I am anxiously following the real estate market and prices are far outpacing the wage growth, making real estate really unaffordable for a lot of people, and yet there is very little political will from politicians to do anything about it.
This is especially true for desirable areas and big cities, and slowly pushing low earners to the outskirts and even outside towns. I know plenty of people who hoarded multiple properties and now they simply rent them through Airbnb or booking not to mention big corporations trying to snap even more and rent them at outrageous prices. While plenty of people cannot afford even rent in those cities.
Mind you I am not US based, but I know that this is pretty much a world phenomenon for quite a few years who got really accelerated by the COVID pandemic, but its effect will cripple future generations severely who will never be able to purchase their own roof over their head and they will forever be stuck with ever increasing rents increasing enormously the financial burden of those people.
I don’t know for you but I believe this is completely unsustainable in the long term and this will become an even bigger problem in the future and I wonder why there is so little done to tackle the problem now, and what are those politicians hope, that this will magically disappear tomorrow and all will be roses?
Why aren’t universally some laws against home flipping and people owning more than one residential property? I think the right of having a roof over your head is a basic human right and every person out there deserves to have a decent home and not be forced to live on the street.
Dropping the demand for rentals is supposed to address this. But there is going to be a great big gap between “no one is renting” and “we can’t afford to keep this house that no one is renting” where the prices will skyrocket to try and make up costs, which kind of shoots this plan in the foot unless all the newly emancipated renters plan to pitch a tent for a couple years while the market settles.
its chicken and egg though. the demand for rentals will drop when people can buy but if all first time buyers have more money to buy but supply remains the same then the price of housing will just rise. the real solution is to build. government should build and sell at cost and keep doing it till housing is not something one goes to to make profit.