Too Many Vacant Lots, Not Enough Housing: The U.S. Real-Estate Puzzle
wsj.com
wsj.com
They’re going to drag down the next two or three generations with their idiocy.
When it comes to money, we manage to miss the application problem. The classic "people don't want a drill, they want a hole."
I don't want $n,000,000 net worth at age 60. I want to be assured I will have food, housing, and health care. Maybe what we need is a system where, instead of paying out Social Security in dollars, you get a ticket to a subsidized retirement community.
Then you eliminate the moral hazard where if you let the stock or real estate markets fail, allowing defective assets to fail, Grandpa starves.
That... doesn't really help anything.
> Then you eliminate the moral hazard where if you let the stock or real estate markets fail, allowing defective assets to fail, Grandpa starves.
Except it doesn't. If Grandpa qualifies for social security (not everyone does) and if the benefits are sufficient to pay for necessities, ticket vs. dollars doesn't matter: stock or real estate collapse doesn’t causs starvation, because sociak security covers it. (In reality, its already a mix of dollars and tickets, since social security is dollars but medicare is more like a ticket.)
OTOH, if as is generally the case now, the benefits are too low, distributing them via a subsidy for inadequate minimal support doesn’t relieve that problem any more than the dollars did.
If done right, it might produce more services than just giving people bags of dollars and expecting them to fight over available retirement home space.
Boomer and earlier generations have been outnumbered in actual voting by Gen X and later generations since 2018.
Of course, the majority of both Gen X and Millenials are also homeowners, and they are even less likely than Boomers to have pensions or strong non-housing retirement savings, so...
Or it'll last forever because when non baby boomers buy those houses, their entire retirement/net worth will be based on the same system and they will vote the same way.
First buy the land. I didn't even use a real estate agent. Seller and I figured out the forms ourselves and went to a title company to do the deed and make sure everything was correct.
Next sign a contract with a builder, get financing for the (detailed) contract, and build the house. The bank will inspect the house every time they give the builder money to make sure you and the bank are getting what you're paying for.
Edit: actually other financing arrangements are more common, since most people can't afford or don't want to buy the land outright then finance construction. Usually you package the land loan and construction under the same mortgage which takes more up front work.
[0] Searching for the right word here. Simple doesn't quite fit because construction is a complex industry and it is easy to over pay. The more you know and the more you can be involved in the process the better the outcome will be.