It is definitely doable in the US, and I would imagine most Western countries as well. My knowledge outside of them isn't current enough to speak for the rest.
Specifically, both house prices and interest need to go down heavily. Sadly, they used higher interest to try to lower prices, and that didn't really bring prices down.
More supply isn't helping much either, as there is no diversity of supply, and builds aren't undercutting the market yet.
Why? Almost everywhere a majority of people (and certainly the majority of voters) are already invested in housing and do not want their investment to loose value.
> Specifically, both house prices and interest need to go down heavily. Sadly, they used higher interest to try to lower prices, and that didn't really bring prices down.
People are more willing to spend an ever-growing share of their dual-incomes on housing, which drives housing prices modulo interest. So interest has no actual effect on housing affordability, since it doesn't influence how much people are willing to spend. If you lower interest, prices are simply going to rise such that people spend the same % of their income on housing. If you increase interest, prices will (eventually, slowly, since this is a seller-dominated market) fall to match.
> More supply isn't helping much either, as there is no diversity of supply, and builds aren't undercutting the market yet.
New builds will never be cheaper than existing housing stock. Low-cost new housing is a mirage; new housing is premium by construction.
A big issue here is expectations - people are complaining because they can’t buy their own standalone house in a good neighborhood right next to work - while work is in a high demand, high pay area.
Also, well paid work is centralizing, so so the gradient is getting steeper (or was, pre-remote work).
Guess what, that was never the norm!
But a lot of people did buy in what were at the time low demand, high supply, areas that later became high demand areas! Like early Los Angeles.
Also, everything is getting more expensive relative to ‘hour worked’ because of centralization of capital, and more work force participation.
What many people don't realize is how badly the total housing inventory has fallen behind what is needed for the population since the Great Recession.
That may “fix” home prices but not the important thing to most, monthly payments.
Where I live, the local government decided to remove zoning thereby allowing more varieties of properties.
Price comes down in the sense that the missing middle provide options between condo to townhouse to detached
As a layperson I have a feeling that's not going to happen. The working class has too much wealth tied up in their homes because US society and the government have encouraged people to treat it as a store of wealth instead of a box that shields them from the weather. People talk constantly about "getting on the property ladder", "buying more land because they aren't making more of it", "having a landlord side hustle", etc. A house is a lot more tangible than stocks so people without knowledge of finance feel much better about investing in one (understandably so - also forget about Social Security). Combine this with associated government tax subsidies and mortgage underwriting programs and you've basically created a situation where home prices can't do anything but go up.
Look at the amortization table for the proposed 50 year mortgage: borrowers wouldn't be making a dent in the principal for a good 10 or 15 years. The underlying assumption here is that people would make money via home price appreciation, i.e. speculation, not from creating an actual store of value. We already kicked this can once when the 30-year mortgage became a thing 60 years ago.
Of course one can't draw the current trend line into infinity because of affordability but I highly doubt it'll go down appreciably. I also don't know enough to have a solution to this problem - any ideas?
that's because "more supply" hasn't been anywhere close to enough supply, judging by historical housing needs by population age demographics. More supply is absolutely the key thing missing, but it needs to be a lot more supply.
https://www.axios.com/2023/12/16/housing-market-why-homes-ex...
Not all of those empty houses will be places people want to live in, but I'd bet a fair amount of them are perfectly fine places people would love to call home if they could only afford them.
How would the stay-at-home parent get a bad deal here?