betelgeuse [comrade/them]

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Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: May 15th, 2022
  • betelgeuse [comrade/them]@hexbear.nettoPersonal Finance@lemmy.ml•Do you think we will ever have affordable housing again in our lifetime?English
    71·
    11 months ago

    I was looking at the numbers up until about May/June of this year. What drove housing prices down before doesn’t seem to be driving them down now. You plentiful construction, relative to now. Construction workers haven’t recovered from 2008. There is still a running shortage of construction workers.

    There is also a COVID backlog of started but not finished homes. Because supply chains were backed up. The cost of soft lumber, sheet goods, and milling are all near all-time highs. Once these homes start hitting the market, supply will go up and maybe prices will go down a little bit, but not 10-years-ago-low

    If commercial real estate crashes then some of those investors might have to unload their residential assets to offset losses. That’s about the only scenario I can see where we get a sudden flood of supply.

    Defaults on residential is still pretty low. Credit defaults are climbing but not outside of 1 std deviation, yet. Lease defaults are low. So with restricted supply, few being built, fewer workers, more expensive materials, and everyone paying their loans, I can’t see a sudden crash anytime soon. Also it doesn’t look like mortgage fraud (people lying about their identity or their worth) is particularly high either. Though that stat is much harder to track.

    IMO housing prices will go up before the end of the year.

    I think housing costs will stay high and the next “innovation” will be disposable housing or something vile. That’ll be the only way you can afford to own something. You buy a house you throw away in 10 years.