Homes "unaffordable" in 99% of nation for average American

Put a hard stop to the purchasing of homes by corporations/businesses and people with no intention of living in them.

You should need proof of intention to live in the home within a reasonable amount of time after the purchase in order to make the sale. The flipping of homes for profit by those with cash and more money is a detriment to the market and the american dream for the rest of the population trying to get a foothold.

The problem isn't necessarily flipping houses, if the ones doing the flipping really are improving the property and are able to refurbish old properties to be more appealing. If they put in the work, they deserve to make money off of that - but they only make their money if they sell.
The problem is corporations who buy up housing stock, with no immediate plans to resell. They view houses like a commodity, and if they constrain supply in certain areas they can artificially create profit. This profit, though, comes at the expense of everyone who is looking for a home at the time.
I think the solution is for localities to step in and crank up property taxes for residential units that are not either occupied or actively on the market. Once a company keeps a property off the market for a year, make it much more painful for them to hold it for another year.
- House flippers are incentivized not to make good, long term, sustainable, or efficient home improvements. Their only incentive is to make a house more sellable upon initial inspection, house flipping is a bad practice I would argue far more often than not.
  The problem is housing as an investment like a stock. They should be commodities.
- Inherently, flipping houses is about increasing the price of the home. This directly relates to the article by making more houses further out of range of more people.
- Hard agree. Also they can slap a really big transfer tax on non-owner occupied as well.
- All agreed except the localities bit. These smaller cities councilmen are too cheap to bribe. A $1,000 check will have them hanging on your every word. I've seen it with my own eyes. Probably best bumped up to state level.
  But yes, we should ban corporations at some well-defined point. I mean, what if I incorporate myself? Now I can't buy another house?
- To add, the corps buying up housing are also the ones that have the most potential to back housing builders, but since they're buying up stock to artificially decrease supply, then they're deincentivized to support builders. I really wish these big corps had some sort of for each unit you buy, you must build a unit within the next 2 years.
- Good point! That's a great idea.
- Higher taxes is just a cost of doing business which is passed on to other tenants, be it long or short term rentals, even if housing stock is temporarily held - though I don’t disagree that such a vacancy tax is a good.
  GP was right - forbid corporations from owning any residential property if 4 or fewer units and greater than four unless the building is wholly owned.
  On the tax side, add a purchasing tax of 15-25%, 90% of which is rebated at closing for non-corporations who have not received the rebate in the previous 24 months. That targets flippers and property-bros willing to go naked on liability.
Rather than a hard stop, I think it would be a good idea to significantly increase taxes on real estate no one is actively living in, and use the proceeds to subsidize construction of new housing.
- This seems to be the most reasonable. Disincentiivize multiple property ownership rather than outright ban it. The ones who can eat the cost will pay taxes and the rest will just bow out of the market.
- Rather than a hard stop, I think it would be a good idea to significantly increase taxes on real estate no one is actively living in, and use the proceeds to subsidize construction of new housing.
  An alternative is to replace property tax with a land tax. That way instead of penalizing people for building more housing, they are penalized for holding onto land that could be used to house more people (or whatever other use is in mind).
- There should also be taxes on rental properties beyond the first to prevent the "hoard and rent" cycle
You’re essentially talking about decommodification of housing, which is the only correct answer. It is necessarily impossible for a house to be both affordable and a good investment, and the current status quo means that housing will be used as an investment. Whatever mechanism used to fix the housing affordability problem will require that housing no longer be subject to commodity market forces.
- The value of a house should be in reduction of costs, not increase in real value.
  When you rent, you pay for maintenance of your residence, some amount of furnishings, and the risk tht property owner takes in renting to you (i.e. the likelihood that you'll destroy the property, fail to pay, etc).
  When you own, you take that risk on yourself. You can choose to delay, DIY, or preempt repairs. You can choose what level of furnishings you have, and you are responsible for any loans or taxes due on the property. You don't need to worry about unplanned vacancies.
  Housing should keep pace with demand so property values stay roughly consistent with normal inflation. Unfortunately, cities tend to grow, making existing property more valuable.
- I live in a touristy area and literally everything is getting turned into AirBnBs. It’s a huge problem because the people who actually live here have nowhere to live now
- It’s gotten out of control. I would say one in ten houses in my neighborhood are airBNBs.
- If you want to operate an airbnb in Berlin you need a hotel license (unless you actually live in the thing at the same time, or only do it for I think about a month a year, say when you're on vacation). Long story short the city isn't giving out any licenses in areas with high rent pressure, which is basically all of Berlin.
  But those things are highly regional, there's plenty of villages in the alps with an absurd amount of tourist accommodation compared to the number of regular inhabitants, but they also don't have any industry but family farms and tourism. If you own something on Sylt and somewhere else you're paying sky-high secondary residence taxes (rich fucks don't rent they just buy holiday homes).
How about expropriation of these homes instead of just a half assed "can we put a pause on capitalism guys?" You realize what the problem is. No more half measures, Walter
First step is seizing the ones they already bought, at gunpoint if they resist
As for "the market and the american dream", lol. lmao, even
Death to America
well that doesn't sound like free market capitalism!
ATL had a pretty good program at one point. If you made $60k, you could buy a $250k house with the requirement that you would be the primary resident for the first year.
What's even better is that the comparables in the area were all $450k, so 3 years later, all of the homes got valued around $500-600k.
331.9 million (2021) US Population / ~142 million housing units in the United States (2021) = ~2.34 people average needed per dwelling to fully house everyone.
According to Statista: " The average American household consisted of 2.5 people in 2022. "
If people did not need vacation homes, and investment property... We appear to have enough housing for everyone already.
I'm working under the assumption hotels/motels are not included.. there should be plenty of those to house people on vacation, and leaves plenty of room for the ultra wealthy to still have their vacation homes.
Sources: Statista, US Census, Google
its maddening there are plenty of homes out there completely empty
Just levy additional taxes on the homes that aren't owner occupied and make it less attractive to investors.

