Friday, August 23, 2024

Nobody's Buying the House? And What Is "Affordable"?

Wolf Street noticed that nobody wants to buy a house.  First mortgage rates are now down to ~6.5%, yet days-on-market and supply (houses available) have both gone up.  

The first chart will tell another tale:  the remarkable rise in single-family housing sale prices over the last 10 years.

Note well:  the charts are about "median" prices, meaning that half of sales are LESS than that number.  So when your local politician goes on the crusade for "affordable" housing, you are entitled to ask:  "For whom?" ....along with "What is 'affordable'?"  $75K?  $100K?  $200K?  

One suspects that the "affordable housing" is destined for the offspring of the upper-middle-class.  But YMMV.

1 comment:

Margaret said...

My daughter read recently of a new development in a Chicago suburb that is being called affordable housing. She calculated that an annual income of $93,000 would be needed to afford it. Apparently, affordable has a new meaning.