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.
Reducing home prices requires destroying an entire branch of economy - real estate investment. Mind you not construction but owning property as an investment. It would noticeably drop the GDP and any other economic statistic as well as leave a bunch of people without jobs.
I guess in the mind of most politicians it’s not an acceptable course of action, even though avoiding it makes things worse in the long term.
What kind of jobs are you talking about? People speculating in real estate are doing so for passive income, not for employment. I just don’t see this job loss concern being legitimate.
Maybe some property management folk would have to change to slightly different aspects of the service industry, that could happen, but it’s just not large scale. In comparison, we hear stories everyday of people who can’t pay their mortgage or can’t pay rent, then they become homeless, and then they lose their job as a result.
Which is to say, I don’t think politicians believe for a second that high housing prices are keeping unemployment low. Also, you mentioned economic statistics, but for some reason you feel that homelessness isn’t included in them. That’s a peculiar choice.
You severely underestimate the role of real state in the current economy. Banks, investment funds, pension funds, real estate agencies, insurance … Individuals looking for passive income are just a part of it.
Especially in North America, Europe and China (but true everywhere generally) real estate speculation takes a huge chunk of investment money of both individuals and companies.
It’s not, except as an afterthought. It’s not me inventing these statistics