Plenty of women have to work, to avoid their family having to take up residence in a cardboard box. Have you seen the prices of refrigerator boxes these days?
Plenty of women have to work, to avoid their family having to take up residence in a cardboard box. Have you seen the prices of refrigerator boxes these days?
Yes, we have been trying for over two years to scrape our pennies together and buy a refrigerator box of our very own, so we can stop getting sucked dry by the rental market. The real estate crash cannot come soon enough. And when the REI crowd gets hosed and cries and demands bailouts... you can bet a lot of us will be laughing our asses off, setting off fireworks, and hosting all-night bonfires with beer and hotdogs. Should be a national holiday.
So far, every single "help low-income people own a home" program has been a subsidy for sellers, not buyers. It all just allows the prices to keep going up, without increasing anyone's income. Except maybe real estate agents and loan officers.
No one wants to deal with the supply problem for real. Even if they offered down payment assistance to first time buyers, it won't keep pace with price increases which are caused by lack of supply. I haven't seen Harris propose anything to deal with this, or I missed it.
I recently saw a chart on that-- from Charles Hugh Smith's site-- showing that the houses-per-people ratio in the US right now is as high as it's ever been.
There are a few ways you could look at that.
1) The numbers are wrong. Once you add in the ??? illegal migrants and subtract the "houses" destroyed by squatters, there really is a supply shortage.
2) The numbers are roughly correct, and the "shortage" is artificial: investors and rich people, looking for a way to shelter their wealth from inflation, are hoarding residential property, either as short term vacation rentals or simply letting things stand empty, counting on the price to keep going up forever.
3) It's a distribution problem. There are plenty of affordable residential properties available-- but not where anybody wants to live. We could solve the "shortage" almost overnight, if places like Baltimore, St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago, etc. engaged in some serious law enforcement and corruption-busting, so that their cities became places worth living again: physical safety and jobs.
Plenty of women have to work, to avoid their family having to take up residence in a cardboard box. Have you seen the prices of refrigerator boxes these days?
Yes, we have been trying for over two years to scrape our pennies together and buy a refrigerator box of our very own, so we can stop getting sucked dry by the rental market. The real estate crash cannot come soon enough. And when the REI crowd gets hosed and cries and demands bailouts... you can bet a lot of us will be laughing our asses off, setting off fireworks, and hosting all-night bonfires with beer and hotdogs. Should be a national holiday.
They'll get their bailouts. Don't kid yourself.
And the real outcome (if not unstated goal) of every program to "make home ownership more affordable" is to raise housing costs.
Something much the same can be said about higher education. And read my comment on banking regulation.
So far, every single "help low-income people own a home" program has been a subsidy for sellers, not buyers. It all just allows the prices to keep going up, without increasing anyone's income. Except maybe real estate agents and loan officers.
No one wants to deal with the supply problem for real. Even if they offered down payment assistance to first time buyers, it won't keep pace with price increases which are caused by lack of supply. I haven't seen Harris propose anything to deal with this, or I missed it.
I recently saw a chart on that-- from Charles Hugh Smith's site-- showing that the houses-per-people ratio in the US right now is as high as it's ever been.
There are a few ways you could look at that.
1) The numbers are wrong. Once you add in the ??? illegal migrants and subtract the "houses" destroyed by squatters, there really is a supply shortage.
2) The numbers are roughly correct, and the "shortage" is artificial: investors and rich people, looking for a way to shelter their wealth from inflation, are hoarding residential property, either as short term vacation rentals or simply letting things stand empty, counting on the price to keep going up forever.
3) It's a distribution problem. There are plenty of affordable residential properties available-- but not where anybody wants to live. We could solve the "shortage" almost overnight, if places like Baltimore, St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago, etc. engaged in some serious law enforcement and corruption-busting, so that their cities became places worth living again: physical safety and jobs.
I lean toward a combination of all three.
And you won't.
Of course.