This situation has turned into a real cock for so many people.

The place I got my mortgage through sends out emails regularly with updates on my home value, current rates, and other assorted stuff. I originally bought this house at the tail end of 2020. It's not the best house around, still needs work, but it had the room we needed, was in our budget (220), and the payment was low because the rate was great (2.75). Our original plan was stay here a bit, get rid of some debt, and then maybe try to find what we'd like to be our forever home, wherever that may be (we're 44).

That idea went south in a hurry. What once probably wouldn't have been worth sinking extra money into to fix, may now be the only choice. The aforementioned newsletter has a section where it shows what you could "save" at current rates by refinancing or taking cash out. The most recent one said I could "save" -$213400, meaning if we refinanced to take cash out to fix things up right now, it would cost us the entire price of the home yet again, on top of what the home and interest will already cost. Where a home in the 400's was achievable before, our home in the 200s would nearly not be now.

I feel terrible for people having to try to achieve home ownership at this point, or probably for the rest of the decade. On the one hand, I understand how fortunate I am to have gotten in when I did, and to have a home period; on the other, like many, I'm now essentially trapped, which has the ripple effect of keeping both rates and prices high because most people aren't going to trade a sub-3% mortgage for 7%+, assuming they can even find a place to go at this point.

Add in corporations branching out into a new area to do their level best to eliminate the concept of ownership for the majority of people, and politicians focusing on the more serious global issues like who goes in which bathroom, and my hope for the future couldn't be squashed any further if you put it in a hydraulic press.

Real estate will crash, eventually. Hard to predict exactly when and why, but if history is any guide, a market crash eventually is practically inevitable. It could conceivably happen relatively quickly for any number of reasons, but crash it will.
That doesn't necessarily mean it will become readily affordable - when real estate goes south, a lot of other stuff will be crashing with it. History books are full of monumental calamity. There's no reason to expect that to change.
- This time is different. The new business model isn't selling homes - it's single family rental.
  I coordinate all development projects in one of the fastest-growing cities in the county, and 100% of new single-family projects proposed since 2021 have been build-for-rent.
  Why sell someone a house when you can rent it to them forever AND increase the price every year.
- The housing market isn't going to crash. New homes aren't going to flood the market and demand for homes will not fall. As long as we have a growing population the price of homes will also increase.
- And corporations will be right there to buy it all up and further make it worse.
Hey are you me? We moved temporarily to a place with a far longer commute with the plan that we'd ride out the silliness of the market for about 5 years. That was in 2017. They'll fucking bury me here lol.

It's more than homes. Groceries have rocketed up in price. Cars are also unaffordable. Business people crowing about how great the (phantom) economy is are going to be leaping out of windows by next year. That's when "the economy" will catch up to the fact that if no one can afford to buy anything then there is no economy.

