We've collectively destroyed this concept for the next generation of young people and we need to desperately course correct.
Sorry, turns out it's economically way more important for the richest two dozen people in the world to turn all of our collective resources into computer programs that will tell them how special and cool and inventive and totally not "the man" they are. Anything that gets in the way of that must be destroyed.
There are bad actors in all of these (banks caused the financial crisis and agents are probably paid more than they're worth for $1M+ houses in CA), but the biggest root cause that's missing from your comment is NIMBYs blocking new development almost everywhere.
Instead I am seeing developers who would rather build an upper-middle class neighborhood, not a starter home one, because they can get a much larger profit for only a little more effort/material-cost.
I suppose when they are finally unable to sell them they'll start addressing starter homes. I have no idea who could still be buying all of these though. (Perhaps people leaving CA like I did after retiring — they're not going to like the property tax rate though.)
Expecting starter homes to be a category of real estate that is newly built seems naive. Starter homes are some combination of older, smaller, bad location which makes them more affordable. Why wouldn't real estate developers satisfy the demand at the high end before moving down market? Seems like the easiest way to turn a profit to me. Rational actors etc
So in the long run, I’d expect that developers are really funneling money into the lower class by overbuilding upper class housing, when they eat the losses on their poor planning.
I’m also fairly positive a 30-year old upper middle class home makes for a fairly good starter home
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/private-investment-in-art...
It was everyday people. Not the 1%.
Get out of the cities...
Not to mention, it's more inefficient to sprawl.
Customer support, sales, accounting, HR, IT, etc., all don't need to go into the office most of the time. Why force them? It also opens up the job market to a larger pool, cuts health care and child care cost, insurance, etc.
This is a terrible public policy if it's the plan. And while I think selfishly it might be better for individuals if they did, I don't think it's actually helping anyone. Cities used to be a place where you made a life for yourself and could earn more and innovate more than you could in rural/suburban areas. Now it's a luxury to live in one and that doesn't bode well for the future of the country.
You don't need to live in the city to earn more and innovate.
Warren Buffet didn't move to Wall Street and he did ok...
I'd rather be a big fish in a small pond.
Canada is seeing that right now where so many people from big cities flooded small towns. All that has happened is something to the tune of 200% appreciation in small housing prices over the last decade with almost no appreciation in wages. It's crushed housing for the smaller towns and the individuals that lived there. It's truly just a kick the can down the road approach.
We were discussing "one crucial factor in the city’s creative energy: cheap rents".
Apparently we now need to discuss another crucial factor notably absent in small towns: "density of and proximity to other creative types"
If people can effectively speculate on something in a leveraged high liquidity environment, they will, and prices will go up. Look at the terrifyingly overbuilt real estate in China with pricing comparable to NYC or London and huge vacancy rates.