Young people have to do their best to survive in an unfavorable macro for the life they have left, and old folks age out eventually (which is the only way they give up power, the power which is needed to make change to improve the macro).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40338619
https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_galloway_how_the_us_is_destr...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-PinTQcuik
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/25/adults-no-children-why-pew-...
A lot of those old folks have children who will inherit their homes.
If you are lucky enough to inherit an unencumbered (or one with a mortgage you can at least afford) residential property you can live in as a young person when your parent(s) pass, that is fantastic luck. Take the win if you can get it. That is not the mean experience, based on the data.
https://www.gao.gov/financial-security-older-americans
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/generational-wealt...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/14/business/economy/wealth-g... | https://archive.today/fpbNK
https://www.deseret.com/business/2024/09/10/millennial-gen-z...
It's fairly likely we won't see any inheritance from him. The 2 of us who can realistically work for a living might make more, but it's not looking likely either of us will ever be able to retire. On the other hand, if I chose the same life, it's plausible I could buy a house eventually, but buying a house in my home town isn't worth the trade of living in my home town.
Primary residence equity is the largest component of wealth in most family estates, ergo maximize efforts and opportunity to protect that wealth. When it’s gone, it’s gone. Good luck.
Is it more likely the trend continues and young people will simply become priced out, or is a correction more likely? If the latter, what are smart people expecting?
>Is it more likely the trend continues and young people will simply become priced out, or is a correction more likely?
As a layman, take this with a huge grain of salt: it depends. By established rules, a major correction should be imminent. In fact, it should have happened one of several times already.
Examples of catalysts include a bond liquidity crisis in late 2019, the flash crash at the start of the COVID pandemic, the Gamestop debacle in early 2021, the collapse of the Chinese real estate market later in 2021, and the US bank collapses of early 2023. There are also others, though several venture into conspiracy theory territory.
In every example I mentioned, unprecedented action was undertaken to prevent a catastrophic event that might have lead to financial contagion across global markets. There will be probably be more. It remains to be seen whether authorities will continue undertaking steps to shore things up when the bubble threatens to pop. (Trump's return to office is an interesting wrinkle; grab another grain of salt, but it's my opinion that the Gamestop thing only got as bad as it did because the regulatory regime under his tenure was asleep at the wheel.)
It should be noted that a correction doesn't necessarily lead to affordability if purchasing power simply continues falling or remains stagnant, as a result of a weaker job market. There are people who believe that sellers will simply refuse to drop residential real estates prices, as they have with commercial properties. Consolidation of ownership under large entities - as we've already seen to some extent - would allow owners to simply squat on properties, perhaps renting then out. Who knows what happens to the algorithmic rent fixing lawsuits, that might have brought those costs back to Earth a bit, after this year's electoral red wave.
With regards to the labor market, due to structural demographics and labor shortages, it is highly unlikely in my opinion that the job market weakens to the point where housing experiences a crisis from a rapid, sustained increase in homeowners who cannot afford their mortgage payments.
https://www.voronoiapp.com/demographics/Over-Half-of-Househo... ("Over Half of Households in the U.S. Don't Have Kids")
https://www.fanniemae.com/research-and-insights/perspectives... ("U.S. Housing Shortage: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once")
https://www.fanniemae.com/media/45106/display ("Fannie Mae: The U.S. Housing Shortage from a Local Perspective")
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace/the-housing-se... ("APM Marketplace: The housing sector droops under a labor shortage and price hikes")
https://www.businessinsider.com/baby-boomers-housing-wealth-... | https://archive.today/OsNgL ("Business Inside: Baby boomer homeowners got rich from skyrocketing house prices. Now they can't find retirement housing.")
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-18/us-faces-... | https://archive.today/Lyr5t ("Bloomberg: US Faces a Deficit of 6 Million Workers in Less Than a Decade")
https://www.axios.com/2024/06/27/labor-shortage-workforce-ec... ("Axios: Labor shortages are the new normal")
https://www.axios.com/2023/08/27/labor-shortages-air-traffic... ("Axios: Labor shortages plague high-stakes industries")
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/08/us-labor-shortage-older-wor... ("Axios: Why labor shortages could be here to stay")
Home builders, especially with a risk-free 4% return today, do not have any incentive to build “cheap” or “affordable” housing, and as material prices continue to increase because there are 330 million people in America who also want those resources, new builds will have to continue to increase in price and perhaps decrease in quality, depending on how much oil goes into the construction of the house. Home builders, absent clear evidence of industry collusion will simply increase their profitability and will not build ‘starter homes” or “affordable housing”.
We can address the issue in a few ways, for example removing artificially limiting zoning practices, generally speaking, or perhaps the elected government can just pay for cheaper housing, or we can craft good legislation.
But on its own I don’t see a good catalyst right now that will cause home prices to “correct”* without a treatment worse than the disease (economic depression or global war or something else that is otherwise catastrophic).
