> It's do-able, but the housing crisis needs to be resolved.
Why? Almost everywhere a majority of people (and certainly the majority of voters) are already invested in housing and do not want their investment to loose value.
> Specifically, both house prices and interest need to go down heavily. Sadly, they used higher interest to try to lower prices, and that didn't really bring prices down.
People are more willing to spend an ever-growing share of their dual-incomes on housing, which drives housing prices modulo interest. So interest has no actual effect on housing affordability, since it doesn't influence how much people are willing to spend. If you lower interest, prices are simply going to rise such that people spend the same % of their income on housing. If you increase interest, prices will (eventually, slowly, since this is a seller-dominated market) fall to match.
> More supply isn't helping much either, as there is no diversity of supply, and builds aren't undercutting the market yet.
New builds will never be cheaper than existing housing stock. Low-cost new housing is a mirage; new housing is premium by construction.
It doesn't help that new builds seem to focus on the high end for housing (because that is where the profit is). If we keep building more expensive housing it shouldn't be surprising that the average cost of housing increases.
No, what doesn't help is that the new builds aren't nearly enough. If they were quantitatively sufficient, it wouldn't matter if they all targeted the high end, because the people moving in to it would be pulling demand away from other existing units, with a ripple effect across the whole market.
What many people don't realize is how badly the total housing inventory has fallen behind what is needed for the population since the Great Recession.
It absolutely helps - people who move to high end housing free up other, cheaper apartments (recent economic paper has clearly showed that this works, you can easily find it)
People buying their first house almost never got new housing - ever. They’d buy a starter home, which was older, needed some work, etc.
A big issue here is expectations - people are complaining because they can’t buy their own standalone house in a good neighborhood right next to work - while work is in a high demand, high pay area.
Also, well paid work is centralizing, so so the gradient is getting steeper (or was, pre-remote work).
Guess what, that was never the norm!
But a lot of people did buy in what were at the time low demand, high supply, areas that later became high demand areas! Like early Los Angeles.
Also, everything is getting more expensive relative to ‘hour worked’ because of centralization of capital, and more work force participation.
Why? Almost everywhere a majority of people (and certainly the majority of voters) are already invested in housing and do not want their investment to loose value.
> Specifically, both house prices and interest need to go down heavily. Sadly, they used higher interest to try to lower prices, and that didn't really bring prices down.
People are more willing to spend an ever-growing share of their dual-incomes on housing, which drives housing prices modulo interest. So interest has no actual effect on housing affordability, since it doesn't influence how much people are willing to spend. If you lower interest, prices are simply going to rise such that people spend the same % of their income on housing. If you increase interest, prices will (eventually, slowly, since this is a seller-dominated market) fall to match.
> More supply isn't helping much either, as there is no diversity of supply, and builds aren't undercutting the market yet.
New builds will never be cheaper than existing housing stock. Low-cost new housing is a mirage; new housing is premium by construction.