It seems like the author is willfully miss-understanding Trudeau's statement.
Value and affordability can be considered independently.
Increasing median income and economic growth both increase affordability, even if housing costs track inflation.
Value and affordability can be considered independently.
Increasing median income and economic growth both increase affordability, even if housing costs track inflation.
Given 1% growth a year that would take close to a lifetime to just halve current home prices per income. It isn't a solution for the people living today.
With a more realistic number of 2% (for the US), you are talking about a 35% reduction in Price/income in 20 years. I think that is a very optimistic case to shoot for socially and politically.
That's doubling in 11 years, thus rising 6.5% per year on average over the long term.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
Over the same time period, the value of existing homes, as measured by the Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index (which measures the price of repeat same home sales) more than doubled.
If you asking why I think it is completely unrealistic to expect a 50% decline on a short timeline, there are tons of reasons. You have to ask why housing prices doubled, and ask how easy or likely those underlying conditions are to reverse.
1) First, US GDP/capita went up by 60% in those 11 years.[1]
2) Similarly, US inflation in those 11 years was 40% [2]
3) US urban population increased by 25 million in those 11 years [3]
4) Construction costs/sqft are up about 90% in those 11 years [4]
5) More generally, Most Americans have 30 year fixed rate mortgages. This means they can and will avoid selling at a loss, so prices are sticky.
These are all factors without "quick fixes". Slow change can happen, but the fundamentals are sticky. If my house burnt down, it would cost $1M in materials and labor to replace.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RC0Q052SBEA
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/985183/size-urban-rural-...
Massive monetary expansion via QE and low interest rates. Resolved by raising interest rates and taxes on wealth holders (and particularly those holding unused or underutilized real estate) to deflate the asset bubble.
Underutilized RE is a red herring.
As long as construction costs remain high, supply remains low, and there are enough buyers that afford the price, you wont see changes.
>Underutilized RE is a red herring.
So you've stated. Please prove it, at the very least showing how RE isn't underutilized (this is going to be difficult, because it is).
You would have to have major declines in the first 4 factors I mentioned. good luck unwinding worker salary, population, cost of materials to that degree.
If the median income increases from 50K to 100K (adjusting for inflation), and houses stay at 500k (adjusting for inflation), they have become more affordable without losing value.
More widgets and stuff produced per worker is the only way to beat inflation. This is the fundamental economic goal of nations which seek prosperity.
For instance McDonalds' CEO makes ~$20 million a year[0] and they paid out $6.6/share with 726M shares[1] to parasite shareholders[2] while the average non-CEO employee makes $25k a year[3].
Since there are 150000 employees working for McDonalds that means lowering the CEO salary to $200k and eliminating shareholder payouts would free up close to $5 billion/year.
If that $5 billion were distributed evenly to all employees they would take in an additional $33k/year, more than doubling their salaries.
Of course all these numbers are estimates and there are caveats but the overall point is there's a lot of money out there that's going to a very few people.
0: https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/financing/mcdonalds... 1: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/shar... 2: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/income-investors-know-mcdonal... 3: https://www.zippia.com/mcdonald-s-careers-7238/salary/