Over the past year, frustration over the cost of housing in the United States has become a centerpiece of the presidential race, a focus of government policy and an agonizing nationwide problem.
Conor Dougherty, who covers housing for The Times, explains why the origin of the housing crisis is what makes it so hard to solve.
Guest: Conor Dougherty (https://www.nytimes.com/by/conor-dougherty) , who covers housing for The New York Times.
Background reading:
• Why too few homes (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/22/briefing/us-housing-crisis.html) get built in the United States.
• A decade ago, Kalamazoo — and all of Michigan — had too many houses. Now it has a shortage (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/22/business/economy/housing-crisis-kalamazoo-michigan.html) .
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We are fortunate to have purchased a home in 2018 at a low interest rate (a smallish three story townhome) with the plan for it to be our starter home. I was pregnant. Then the pandemic hit and housing is now out of control. We’d love to buy a bigger family home but now it feels impossible. A good home in our area cost “only” about $900k five years ago…but now that same home is $1.6 to $2m. Could we technically qualify for it? Sure. But we’d be saddled with debt and have no money for life’s small luxuries and we don’t want to do that to ourselves. We’re in “golden handcuffs” as they say and our starter home is now perhaps our forever home. I know it could be far worse so I’m grateful for what we have. But us not being able to move on/up also means others can’t ever buy our current home. It’s all interconnected and MOST of us are screwed.
This is woefully incomplete. You say the ‘disease’ is the GFC, but you’re not telling us HOW the GFC started. What actually CAUSED the so-called ‘disease?’ This goes back longer. Think the Reagan years.1980s. Second Thought got it right. Everyone should check out their videos, starting with Why Housing Keeps Getting More Expensive.
I wonder if there’s a place where immigrant’s life could be easy.
I understand that market forces such as interest rates / supply and demand / corporate interventions…etc. are primarily factors in the escalation of housing prices. But Jesus H., every wine mom I know watches HGTV and tries flipping properties. I’m positive that trend alone has put enormous pressure on prices. Wine mom 1 buys a small house at fair market value, she slaps a coat of paint on it and sells it for 20 percent more to wine mom 2 who does a little landscaping and sells it for 20 percent more to wine mom 3. On and on it goes. This is happening every day everywhere people want to live. Housing prices going up 80 percent is inevitable.
Started with hedge funds but didn’t end with hedge funds