"Contractors work on the roof of a house under construction at the Norton Commons subdivision in Louisville, Kentucky, US, on Friday, July 1, 2022. With fewer buyers competing, the number of active US listings jumped 18.7% in June from a year earlier, the largest annual increase in data going back to 2017, Realtor.com said in a report."
For all those who’ve been frustrated by the continuing need to rent because of the lack of affordable housing, the near-term future is looking overall at least as bad as the immediate past.
There’s a three-part problem: a vicious demand circle, the economics of building, and investors.
Vicious demand circle
No one need tell you the personal impact of a freakishly disruptive housing market. However, some details about the current dynamics, although it doesn’t immediately solve problems, might help in planning and knowing when to shift back to searching for a house (because, if you can afford the fixed rate payment, you’ll eventually be ahead of rents that keep rising, even if at a slower pace than recently).
The demand and supply issues go back to the Great Recession in 2008. Millions of homes entered foreclosure, credit seized up like a 25-year-old car with a two-year-old oil leak, and the housing market tanked when property values collapsed.
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