Americans are living through the toughest housing market in a generation and, for some young people, the quintessential dream of owning a home is slipping away.
Mortgage rates surged in recent years, hitting the highest levels in more than two decades last fall. While rates have come down slightly since then, home prices remain painfully elevated and a limited inventory of housing is still failing to keep up with demand. Such conditions mean that housing has become woefully unaffordable.
Falling mortgage rates in recent weeks have helped, but home prices could remain sticky, according to economists. It’s still a cruddy time to be hunting for a home, but it’s even worse for young, first-time buyers who need to save up for a down payment and build up their credit score during a time when Baby Boomers are refusing to part with their big houses.
The situation isn’t a whole lot better for renters, with rents barely coming down from record highs and half of tenants in that market saying they can’t even afford their payments.
The uneasiness over America’s affordability crisis is captured clearly in surveys and polls, but data that outlines the sentiment specifically among young people is limited.
Renting is literally paying for someone else to own a house or apartment or whatever. It guarantees that the landlord will always be able to make a killing by commoditizing a need for shelter. It’s sinister, and no matter how you paint it it remains sinister.
Renting isn’t sinister. You’re paying for a roof over your head without any large up front investment or maintenance costs. But it should be affordable, and owning should also be affordable. Neither are at the moment.
Not just that but we also need better tenant protections and ways to mediate tenant/landlord issues.
For example, a number of states only mandate availability of heat in the winter without any mandate for A/C in the summer.
I’ve had landlords get pussy about portable AC unit exhaust hoses sticking out of the window. That needs to be banned, and AC needs to be mandatory in new rentals (new builds and new leases on existing housing units.)
Aren’t portable AC units very inefficent?
Yes, espically one hose models, bit sometimes that’s all you can use
You’re paying someone else to deal with the bullshit of owning a property. You assume you actually will build wealth owning a house. This just isn’t true for everyone and everywhere.
If the foundation cracks, I can move as a renter and go somewhere else. As an owner, I’d be completely fucked.
If the house is in the way of a hurricane, I can pack up the stuff I care about and not give a shit about what happens to the house or anything else.
If the property value plummets for whatever reason, it just isn’t my problem to deal with.
It’s absurdly silly to think renting is entirely bad.
Renting isn’t bad. Being a landlord is bad.