Barring a sea change in housing policy that enables massive amounts of new houses to be built, I would make a significant wager that in 50 years time about 75% of people will rent their home all their life.
The reason is that for most homeowners their home equity is the majority of their savings, and homeowners vote in higher proportion than renters (on average). Any politician that allows home values to fall too much will be facing the end of their career.
Under these conditions the only way housing will fall in a lasting way is if something so terrible happens to the economy that... well... you'll have bigger problems than housing.
Housing is fundamentally broken and very hard to fix due to vested interests all over the place. "Housing cannot simultaneously be affordable and a good investment," and we've clearly decided that housing is a financial instrument first and a place to live second.
There is one way out of the housing price trap: telework plus ubiquitous broadband via things like 5G and Starlink. That could allow people to escape the housing trap by locating away from price hotspots. If you simply must live in a big city this won't work for you, but keep in mind that you could always live somewhere more rural and visit big cities any time you please.
I don’t buy that. People don’t like to live in cities primarily because of jobs, but because living in cities is fun. People like to be close to other people, exchange with others and their community.
Living in a small town sounds depressing to me, no matter how fast the internet connection might be.
Maybe if you create your own commune, bring in a social circle from the city. But that has a tendency to fall apart.
This is mostly only true of younger childless people. Once you have kids you can forget about having any fun for the next 15 years or so. And after that, well, how many 45 year olds do you see in nightclubs?
I think you mean "new homes". I don't think there's anywhere in the US with a housing crisis is due to new houses not being allowed. It's usually due to the difficulty in tearing down houses (and low-density apartments) and building higher density apartments. This may seem pedantic, but in these discussions the distinction is important. In almost every housing-related thread on HN, I see people using them interchangeably, in ways that are confusing.
Remember when the 2008 crisis hit, no one was buying but no one was renting either. And a lot of banks with real estate on their books just let it sit there (where it sits today).
Once a the credit default domino chain starts to fall, people and organization will need to get liquid. The first stage will see some people jump in on pent-up demand but after that, real estate will fall through the floor. It will literally drop to near nothing in places.
As someone who was in eighth grade at the time, can you clarify what you mean by this? Every person either 1) buys property, 2) rents property, 3) goes homeless, or 4) dies. There aren't really any other choices.
P.S. I just saw this article:
Mortgage Delinquencies Have Risen Fastest In US History
https://thewashingtonstandard.com/housing-crash-2-0-mortgage...
But, at least in my local market, it would surprise if the banks are sitting on empty units from 2008, as far as I know it all got auctioned off years ago.
This article predicts the covid crisis will center around a new collateralized debt instrument "[after post 2008 banking reform] [d]emand shifted to a similar—and similarly risky—instrument, one that even has a similar name: the CLO, or collateralized loan obligation. A CLO walks and talks like a CDO, but in place of loans made to home buyers are loans made to businesses—specifically, troubled businesses." https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/coronav... discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23480680
