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Housing is so utterly fucked, it's almost incomprehensible to me how to fix it. The degree to which it creates a class of haves and have nots boggles the mind.
Putting aside how turbo-fucked the current situation is with historic, never before charted levels of unaffordability, even in normal times, the struggle to save up a down payment faster than housing prices are rising is real. My whole 20's and 30's was spent in an effort to save 20% down for a property, scrimping, saving, budgeting, getting set back, while my goal moved further away from me faster than I could catch up. This as a single man, with no family, making a generous middle class salary, and being rather frugal.
And yet, as soon as I finally got close enough to make one last valiant push and leap across the finish line in 2021, thank god, things went and got so bad, if I hadn't, it's unlikely I ever would have bought a home. I'm not sure I'd want to become a first time home owner in my 50s!
But, thanks to the benefits of a 30y fixed rate mortgage, a true luxury that exist almost singly in the United States, my largest expense is now greatly shielded from inflation. My mortgage has crept up $200/month for taxes and insurance, but equivalent rent where I used to live has shot up closer to $1000! And that's money right back into my pocket I'm now investing, getting even further ahead. The degree to which this single decision secured not just my future, but my ability to contribute to the future of my children, cannot possibly be overstated.
The worst part is, almost every solution I hear about is worse than things currently are. The complete and total failures of rent control are well known. Subsidized housing annihilates cohesive pro-social communities faster than actual warfare. Building more housing seems like the most obvious solution, and yet economic incentives have basically gutted the economic viability of constructing starter homes. And unfucking that quagmire, where the cost of land, materials, permitting and labor strongly incentives only "luxury" homes to be built and sold seems as likely to run into the same perverse incentives that causes rent controls to always fail. It's like the only way out is for an apocalyptic reset, and to revert back to living in cheap, affordable mud huts on whatever land your tribe can secure through 3rd world brutal violence.
Tangent to all the point missing nit pickers who will chime in "You don't have to put 20% down!" I know. But the fees associated with all the other loan packages that allow you to not put 20% down seriously eat into the benefits of buying a house. Depending on the terms of your mortgage, the PMI may be something you are stuck with even after you've built up 20% equity in the home. It may require refinancing to rid yourself of, which in this rate environment is utterly retarded. To say nothing of how having that 20% down gives you a leg up in having your offer considered, probably second only to all cash offers. In a competitive environment it's a real asset.
Building housing is actually doable. Sure, starter homes will have to go for more than in previous generations, but you can still build them. Relaxing zoning restrictions also brings prices down.
Now that being said, there are places like New York which just don’t have much to be done, due to density.
Some of that is also due to changing standards of living: Manhattan has fewer residents now than a century ago.
Sure, but ‘let’s all be much poorer’ is a tough sell.
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There are a tons of programs that are 0% down or 3% down for first time home buyers that have low cap PMI/no PMI or get rid of it at some equity goal like 20% paid off etc.... The fees don't even factor in. The saving 20% thing hasn't been true for almost 40 years. It doesn't make your offer more attractive than a higher one at 3%. Not in any way that matters, cash sales are nice because you can wave all kinds of stuff and get it done fast, anything else is mostly the same with some caveats. I'm glad you were able to get in when you did, but clearly you wanted to buy earlier, and you easily could have, even faster if you had done it with a partner. I didn't scrimp and save, I bought my first property in foreclosure with 5% down that I put on a credit card and they handed me a 15k check at closing.
Most people in the USA own houses, around 2/3rds, so is 1/3 of the population renting really a crisis? It is historically average for modern times.
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Well, I suppose the government financing public housing projects again would at least alleviate the problem.
Then you're just paying through your taxes, and you're getting far less for your money.
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Not if they become highly affordable crime-ridden dysfunctional wrecks that no one wants to live in, which already exist. The chances of these being remotely safe in any kind of current-day city is virtually nonexistent at this point.
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I think it’s actually easy to fix housing. Voters don’t want to in blue states where I am guessing you are located.
You never directly build affordable housing. You build new high end housing. The old high end housing depreciates and in 20 years is affordable.
The only hard thing now is addiction to fiscal policy which drove up inflation and private investments (rates). Which curtails new construction where they let you build.
The other, non-governmental, issue is the Blue Tribe's desire to centralize everything in cities. As you concentrate more and more economic activity into a small space, the housing located near it naturally becomes more desirable and thus more expensive.
Even then you need significant geographical barriers limiting growth. Only a few places are Tokyo dense.
The thing that most surprised me about visiting Tokyo is that there are (tiny footprint) freestanding single family homes within walking distance of even the densest areas. It isn't all apartment blocks as far as the eye can see, although those are there.
Yes, Tokyo and Paris prove that you don't have to build 50-storey condos to reach the required density.
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