I know I’m supposed to want it to keep going up as a wealth generator or whatever.
But like… I wouldn’t be able to afford the monthly payments if I bought my house right now and it’s scary. Also none of my friends are buying homes, none of them are even renting full places. Just like renting rooms.
So what are your feelings home owners of lemmy?
You point out the Catch-22 that a lot of people miss on this stuff. They get so fixated on increasing their property values because they want to screw someone over when they finally sell their house…not stopping to think that the same thing is about to happen to them when they go to buy one. Not to mention, higher property values means higher property taxes (in some places, anyway).
Yeah like it’s cool my 200k town home I bought 4 years ago is now selling for 400k (neighbor just sold for that much).
Except that means that the 350k home I was thinking might be a nice upgrade one day, is 700k.
Like I’m way more screwed over now unless I intend to like sell my home then move to the middle of nowhere. All that higher value means is property taxes like you said. But of course renters are the most screwed.
This is precisely why your home price won’t crash. You are locked in and so is everyone else. You literally can’t do better, so selling is a bad move.
I just sold my condo and went back to renting. Best choice ever. Feels great to be free.
If it makes you feel good, I’d say congrats. I’ve never owned a condo and it has different considerations than a home. I sold my first house in March 2021 after I bought our current house in 2020. Both felt like some of the smartest, best times moves. I actually do wish I would have bought a more expensive house in 2020, but we’re likely buying more land in the next 2-5 years. Not holding some kind of property right now (again, idk about condos), feels like leaving stupid money on the table.
I don’t know why you think that’s going to happen. Supply is down and demand is as strong as ever. Policy to make housing more plentiful is woefully lacking.
What’s the mechanism for a housing crash?
Legislation could also force a lot of homes on the market.
Houses and condos should only be available to be owned by individuals. Ban corporate / hedge fund ownership of everything except high density apartments (that aren’t individually owned).
Ban / cap short term rentals.
Add a tax penalty for individuals after X properties. Ex: if you own more than 3 residential properties, you pay extra taxes.
All of these encourage houses to be occupant owned, while still enabling small scale landlords, because we need both.
I personally would love a crash. I sold my small condo last year in an attempt to upgrade to a house due to getting married and needing more room. I was hoping to time the market, but houses are still out of reach for two middle aged professionals with strong careers, if we ever want to retire.
Edit - to illustrate the problem. In San Diego, where I live, depending on the source, the median home is about $1m.
If you take the estimated monthly cost of leading real estate cites, that’s around $7200/mo.
The median household income in San Diego is $83500.
Do the math.
Legislation could also force a lot of homes on the market.
Gonna stop you right there because the rest of your response is fantasy, if legislation can’t be passed.
Whose gonna propose those bills? Who is going to vote on them? Where are they going to pass? Give me reasonable answers to those questions and we can proceed.
I bought in Honolulu in 2020 after owning in Oregon for 6 years. The average sale price is 1.5 million, median is 1.1 million, and the houses are straight up rotten garbage (I grew up in North County San Diego in a construction family, SD has much higher build quality).
There are basically no homes for sale in Honolulu county right now. Just scanned the numbers this AM. Tear downs are going for 600-800k.
A crash wouldnt bother me, but its basically unbelievable to me. Ultimately all that money printed is going to find its way into inflated durable goods, and (ding ding ding) residential property.
Sorry to let you know this brother (or sister or non-gender conforming individual), but selling that condo might have been a fatal mistake. Its not clear to me based on macro economic and ongoing political conditions that housing prices will ever materially go down. Honolulu has a ban and cap on short term rentals. Didn’t do shit. We’ve got more homeless than ever and rents have gone up 30% since. Add onto that losses of structures due to climate related disasters. California had the Tubbs fire (1k homes?) and then the Paradise fire (11k homes). We just had the Lahaina fire. Those homes aren’t getting rebuilt into affordable housing, I promise.
I’ve done the math. There is no reasonable scenario I can see where housing prices go down substantially over the next 20 years. We’re going to be supply side constrained with ever increasing demand. This is a hold/ buy and hold time.
