing initiatives for instance. It’s becoming a nightmare fueled by pure greed.

Socially liberal, fiscally acquisitive.

Re: Americans don't believe middle class can afford homes

#126

Post by bugglebeetle »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #74
burlesona wrote: post #6

We spent 40 years believing that house prices were fine because the debt load didn't matter because interest rates would go down forever. Prices are based on the seller extracting the maximum ability to pay from the buyer, so payments were effectively fixed, and every drop in interest rates was perfectly offset by an increase in the purchase price. Then we hit interest zero, there was nowhere left to go. Now we're fi…

> We're going to have to have a cultural shift towards housing as shelter, not investment. I've been saying this for years. Real estate investing is an absolute cancer on society. It is utterly unreal to me that people think their house should go up in value over time higher than the rate of inflation without doing any improvements. But it's not even just that, but people and corporations buying up houses for the sol…

> Real estate investing is an absolute cancer on society.

Yes, so much so that Adam Smith himself described real estate speculators and landlords as destructive parasites, whose power and influence should be diminished at all costs. So much for that part of his philosophy, though…

Re: Americans don't believe middle class can afford homes

#127

Post by bugglebeetle »

financypants wrote: post #118
jemmyw wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with this stance. Among my peer group a couple of folks own a second property they rent out and the "if we didn't where would our tenant live?" vibe is bizarre. They'd live in a house, maybe even being able to afford the one you rent to them.

Is this landlord savior complex common? I’ve never come across it. It’s a silly perspective even at face value.

It’s how liberals resolve the cognitive dissonance of getting someone poorer than them to pay for their mortgage, without seeing themselves as greedy or parasitic.

Re: Americans don't believe middle class can afford homes

#128

Post by chmod600 »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #83
chmod600 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubling or even tripling in ten years is not a ridiculous rate of growth.

For a stock, maybe not. But for a house? It is absolutely beyond ridiculous for a house to double in 10 years. Are you kidding me? That's far beyond the rate of inflation. Unless there are significant improvements to the house or the surrounding area, the value of house should not rise faster than inflation, at least not by some significant margin.

"the value of house should not rise faster than inflation, at least not by some significant margin"

What does "should" even mean here?

Re: Americans don't believe middle class can afford homes

#129

Post by rawgabbit »

ta1243 wrote: post #66
dragontamer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't have this, because a huge fraction of household wealth is tied up in people's houses. If you stop protecting them as investment accounts, you nuke the retirement accounts of 100 million people. So the question is if the wealthy can remain wealthy, or if the poor can get houses? I'm sorry, but... as a Catholic the choice is obvious to me. Blessed are the poor, etc. etc. We should favor those who don't have…

> I'm sorry, but... as a Catholic the choice is obvious to me In the UK the 13th largest landowner is the church. If it used its lands to build at average density of Hackney it could house 2.5 million people.

The Catholic Church own land in the UK?

Re: Americans don't believe middle class can afford homes

#130

Post by rawgabbit »

xnx wrote: post #79

How do we make sense of less being spent on mortgage as a percent of income than has been historically? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MDSP If you financed during low rates, you're OK, but if you're trying to buy a house now, you're it is hard?

Instead of buying, people are now renting?
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