The U.S. Housing Boom Is Coming to an End, Starting in Dallas

The bank is also privately owned and not by any government. I learned this because a technology director at the Dallas bank works with me in our side job.

Full employment should be a burden taken on by elected representatives in congress or the executive.

The dual mandate asks a fish to make sure the boat flies.

1. Every idiotic meme about how goods X, Y, and Z have more than doubled in price while [real] wages haven't. I'm torn between thinking the meme creators are completely clueless or epic trolls.

2. There is a substantial linkage between nominal wages and nominal inflation, especially for limited, competitively bid goods (like housing).

Looking at median house prices https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA , it looks like they went up slightly more than median wages (2.85x vs 2.5x in 30 years), which I think is likely more than explained by today's lower than historical norms interest rates (increasing affordability). https://www.macrotrends.net/2604/30-year-fixed-mortgage-rate...

Mortgage rates over 10% in 1988 and under 5% today means that 1988 houses were less affordable on 1988 wages than 2018 houses are on 2018 wages.

Health Care and Other Benefit Costs

As nonwage benefits are beefed up by U.S. employers, such as expanded paid leave and performance-based bonuses, fewer dollars in their total rewards budgets may be available for salary increases.

But health care benefit costs are a prime suspect.

"The rise of health-care costs is the most important reason wages have not increased more for U.S. workers," Nobel economics laureate Edward C. Prescott and Lee E. Ohanian of the Center for the Advanced Study in Economic Efficiency at Arizona State University, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 2018. "The extra compensation is swallowed up by health-insurance premiums."

A new white paper provides evidence that "the rising values of fringe benefits, such as health insurance, may have offset potential wage gains for middle-income workers" despite falling unemployment. The authors, Jeff Larrimore of the Federal Reserve and David Splinter of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, contend that when factoring in the cost of health coverage, "total compensation may be higher than previously believed, also implying that employer-sponsored health insurance benefits may represent a larger share of employee compensation."

Economics columnist Robert J. Samuelson wrote in the Washington Post:

    The problem is plain: We'd all like both cheaper health insurance and higher wages, but the way the health-care system is operating today, we might get neither. As insurance premiums get more expensive, inflation-adjusted ("real") wages will continue to stagnate or decline.

As a "DI3K", a house makes a ton of sense. We need space, we need a place for five people to live, and we need a house in an area where the schools are going to be great for the next 18 years. We don't need mobility as far as relocation goes, because it just doesn't make sense in our life choices right now. I mean, it's certainly possible, but I've seen second-hand what moving from town to town every 6 months does to a 7-year-old.

I'm not mad that our property (as far from the coasts as possible) has increased in value ~$50-80K, either.

Don't forget shorter mortgage commitments are available (And a much better deal when you can swing them).

Edit: randomly chosen example, I have nothing to do with the seller here: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2089463438_zpid/

If the house isn't already wired for CAT5, wireless makes sense.

Perhaps more importantly, wireless still connects to a wired router which needs to be somewhere in the house (unless we switch to more long-distance wireless, which I don't see happening anytime soon without both technical and political advances).

In my house, a major upgrade we did was install 3 additional access points, and we still have dead zones in one area because there was no Ethernet port (it would be 2, but one was a bedroom, so we ran a wire along the wall. Ugly, but bedrooms need wifi).

You are certainly correct that most people won't need Ethernet ports in every room

And while wifi is pretty good now, people still hit issues and plug in their various TV devices and game consoles.

I've actually heard/read of a few boutique style agencies taking this approach in LA. Will dig around the history and update this post if I find the blog post talking about it.

Does the buyer's agent in the US handle the role of a conveyancer in sorting paperwork of the final sale?

For any piece of real estate, there's basically a price at which it would sell itself. People hire a real estate agent because they believe the agent will work to sell for more than that base price.

In my experience, both real estate agents represent the buyer as it is the buyer who is supplying the money. Your closing attorney is the professional more likely to represent your interests.