A key part of the American Dream is dying, and no one is talking about it
The definition of The American Dream varies depending on the individual, but it almost always involves owning a home.
Which is why this should alarm you.
(AP) -- The proportion of U.S. households that own homes has matched its lowest level in 51 years — evidence that rising property prices, high rents and stagnant pay have made it hard for many to buy.
Just 62.9 percent of households owned a home in the April-June quarter this year, a decrease from 63.4 percent 12 months ago, the Census Bureau said Thursday. The share of homeowners now equals the rate in 1965, when the census began tracking the data.
The Housing Bust never stopped busting. We've completely retraced the Housing Bubble, and are now beyond the creation of Freddie Mac. And yet the collapse of home ownership in America appears to be still picking up speed.
The trend appears most pronounced among millennial households, ages 18 to 34, many of whom are straining under the weight of rising apartment rents and heavy student debt. Their homeownership rate fell 0.7 percentage point over the past year to 34.1 percent. That decline may reflect, in part, more young adults leaving their parents' homes for rental apartments.
America added nearly a million households over the past year and all of them were renters.
Who exactly is going to buy all these homes at very inflated prices if the millennials are priced out?
For the first time in record keeping history, the most common living arrangements for those 18 to 34 years of age is living at home with a parent...
In 1960 most 18 to 34 year old households were living on their own in married or cohabiting households (over 60 percent). Today that number is only 31.6 percent. The biggest living arrangement today is living at home with a parent coming in at 32 percent
The cornerstone of the American dream is largely becoming a fantasy.
The median home sales price was $247,700 in June, up 4.8 percent from a year ago, according to the National Association of Realtors. That increase is roughly double the pace of average hourly wage gains.
Commercial property prices now exceed the 2007 prior peak by 24% overall.
Home prices have retraced all the way back to Peak Bubble levels, but isn't that the problem?
As economist Matthew Rognlie reported in a famous paper last year, the rising value of housing has been a major driver of income inequality in the developed world.
The price of housing has become a crisis for a majority of Americans, homeowners, and especially renters.
A vast majority of respondents – 81% - said housing affordability is a problem, and one-third said they or someone they know has been evicted, foreclosed on, or lost their housing in the past five years.
Over half the respondents, 53%, said they’d had to make sacrifices over the past three years to be able to pay their mortgage or rent.
The housing affordability crisis didn't miss a beat despite the 2007-2008 bust.
The number of cost-burdened households rose by 3.6 million from 2008 to 2014 to a stunning 21.3 million households. Even more concerning is that the number of households with severe burdens (ie: paying more than 50% of income for housing) jumped by 2.1 million to a record 11.4 million households.
However, the burden is not shared. At least homeowners benefit from the rising equity.
The home mortgage interest deduction is a subsidy for the affluent that serves no discernible economic purpose, but is almost impossible to get rid of because removing it would (1) raise taxes for those with mortgages and (2) depress home prices across the board.
Yet that is exactly what must happen in the end, or this problem will never end. Prices must come down, although politically that will never happen.
Housing is like food. You don't cheer for food prices to rise until people can't afford to eat.
In the immediate term, the poor renters carry the burden so home owners don't have to.
The value of owning a home in the U.S. has never been greater, at least according to one figure buried in a monthly Commerce Department report.
The share of Americans' total personal income coming from rental profit rose to a record 4.4 percent in the first quarter of 2016, data released in June show. That's at an all-time high in figures dating back to 1947, and is up from just 0.7 percent thirty years ago.
The flip side of this fact is that renters have never paid more for shelter.
The strong demand for rental units has become a self-reinforcing trend: Shelling out high rent payments makes it hard for households to save for a down payment. What's more, credit standards are strict, making it difficult for those with less-than-stellar histories to acquire mortgages.
Meanwhile, median wages stalled in 2016.
Comments
Glad you are writing about this . . .
We all know that when the mortgage crisis hit, people lost their homes and rental companies bought them. Now they rent them back to those same people at exaggerated prices.
There are so many facets to the housing problem. In Texas, mobile home manufacturers are the slum lords of the South. That's why I don't have much respect for Warren Buffet who owns Clayton Homes. They are the crappiest mobile homes out there. Basically, a mobile home costs nearly the sames as a conventional home, but it totally falls apart in 10 years. Terrible!
