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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

House prices were also much lower back then, but that only proves (what I assume is) your point - we can't view the past with rose tinted glasses.

The American Dream was always aspirational and took grit and effort and was never attainable for 15-30% of the country due to their skin color or ethnic origins until precedent against redlining took hold by the 1980s.

IMO, I'm fine with us keeping high interest rates if it forces a rebalancing of prices long term.

It's not like low interest rates would help affordability anyhow, as it's only us white collar workers in high paying fields like Tech, Finance, etc that have the dry powder to execute on purchases.

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> IMO, I'm fine with us keeping high interest rates if it forces a rebalancing of prices long term.

House prices are still sticky and high interest rates haven't rebalanced anything.

Houses are 50%+ less affordable on a month-to-month basis, and housing prices are stable or increasing. If you use critical thinking, it's obvious that inflation is still present and interest rates are masking the inflation. If rates decrease even slightly (Which will ultimately be required due to the ticking time bomb of the government defaulting on the debt and banking system collapse) prices are going to skyrocket.

The real problem is that we printed trillions of dollars. That has to come from somewhere no matter how much you fiddle with the interest rates. And that "somewhere" is directly out of the pockets of the middle class.

> it's only us white collar workers in high paying fields like Tech, Finance, etc that have the dry powder to execute on purchases

With inflation, layoffs, and lack of union representation, I suspect software engineering median salaries outside major hubs to stagnate rapidly.

I agree that higher interest is a worthwhile trade-off if actual prices come down, but to your last point, don't low interest rates benefit some marginal buyers by (1) lowering the monthly payment and (2) making it more appealing to put minimum down?

Granted, even minimum down is out of reach for too many people, but I feel like "if only we could afford the down payment, we could definitely afford the mortgage..." is a relatively common lament. And sometimes those lamenters don't realize you can/should put down 5% instead of 5-20%, circumstances permitting.

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