I live on social security disability, about 1100$ a month.
A combo meal at McDonald's is 12$.
2 combo meals a day from a fast food restaurant would completely wipe out my budget. No money for rent. No phone bill. No water or electric money. No money for garbage removal. The idea of a car is laughable. There wouldn't even be enough for a bus pass.
It's been a real struggle. After all the inflation hikes of 2022, they only raised my payments 50$ a month.
They simply don't care about the people voting for them more than the companies bankrolling their campaigns that earn their paychecks. It's that simple.
- I feel for you.
  I'm in an average family earning average wages. Maintaining our standard of living is now at least $500 more a month, and that's just from utilities, rent, and groceries (!). I've cancelled everything streaming aside from Youtube. We don't eat out any longer, because that's easily jumped at least $30 a meal for a family of four. Depending on your point of view, we were fortunate enough to have things we could cut back on that weren't essentials.
  I grew up fairly poor and by all metrics my family is better off, but it certainly doesn't feel like it at times. I've had more month left at the end of my money more times than I'd care to admit.
  I have no idea how those who were "just getting by" are continuing to do so.
- jesus, there aren't even studio apartments in my area for 1100 a month
I find it so dystopian that cars are one of the essential things to have when living in America.
If it weren't for my parents I couldn't afford to live in this state as I live with them. Even as a homeowner, my mom is finding it hard to cope as homeowners insurance rates keep rising and the crisis is deepening as more insurers leave the state or stop offering new policies. I financed a used car back in 2022 for $8,500. I don't think I'll ever own a home here, not that I'd want to anyway, and as for cars I'm better off buying cheap and used.
- California too, huh? That or... Florida?

The only difference between a citizen and a serf is the right of ownership. This is the "freedom" people fought and died for. Welcome to Neo Feudal America where you will own nothing and you will be happy about it because complainers go to the gas chambers. Remember to go get your "Real ID" and passports because you are in the process of being tied to the land too.

Growing up, learning history, I always wondered how average people went from the freedoms of the citizens of Rome to feudal serfs barely more than slaves. I never thought I would get to learn first hand.

Americans would probably have a lot more freedom if they didn't normalize getting into debt. You can save a lot of money if you never pay anyone interest.
- Oh fuck off I missed owning a home because I was too afraid of debt. It's impossible for most to save enough cash for a house outright especially with how insanely the prices inflate
- Can confirm, I only have a low rate mortgage and otherwise no debt. I bought my cars with cash, worked my way through school, etc, and I have a comfortable savings. We're not rich, we just don't piss away our money to interest.
  Honestly, if you can avoid credit card interest and make an average income, you can probably afford a home by your 30s in most of the US.
- The problem is there is inflation, high interest rates, house prices increasing rapidly, skyrocketing rent and wages staying stagnant. If you try to save money for 30 years in hopes of buying a home, it would be a difficult prospect currently. In my area, most of the friends that are renting are paying 2000+ in rent. I pay 1300 for my mortgage. If I had started saving when I bought my house, I still wouldn’t have enough and my house is now worth 3X what I paid for it. I don’t know where you are from but you clearly don’t understand the current situation in the US.
- Yeah I was raised to understand debt is for three things: education (as an investment and treated as such), mortgages, and cars (though I avoid car loans where I can).
- It is more complicated than it first seems. The inflation rate is controlled within the way debt is handled and it is a way to tie together the politics of nations in order to bring mutual benefit and stability. It is not anything like an individual's debt to an institution. The rate of inflation balances against the debt in a way that makes it irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Talking about debt like it is a bad thing in the world of today is a major form of populist manipulation for conservatives. The whole point and purpose of the GOP is to prevent reasonable legislation from having the opportunity to pass. This is what the billionaires are funding. It isn't about liberalism or responsibility or any bullshit like that. The only purpose is to continue keeping all of the legal loopholes open for exploitation. The USA has a tenth of the laws and protections of any other western nation. This is why there are 750 billionaires and a major homeless problem with most Americans unable to own a home or even most of their property any more due to DRM/neo-digital-feudalism. The GOP is a circus show leading the nation around to one side show after another simply to prevent anyone else from taking the stage. They have no morals, there are no limits. When the focus shifts away from them, they instigate another ever more outrageous event where the outcome is already secured well in advance. This is all about distraction, from the budget, to stealing fundamental human rights from half the population, to massive open corruption by the supreme court, to rocket Karen fighting for Putin, to DeSatan or the orange usurper, to book burning, and defunding education, it is all just a distraction so that no reasonable legislation has the time or opportunity to pass. This is how 750 people robbed the country blind.
- But if you want something NOW, instead of saving up for it, you take on debt. People don't have as much patience it seems, than in years past. Also society has become more reliant on convenience (which costs more) and being lazy than taking the longer route (which costs less overall).
  But that's the freedom in it, right? The ability to choose the more convenient, fun route than the longer, saver route. An "ant vs grasshopper" fable in real life.
Fuck real IDs
- What's wrong with them?
The only difference between a citizen and a serf is the right of ownership.
Nope. Serfs were forbidden from moving out of where they lived.