I look at answers in non-conventional housing, such as tiny homes, container homes, dirt bag homes, earth ships, etc.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
So am I--and IMO, you should write about this more...
seems like you know a little more about it! It would be really interesting--and probably more than a little helpful to a lot of folk caught in the rent trap (raises hand--we'll never get to own another house. We're lucky we got out from under the one we did own, but that's a whole other story). Anyway, I am a bit familiar with 'tiny homes', but the others, I've never heard of. I'll have to do a little googling...
Ordinances Prevent!
Few cites will allow such alternative forms of housing. Ozzie and Harriet still dominate local governance, and they aren't about to affect their property value by allowing riff-raff to erect plywood shacks and other forms of protecting one's self from the elements if one isn't financially endowed.
Then there is the problem of investors snapping everything up. My boss just told me today that he ended up buying a house 30 miles away from work because it was the first place he could win the bid. Any closer, and some investor would throw in another $10k in cash to steal the deal.
I was up in Vancouver BC recently, where Hong Kong money has made housing so expensive the locals now must commute tens of miles from their homes to their jobs. A nothing special bungalow now costs over $1 million.
Just another dead goose cooked by 1% greed.
Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.
more than 1 in 10 homes going to foreign buyers in Vancouver
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/video/video-1-in-10-va...
Just as bad in Vancouver not BC
I bought a tiny old house in a town east of Vancouver, WA in 2000. It was dirt cheap. My payment with taxes and insurance was $350.00 a month or $150 cheaper than the average rent at that time.
It was ment to be my work home because I work 3 hours from my actual home. I paid it off before the last crash. Now I'm thinking of selling it and retiring early I've been offered as much as 5 times what I paid for it. That is insane but far be it from me to tell them that.
Better do it fast,
before the whole shitaree comes crashing down.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
You can blame Real Estate Incorporated
I'm out in the boonies. When I moved here 25 years ago there were few rules and only three permit requirements. Lots of mohos and "creative" dwelling styles.
Then came 2000. We started seeing all these big name real estate agencies coming in. I guess by then people couldn't afford the city places anymore, so country estates became the next big investment fad.
Now people around here didn't use to care about this sort of thing, but Real Estate Inc. can't sell overpriced houses if there's an untidy place nearby. So Real Estate Inc. started buzzing in local politician's ears about **taxes, and taxes and all the improvements they could buy with taxes.**
But first they had to get rid of all these low income hillbillies and their substandard houses... I mean Home sites.
Suddenly things started changing and a furious clip. Shuckie darn and shove me in it, house prices started going through the stratosphere, and taxes started going up and up and up.
Now, in town, you can't sell a lot if it has a moho on it. The trailer has got to go. This sounds blatantly illegal, but they're getting away with it. They have a Property Maintenance Code Enforcement Officer... who just happens to be a rental agent who also sells real estate. She inspects every house that sells to make sure all the codes are met. She alone gets to decide when a building has to come down. And she bills the city for the demolition.
Ponder that for a minute.
I've watched this happen twice before in the area I used to live in and it's the same every time. It's not the local government so much. It's the greedy real estate shysters who come in and start buzzing around them like little bees. After all, if they can't keep the herd moving, they can't make money to pay lobbyists to get more laws and rules and exceptions passed.
Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons - For thou art crunchy and good with ketchup
I could be wrong about this, but I thought the only thing
that made a mobile home "mobile" was the fact that it wasn't tied to a permanent foundation. If you look at any website of manufactured homes, often called "modular homes" some look like single wide mobile homes all the way up to mansions. I wonder if simply putting a mobile home on a foundation wouldn't transform it from "mobile" into single family housing that would pass local zoning codes.
" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "
You're right
In Ohio, real estate is defined as the ground and anything attached to the ground. Until 2000 putting your "mobile" home on a foundation was a personal choice. Some people chose to do so, mainly to keep people from bitching about it being a detriment to their property values, but also to increase the house's resale value.
County auditors here had a two tier taxing system. One for truly mobile homes (sitting on blocks), which were on a depreciating scale based on something like a Blue Book value, and one for those on foundations.
The kinky part of this changing is that, once again, it came down to a single woman. Some real estate babe up in Akron wanted to build an "affordable housing development" using manufactured homes - ie single and double-wide trailers. Naturally the surrounding homeowners had a conniption fit at the thought of a "trailer park" going in near them. The realtor explained that this would be a nice development on landscaped 1/4 acre lots, but the owners wouldn't budge.
So this gal, whose family had been in real estate since Noah's flood, single-handidly got cozy with a family friend legislator in Columbus and got the rules changed. This was all well-documented in the Akron Beacon Journal back in 1998. Starting in 2000, any moho, and it doesn't matter if it's new or used, any moho "sitted" on property has to be on a foundation unless it's a temporary job site trailer.