* The term “correction” is popular but misused. The current price of an asset is always correct. When an asset decreases in price, that decrease is no more correct than a corresponding increase in price.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39037589 ("HN: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds")
https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/nov/why-do-wf... ("Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis: Nearly half of people working from home — who moved to a different state — moved because of housing.")
People argue about paperclip maximizers that don't exist yet while being unaware of the one they live their lives in today.
I'm not from the US, and unfamiliar with the statistics, but in NZ the general narrative has been similar - i.e. "the property price boom was due to a shortage caused by an increase in population and a lack of new stock".
For NZ, this doesn't hold up when looking at actual statistics.
- Prices rose x4 between 1995 and 2021 (inflation adjusted).
- The total number of households to total number of dwellings remained relatively unchanged over the same period.
- The average household size remained steady (i.e. it's not just a case of each dwelling housing more people).
Given the above (and some other evidence), my assumption is that the property boom was not driven by increased demand for homes, but by steadily declining interest rates causing an increase in demand for investments. If this is true, and we are at the end of the era of ever decreasing interest rates, then I believe a correction is entirely possible (it is well underway in NZ - 30% down in 3 years in my city).
I would be interested to know what makes the US situation so different (my feeling is that the situation in most anglo countries is similar - if not so extreme as NZ with regard to price rises and population increases).
https://nlihc.org/resource/gao-releases-report-institutional...
When I said "steadily declining interest rates causing an increase in demand for investments", I wasn't referring to institutional investment only (for residential properties this is almost entirely insignificant in NZ). I was referring to the motivations of all purchasers.
Nobody was paying the average of NZD1M for just a home - they were making an investment with future capital gains in mind (as well as getting a home). Now that credit is no longer cheap those capital gains are less than assured - even negative. So a correction is occurring. The correction has not been caused by a drop in demand for homes/places to live.
The solution is already known, as it has been executed successfully in many places, including Singapore, the UK[2], and the Soviet Union: the government builds units directly and either sells or rents them according to affordability rather than cost. This will destroy housing as an investment, which would certainly have knock-on effects, but in terms of solving the problem at hand - "Are there enough places for people to live?" - it's adequate. Chalk up any resulting difficulties as a redistribution of the externalities of letting the problem fester for so long.
>With regards to the labor market, due to structural demographics and labor shortages, it is highly unlikely in my opinion that the job market weakens to the point where housing experiences a crisis from a rapid, sustained increase in homeowners who cannot afford their mortgage payments.
Please see GP for examples of situations where just that exact scenario happened (China, relevant because of the potential for financial contagion) or almost happened (the rest). It's unwise to bet the labor market on the ability of officials to pull novel remedies out of thin air every time a systemic threat appears.
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10511482.2024.2...
So I wouldn't expect a correction until the US is unable to borrow more money or defaults on its debt.
Much like climate change it will already be too late by the time young people have the power to change it. So I'm not surprised many of them have sort of checked out from the "spouse/house/kids" grift/grind
So while it is a financial asset, the cost is still tied to the cost of physically constructing the thing.
This line of thinking is commonly repeated, but it fails to take into account the old “location, location, location” thing. If you bought a house that was once in the middle of farmland 30+ years ago but now that house is on (let’s say) two acres of land in the middle of a coveted suburb of a large city where the average house sits on .2 acres, why _wouldn’t_ that house (or more accurately, the land) have appreciated greatly in value?
A LOT of these houses that “boomers” bought were once out in the boonies, and now those places are desirable, developed areas.
Hedge funds and other corporations should be disallowed from purchasing single family homes. Period.
It is time for people to accept that if they want affordable housing they should look at some lesser developed areas in the country. Otherwise it’s pay to play.
solar and starlink keep on improving. i continue to be surprised remote work communities arent commonly developing in scenic, non-traditional locations. it seems idealistic, but makes a lot of sense on paper
Cheaper housing is available if people are willing to move to less densely populated areas.
At the end of the day, housing is all about supply and demand. Like most other things in life. There is not enough supply in the areas where people want to live. And no country has been able to figure out a solution for that problem.
Minor nit, the "solution" is well known, it's to increase supply of housing by removing zoning regulations and letting the increase in demand pull more supply out of the market. It's just not politically popular, everyone is for it in the abstract but campaign against multifamily homes being constructed in their backyard. Basically, we know how to build homes but do not know how to convince people that neighbors who can't afford McMansions are still desirable neighbors.
It's a game of chicken. The people who live in these areas and expect to be served without complaint either acquiesce to density and lower property values, or risk (occasionally fiery) demonstrations against the unfair and unworkable situation. Their goal is to keep the game running, so that everyone else doesn't decide on one or the other end state. Essentially, "Highly desirable areas that are too expensive for low/middle-income workers," is a transition state.
Also, less desirable areas are not necessarily constructed to be any more functional or sustainable, so why should we promote that? Areas that are "less desirable" in my city are swathes of oversized, copy-pasted houses massively spaced apart with near zero amenities. 100% car dependent. Near-dystopian land use, really. We don't need more of that. Instead, I'd much rather take amore sustainable approach to housing across the board.