I don't really have any idea of owning a home for the rest of my life. Even making enough money to potentially get close seems impossibly out of reach.

I feel like I should just claim homes that are empty at this point.
You bought it as an investment but nobody is renting it since you're letting your rentee pay your bills? Looks like this is my property now.
- This is partially why "squatters' rights" was a law. Live in a home for a certain number of years, and it's legally yours if the "owner" suddenly shows up and tries to kick you out. It also had to do with banks selling property that people already owned, but that's just another form of corporate skullduggery.
- Move in like a sovereign citizen haha.
First time home buyers in the US don't need any cash for a down payment or closing costs. You can roll it all into the mortgage. This is how the majority of first time homebuyers get started. You just need a good credit score and enough income to qualify for the mortgage - which is impossible in some cities and easy on a McDonalds wage in others.

It's worse than the headline says. The study set 71k as the average US income for a single person...

Which is the official household number. The actual single income average is 50-60k.

This still seems high to me, damn. In my town average household income is 30k lol. Even surrounding "nice" towns aren't that much higher
I guess there's places where people must make so much money
- Oh definitely these are national numbers. Even just state by state starts to vary a lot
- West Virginia, or something?
The heck? A ton of my friends are making like 40k... I guess they're still within the bell average.
- Oh that's the fun part. Everyone discusses mean and median. Mode is in the 35-40 range last I tracked it down. (it wasn't easy to find and I have my theories about why)

If I had to move to my current area now, my rent would be around 50% of my income, and that's with a job that used to be able to support the whole nuclear family bullshit as little as 20 years ago. I'm like $2k below median family income by myself.

Researchers examined the median home prices last year for roughly 575 U.S. counties and found that home prices in 99% of those areas are beyond the reach of the average income earner, who makes $71,214 a year, according to ATTOM.

This sounds like they compared the national mean income to local median home prices which honestly probably makes 99% too generous, it's probably closer to 100% unless the article is explaining what they did poorly.

The lowest cost of living areas are going to be the ones where these houses are most affordable but they're also lower income areas normally and a normal person isn't pulling 71k a year in middle of nowhere Tennessee or whatever.

Wow, I just bought a house three months ago, I guess I’m part of the 1%. #feelsweird

Lemmy leans tech and higher income, so yeah, I'd expect a higher proportion.
(Coughbragcough)

Mao please come back.

Well yeah, the average American is broke. And the average house is expensive. Give me whatever funding this study receives because this shit didn't need one.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The typical American cannot afford to buy a home in a growing number of communities across the nation, according to common lending standards.

"The dynamics influencing the U.S. housing market appear to continuously work against everyday Americans, potentially to the point where they could start to have a significant impact on home prices," ATTOM CEO Rob Barber said in a statement Thursday.

ATTOM's data adds to a growing body of real estate research in recent years that highlights the lack of affordable housing .

Factoring in a mortgage payment, homeowners insurance and property taxes, the typical home priced today would require 35% of someone's annual wages, ATTOM said.

Cities with the most unaffordable homes include Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix, San Diego and Orange County, California, ATTOM said.

Communities surrounding Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Philadelphia or Pittsburgh have the most affordable homes compared with median salaries for residents there, according to the firm.

The original article contains 486 words, the summary contains 151 words. Saved 69%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I wonder if they consider Lansing to be a "community surrounding Detroit." Housing is much cheaper here than anywhere else I've seen

Oh I've a solution for this the average American can all go and try to buy home in that 1% are so it also becomes unaffordable. Problem solved.

We purchased right before ar the beginning of the rate increases. A 10 year ARM. Hoping the rates stabilize by that 10 year mark or things might get expensive for a few years.

Purchased at like 4.1% but absolutely refused an ARM. We have a fixed rate and absolutely nothing would ever make me get an ARM.

If it's getting paid for by renters or by owners, it's not unaffordable.

Unaffordable for the average American.
- That doesn't make any sense. The housing sales market is enormous. Much more than the amount of "upper crust" buyers. The rich aren't buying them all, and the investment/landlord buyers can only afford them if the actual renters pay the bills which would not be the "upper crust" super wealthy. Therefore the statement that 99% can't afford them must be false.