What they do is dig a bunch of holes three feet deep. They fill them with concrete, remove the tongue and wheels from the trailer and set it down on the concrete while it's still soft. Viola, you are real estate! To soften the blow, they removed the sales tax on trailers when you buy them.
But they go you one better too! Mine is truly mobile, meaning it's on blocks. If I ever decided to move it, technically I could. So I was grandfathered in to the old depreciation schedule. BUT! hidden in the fine print was an addendum about the title changing hands. So, when my husband and I split up, and his name came off the title, I lost my grandfather status. I'm still taxed as a mobile, but now I'm subject to any new tax levies that are passed. Not grounds for a court battle, but irritating nonetheless, since the place didn't actually change hands at all.
Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons - For thou art crunchy and good with ketchup
I can say in my neighborhood homes are not increasing in value.
Two homes, one next door and the one across the street sold for what they were purchased for ten years ago. Our plan was to stay in the our house for ten years then sell it. We've been in it for six and it looks like we'll be here much longer if we don't want to sell at a loss. Blame stagnant wages and outsourced jobs before you take aim at the home interest deduction. We use it to make upgrades on our home and, this year, it kept us from losing our home as my wife was unemployed for over four months and she just took a job for $25,000.00 less than she previously made. Good times.
The real SparkyGump has passed. It was an honor being your human.
The home interest deduction doesn't really deserve any blame
The second you start qualifying to file AMT on your taxes (which generally around $200,000 for a married couple based on my experience of looking at taxes as a mortgage broker), your ability to claim the home interest deduction is basically null and void. It's not the upper class that it's generally helping.
Be Glad You Have A House
The shack I live in is at least paid off, so as long as I cover the property taxes I have a roof over my diminished faculties.
Having a house is 99% of the battle won right now. It's those who don't have one whose prospects are dwindling daily.
Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.
It must depend.
I live in an affluent suburb west of Toronto. We bought our house in 1992 for 300K (could barely afford it, but real estate agent said, "you won't be sorry".) It's now assessed at 1.2M with property taxes thru the roof.
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.
For most working and middle class Americans,
a home was the one major investment in themselves they could make. If they had nothing else in 30 years, they would have that mortgage burning ceremony to look forward to.
Surprisingly, houses in my sub are selling and selling fast and high. I don't know who is buying them, but the home values have risen a lot and are projected to remain that way. It could be because MI property has been so depressed for so long.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Chinese investors
Recycling the dollars we spend on Chinese goods that used to be made here.
Thank you, Bill Clinton.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Chinese pour $110 billion into U.S. Real Estate
Chinese private investors are buying a lot of commercial and residential real estate and will double their investments in the next 5 years. This buying has inflated the prices of real estate in many large cities. The Chinese spend an average of $832,000 for a home.
" The motivations are broad: some are buying second homes, some are buying as they move to the United States on EB-5 investor visas; some are investing for rental and resale."
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/16/chinese-pour-110bn-into...
Hedge Funds, and investment groups
as well as the banks that foreclosed on the place to begin with.
Back in 2013, I disputed my property tax bill and I had to come up with five comparable properties that were taxed less. In doing this search, I noticed that an unprecedented number of houses had sold in this area and we were only half way through the year. Then I started looking at who the tax bills were sent to. There was a tiny handful of locals. All the rest were hedge funds and investment groups from NYC to Los Angeles. That fracking boom I mentioned elsewhere don'tcha know. These places were renting to the frackers for $1000 per bedroom per month.
Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons - For thou art crunchy and good with ketchup
"Median" Houshold income...
is a joke.
It doesn't tell the half of it.
Sure. the 1%'s income is growing by leaps and bounds...driving the median up. What percentage of households exceeds that $550 k. "median"? 10%?
I want a Pony!
Raising the top 1% doesn't affect median much
You may be thinking of the mean (or average).
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
The essayist and commenter are correct -- it is the median.
The median is simply the mid-point of all incomes. Thus, if the highest income is $ 1,000,000,000 and the lowest is $ 20,000, the median is roughly $ 499,999,980,000.
How many people make each of those figures does not matter -- the median remains the same, hence the fallacy of using it. Everyone else but one could be making the $20,000 and the median would still be right where it's at. And the more being made by the high-end folks, the higher that median goes, even though almost nobody is making that or better.
