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Home buyers need 80% more income to buy than 4 years ago

washingtonexaminer.com

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Re: Home buyers need 80% more income to buy than 4 years ago

#41

Post by lostinroutine »

Auracle wrote: post #39
delish wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll try to invoke Cunningham's Law by saying: Housing is close to a perfectly-competitive market. I think the above is true, but I'd welcome counterexamples. So, the way to depress housing prices is to build more houses. _Most_ housing regulations, including making it illegal for people to own four houses, reshuffle the ownership of existing houses, and don't depress their prices. As regards that regulation: if the…

The other way that everyone outside of Canada seems to ignore is get a handle on the demand side of things.

Could you elaborate on Canada's approach? Are you referring to adjustable rate mortgages?

Re: Home buyers need 80% more income to buy than 4 years ago

#42

Post by dragontamer »

rtev wrote: post #11

This appears to be what happens when rich people that don’t need houses buy them anyway as investments. There should be laws preventing a person from owning more than three houses in the United States.

Just build houses, which naturally will cause the price of houses to decline.

Investors are allowed to speculate. But speculation must be risk, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

Re: Home buyers need 80% more income to buy than 4 years ago

#43

Post by aaomidi »

paulddraper wrote: post #19
rtev wrote: post #11

This appears to be what happens when rich people that don’t need houses buy them anyway as investments. There should be laws preventing a person from owning more than three houses in the United States.

So..... Now they have to permanently "rent" them (maybe from a company they have ownership in)? Maybe we should just build more houses.

Don’t buy more than 3 houses?

Or heck, more than 2 should basically be taxed at massive rates. Like, 40-50%.

Re: Home buyers need 80% more income to buy than 4 years ago

#44

Post by aaomidi »

Buttons840 wrote: post #24
delish wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll try to invoke Cunningham's Law by saying: Housing is close to a perfectly-competitive market. I think the above is true, but I'd welcome counterexamples. So, the way to depress housing prices is to build more houses. _Most_ housing regulations, including making it illegal for people to own four houses, reshuffle the ownership of existing houses, and don't depress their prices. As regards that regulation: if the…

This makes sense to me, if 10 families want a place to live and there are 8 places to live, housing prices will trend towards infinity, until people give up and multiple families live together. We need more places to live, at the end of the day there's no way around that. Regulation might help though. If we regulate it so that it's harder to profit from real estate, then people will find other investments instead. Th…

Yes you did miss something.

You missed that it’s 10 families, with 20 houses. With one family owning 18 of them.

Re: Home buyers need 80% more income to buy than 4 years ago

#45

Post by maxerickson »

rtev wrote: post #11

This appears to be what happens when rich people that don’t need houses buy them anyway as investments. There should be laws preventing a person from owning more than three houses in the United States.

Much of the change from 4 years ago would just be interest rates.

The supply of housing was unhealthy then also.

Re: Home buyers need 80% more income to buy than 4 years ago

#46

Post by mock-possum »

> Auto loan debt increased by $12 billion to $1.61 trillion

I really can’t understand how people are so desperate to drive a new car that they’d go into debt to do it. Why would you sign up for years worth of payments on a $15k+ car when you could just buy a used one outright for like $4k, and not have to worry about it?

A house, sure, you then own real estate, you even can borrow money against the value you’ve already paid into your property, and when you’re ready you can sell it, likely for significantly more than you paid. Real estate is such a solid investment.

But a car??

Re: Home buyers need 80% more income to buy than 4 years ago

#47

Post by lotsoweiners »

mock-possum wrote: post #46

> Auto loan debt increased by $12 billion to $1.61 trillion I really can’t understand how people are so desperate to drive a new car that they’d go into debt to do it. Why would you sign up for years worth of payments on a $15k+ car when you could just buy a used one outright for like $4k, and not have to worry about it? A house, sure, you then own real estate, you even can borrow money against the value you’ve alrea…

Honestly I’ve never seen a $4k car that I would consider worth purchasing and driving. I’d be too concerned about reliability and maintenance. Then again I haven’t seen any new cars in the $15k range that I’d consider driving either.

Re: Home buyers need 80% more income to buy than 4 years ago

#48

Post by itake »

rtev wrote: post #11

This appears to be what happens when rich people that don’t need houses buy them anyway as investments. There should be laws preventing a person from owning more than three houses in the United States.

Or when empty nesters refuse to downsize their 4 bedroom house 15 minutes drive to downtown offices.

Re: Home buyers need 80% more income to buy than 4 years ago

#49

Post by fennecs »

paulddraper wrote: post #19
rtev wrote: post #11

This appears to be what happens when rich people that don’t need houses buy them anyway as investments. There should be laws preventing a person from owning more than three houses in the United States.

So..... Now they have to permanently "rent" them (maybe from a company they have ownership in)? Maybe we should just build more houses.

Vast sprawling suburban wastelands with no services is not the solution. Just build houses is easily said but it’s not necessarily where people want to live.

Re: Home buyers need 80% more income to buy than 4 years ago

#50

Post by [deleted] »

amluto wrote: post #22
dukeofdoom wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's easy to say that, until you had to build one for that price. The lot alone and hook up fees, taxes would probably hover around 1/3-1/2 of that price. Then House it self is a lot of labor to construct. Even moving the materials sometimes is very labor intensive. Plumbing, Bathrooms, Lighting, there's a lot that goes into it. Immigrant and cheap manual labor is probably what makes it affordable.

In theory, a lot is worth whatever something built on it is worth minus the cost to build. So the lot should probably be worth less. Hook up fees are often hilariously inflated. Trenching on an empty lot is not very expensive. My point is that, if you remove distortions from a market, prices may go down.

[deleted]
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