And yet it not very long ago it was feasible for a single income earner on minimum wage to not only be able to afford a home, but do so while supporting a family.
You’re correct, but at the same time, buying a house was still a very expensive back then as well. It was major purchase for most people, just not to the same extant relative to today.
So what has ballooned in price to make that out of reach for the vast majority of people? The land, materials, skilled labor, permits, or the house itself due to it being used as an investment?
All of the above, but also, by far the single biggest reason why house prices have gone up is because we haven’t been building enough houses to meet demand. If you look up the US housing inventory over time, you’ll basically see that it has basically collapsed since the great recession to near all time lows. In the meantime, this country’s population has grown quite a bit since then, we’ve added well over 20 million people since 2010. So there you have it, that’s the root cause. If we built houses as the same rates as we have in decades past, we would be an experiencing a housing boom right now reverse the current seller’s market into a buyer’s market.
There are many viable houses sitting vacant because the landlords would rather wait for someone that can afford the absurdly high rent than risk lowering the market value of rent for their other properties.
It’s actually more nuanced than that. The majority of the houses that are vacant are either seasonal houses in states like Maine, Florida, or West Virginia or they’re undergoing renovations (source). There is still a decent portion that are being held as investments, but the number of actually vacant units are smaller than a lot of people think. As for the ones that being held for investment, it’s not your mom and pop landlords who are doing that, it’s massive corporations like Blackrock or JP Morgan Chase who actually have the means to sit on empty properties, pay the taxes, and play long manipulative game.
If the first person in line to a concert purchases every ticket then resells them for 10x the cost the solution is not “make more tickets available”. The scalper will just buy them as well
If you want to make the argument that corporations should be banned or greatly limited to buying residential housing, then I agree with you. However, that is a different discussion than saying that rent is inherently bad.
You’re correct, but at the same time, buying a house was still a very expensive back then as well. It was major purchase for most people, just not to the same extant relative to today.
All of the above, but also, by far the single biggest reason why house prices have gone up is because we haven’t been building enough houses to meet demand. If you look up the US housing inventory over time, you’ll basically see that it has basically collapsed since the great recession to near all time lows. In the meantime, this country’s population has grown quite a bit since then, we’ve added well over 20 million people since 2010. So there you have it, that’s the root cause. If we built houses as the same rates as we have in decades past, we would be an experiencing a housing boom right now reverse the current seller’s market into a buyer’s market.
It’s actually more nuanced than that. The majority of the houses that are vacant are either seasonal houses in states like Maine, Florida, or West Virginia or they’re undergoing renovations (source). There is still a decent portion that are being held as investments, but the number of actually vacant units are smaller than a lot of people think. As for the ones that being held for investment, it’s not your mom and pop landlords who are doing that, it’s massive corporations like Blackrock or JP Morgan Chase who actually have the means to sit on empty properties, pay the taxes, and play long manipulative game.
If you want to make the argument that corporations should be banned or greatly limited to buying residential housing, then I agree with you. However, that is a different discussion than saying that rent is inherently bad.