An actual average -- the mean, determined by adding all income together and dividing by the number of earners -- would be a more accurate descriptor.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Medians can't be "roughly" anything
Discrete medians are members of the distribution. At best they are the average of the two middle elements of the distribution. Which is why I asked if they were confusing median and mean (both begin with m as does mode - which makes me curse statisticians on a regular basis...)
Maybe you could provide a more detailed example so we know what you are talking about?
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
ranged median
Which is why matters like nationwide home prices and incomes are nearly always discussed as ranged medians, not discrete ones. The median of a range is the mid-point of the range, full stop. The problems inherent in obtaining a discrete median when discussing hundreds of millions of distribution members should be obvious -- and why it's almost never done.
What I described was a ranged median, which is what is meant, virtually always, when the term "median income" (or "median home price") is cited, especially on a State or National basis.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
median, mode and mean - all "average"
Let's say we have these 7 house prices:
$100,000
$200,000
$200,000
$250,000
$400,000
$650,000
$1,000,000
The median price is the one in the middle which here is $250,000. Even if the million buck house were 100 million the median would still, in this example, be $250,000.
Another way to look at an "average" house is to find the number that comes up most often. That's called the mode. Here it'd be $200,000.
then there's the mean, which we usually call "the average" value. Here we'd add them all up ($2,800,000) and divide by the number of houses to get $400,000. When we use the mean that high value absolutely makes a difference.
Good summary
Just published a paper on computing these efficiently. All can be gamed but average is the easiest to mess with (as your example shows). Average is also the easiest to compute, which is why everyone does it (and why I can write papers on the others!)
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
50%
It's the definition of median.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Why own when you are job insecure?
With long term employment at one company a fading memory - along with vacation and sick days, health insurance, and a defined benefit pension plan - why own a house when your job may be gone tomorrow and when you finally get another job offer, it's in the next state. It's a hassle to try and buy and sell your house so it's better just to walk away and lose a month's rent then to be stuck with a house that's now in another state.
Mobility of a desperate reserve army of labor is the capitalists' dream and I believe this is a symptom of that vicious mindset.
Thanks for the excellent data presented so that it's easily understood.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Building equity in something is the only reason I can
come up with, but you list a lot of valid reasons not to take the risk.
I am being told by young folks renting apartments that they are getting slammed with all kinds of fees and special assessments that aren't in their lease. I don't know if it is crooked landlords exploiting young people or a new and legal business trend.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Home ownership is a hedge, not an investment
Long term, housing prices have tracked CPI, so buying a house has mostly been hedge against inflation.
Nowadays with all this cash in search of something to do (as gjohnsit has repeatedly documented) this may be changing and we have a bubble. Which is the topic of the post.
It's just the latest way for the rentier class to squeeze money out of the poor. Public housing/rent control might be a solution, but better imho is making it so everyone can afford to own where they live through wealth redistribution or simply fairer wages.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
one nice thing about home ownership is you can't get kicked out
by the landlord. Sure, if you can't pay the mortgage you can lose the house but as long as you make payments you can throw paint around, smoke cigarettes, have cats and after not that long a time you'll find that your mortgage payment plus home insurance and property taxes comes to a lot less than what you'd get if you rented.
On the other hand, then you're not as free. And there isn't a landlord to fix the roof and pay for it.
Shah - the main reason we bought is for the cats!
I was involved in rescue back then, and try renting with more than 2 cats in a house! I rented from a family member for a long time, and when they wanted to sell the property, it was either kick out the 5 cats, or buy.
Plus, our mortgage payment is WAY, and I mean WAY less than what we could rent for even if anyone would rent to us.
I like having a house, but I sure don't consider it to be an investment in any real sense of the word.
mobility was a real issue in the housing bust
unemployed people were stuck where they were in homes that were under water which likely resulted in foreclosure. the housing bust proved that it is not a stable market as it used to be. job mobility might be more of a priority for some people than planting roots.
A little house with a white picket fence
is what I thought was the dream come true. It is what I lived in, with my WWII parents, and what I have for myself. Dad built his home. Bought the land, built his home with his own labor.
I bought the land, had my home built by contractors around what I couldn't do. I had my Dad show me how to lay a wood floor. I would lay it, get to a door, and he would come, saw and measure, get me to the next room, then I would continue to lay the floor. I hired the sheet rock guys, but I did the painting. I have never paid a mortgage payment. I lived in a decrepit mobile home until I built my house.
Who can do that now?
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
be grateful to your Dad, it's hard to do, if you have nobody
to show you the skills you need to have. But that's the way I would do it too.
