Ask Lemmy

Straight up house prices? Yes.

As soon as people start thinking prices can only go up, housing has dropped. Over and over.

Affordable overall, including insurance and maintenance? No, we have never had that, and probably never will.

People talking about societal collapse here, look at the past. It was worse. We have come forward not backwards, overall. Sure it looks dire, but really, would you rather live in the past? Like maybe, if you are a rich white guy, but if so you are probably doing ok now too.

Yes. Housing prices have always crashed about once a decade, ore or less. Also prices tend to plateau for 10-15 years until Incomes catch up. I don’t see why this won’t continue to happen

The only difference is this time we have clear lack of supply, along with impediments to building more housing in places people want to live. There’s a profit incentive to building more and I wouldn’t bet against overcoming those obstacles. Money always wins

If curious if "affordable housing" has an actual definition? Like is there some formula that we could use?

Affordable housing where?

No. We won't be able to solve the problem because we refuse to believe that viable solutions are any more complicated than "put person in house".

Not without changes in zoning codes, so no.

I know parking lot minimums make it hell for new stores to be built, but does it also affect mid- and high-rises? Because that would fucking suck if that’s another reason it’s hard to make affordable housing.

Unless there's a massive crash or a bubble pops, leading to a significant recession (unlike what we're currently in... Far more severe, and probably more severe than ever before).... No.

It may come down, and kind of ebb and flow a bit, but "affordable" isn't going to be a word used to describe where prices go from here.

Also, we definitely are in a time of great inflation, which is causing recession-like things to happen. If there's a recession at all right now, it's being manufactured by artificially inflated prices by greedy companies, more than anything else. This would be a good thing if "trickle down" economics existed (it doesn't).... So instead, everyone at the bottom is slowly dying while billionaire bank accounts gain a few more percentage points. When the system snaps from the massive disparagy between the ultra rich and the poor, if the system doesn't entirely collapse at that point, then we'll be in yet another unprecedented, once-in-a lifetime event, like we've never seen before. All of the millennial generation will groan and roll their eyes about it happening yet again.

Millennials, and by proxy gen z, have been so completely fucked by all the ultra rare events that have happened over the past two decades... A housing crash, a pandemic, a recession or two, now out of control inflation and insane race wars heating up. I feel like the entire generation is so burned out from it all that if aliens showed up tomorrow, it would barely be a footnote in most people's daily lives. Honestly, anything an alien race did, like taking over the world, would probably be an improvement. Even death at this point, seems more appealing than a lifetime of indentured servitude in an unfair system designed from the ground up to force the "poor" into positions they don't want, doing things they don't enjoy, just to make enough to live. That's not enough to make most of the generation suicidal, but I don't think many people would give a shit either way at this point. Moreso if you don't have dependents.

No.

I believe there are, and will be. Over 20 years ago, I moved to Dallas, TX area for the same reasons - to get away from unaffordable housing in the west and east coast. At the time, I found Dallas to have a good housing price to income ratio.

But in doing so (moving to Dallas), I may have also potentially taken a big (lifetime) pay cut. I graduated from a top ComSci school, but in moving to Dallas, I put myself outside of the market of the emerging FAANG companies in the west coast.

I think now there are still medium size cities where you may find a good balance of cost to value and quality of life. It really depends on your career goals and life goals. There's always a trade off. I believe right now, the midwest is a good value, if you can stand the winters there :)

There is affordable housing now, just not where you are. Lots of places that are high end now were at one time undesirable low rent places. Brooklyn and the West Side of Hollywood are both communities that originally drew people because of low quality, low cost of living accommodations.

Look to the rust belt cities that didn't fully collapse to lead the charge. Detroit is stabilizing while still having low rent areas. Maybe Some places in Ohio and Buffalo NY as well.

You can buy a full on house in Rochester NY for under 40k but you may not want to live there.

Barring a calamity, nice places with high rents sort of stay that way. I can't imagine high cost of loving areas like Boston, Denver , Hawaii or Miami going down for anything other than an asteroid. Prices are high in places that people want to live.

Yes. And I think soon. Student loan repayments will force people to make tough choices. I think people got into very large mortgages because they could afford it without the student loans, and likely expected rates to drop before the loans restarted.

Those people will probably have to move, possibly short selling the home (where the bank takes your home and sells it for what it can get, clearing your debt in the process even if it's less than your mortgage).

This kind of stuff happened in 2008, and I just saw a graph showing housing slightly less affordable now than then.

Yes and the best thing you can do is get ready for it. Don't give up and wait for something to happen before you start preparing. Save your money now and when prices drop you're ready to strike and get what you want quickly

No I don't think there will be a crash. I think we might see legislation meant to help affordability become a topic in the 2028 presidential race, when Trump and Biden are definitely out of it so there's a cluster of low-education populist voters in swing states who become swing voters, and the replacement options are decades younger and they will want fresh ideas to be at The forefront of their campaigns.