I am just too old for that. I hope that somehow my son will have the courage to learn and do it.
My brother and I are so lucky.
We know how to do things.
I know young people who pay more in monthly rent than people 5 years into a 20 year home loan.
omigod.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
so, why the fuck aren't there regulations to control
the rental prices? Why is it that landlords or the corporations, who own the apartment buildings, can just ask whatever rent they feel fancy about? And prefer to let the units stay empty instead of offering reasonably priced rents?
In my neighborhood they build one apartment complex after the other, one more expensive than the next, and the hundreds and thousands of students who need housing share four to five or more in old, shabby little ramblers to pay in the low couple of hundred dollars range.
Then you don't have steady, secure jobs with one employer anymore. Constantly younger working couples have to move, because one of them changes the employer and they have to move for that reason.
Same reason there are no controls on Wall Street
gambling, offshore tax havens, etc. Money talks, bullshit walks. I think in most places its been a slow upward movement since the housing market "recovered" after the 2008 recession hit and now its gotten out of hand. I would expect to see some rent control actions in places, but then again, the housing market could just as easily crash again in the next couple years. Like a roller coaster.
Rent control
would limit the value of owning those shabby ramblers. Or decrepit trailers for the "home-sharers" further down the ladder. Can't have that. Not in America, anyway.
Only connect. - E.M. Forster
This needs to be fixed by Congress. They are, of course, in the
process of dismantling it all.
Overview of affordable housing, history and advocacy
HUD under Julian Castro is responsible for affordable housing
The major federal program, HOME Investment Partnerships, has been severely cut
Quelle surprise, the Senate THUD appropriations committee is the culprit
THUD appropriations is 9 Reps and 8 Dems
I couldn't find the votes on the appropriations bill, but anyone want to bet whether or not this is your incremental lesser evilism at work?
These things don't happen by accident and they are not hopeless, folks. These results are driven by government policy.
Please check out Pet Vet Help, consider joining us to help pets, and follow me @ElenaCarlena on Twitter! Thank you.
Food and shelter
More and more, foreign companies are buying our food distribution and real estate. The other way is to go with the local co-ops. Neighbors make sense. Multi-nationals don't so much.
Land, lodging, and labor
were the three things that Pope Francis said in his Laudato Si' that every government should guarantee each citizen.
Land so that they could grow food.
Lodging so that would have shelter.
Labor so that they could earn money to buy needed / wanted things beyond food and shelter, and because meaningful labor gives life meaning.
It's a start for true civilization.
Only connect. - E.M. Forster
Shipping container space
We took a shipping container and turned it into a music/sewing room. The closet at the far end has a sink and a composting toilet. It has electricity, Internet, wifi, heat, air, and a dehumidifier.
We have the materials to put a metal roof with insulation on it. Condensation was an issue we had not considered. The dehumidifier mostly controls that. It is a work in progress, but has only cost us about $5000 so far for 450 square feet. My teenage daughter loves it and spends most of her time there.
Definitely implications for affordable housing.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Beautiful job, Marilyn -- I love it!!
That's a very cool space, and you've reused something that would otherwise be trashed (maybe? -- not sure what happens to old shipping containers). Well done!
Hell is empty and all the devils are here. William Shakespeare
The container itself
with a door installed cost $2700.
There are millions of these for sale at reasonable prices. Some people use them to make fancy homes. This is a simple application. Bonus . . . it won't fall apart like a mobile home will.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
They are stacked
all over the country hundreds of thousands if not millions of them, as a long time trucker I have seen them personally. They don't ship them back empty because it is not cost efficient and would eat into corporate profits and since we don't really export (we are all aware of trade imbalance) much they just keep piling up.
Even more reason to make them into
affordable housing.
Two of them together . . . the most common containers are 8 x 40 . . . make a two bedroom home. Those are usually about 2K each. Composting toilets and using the grey water to irrigate a garden cuts down on costs. Insulating on the outside with dirt bag construction is another idea.
This is definitely a solution in rural areas.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
we saw one of those shipping container homes...
...on a HGTV tiny home show. we couldn't help but wonder how the couple kept from baking inside a metal container in FLORIDA! does insulation really reduce the heat transfer to the degree of being comfortable? i guess it's no different from a metal mobile home but i've wondered about staying cool in those, too.
we painted it with insulating paint
Inside and out. Have the materials to add a metal roof with overhang that will have fiberglass insulation between roof and top of container. It's warm in the afternoon but still liveable without it (in Texas). Hasn't added much to the electric bill.
Condensation once it gets colder was the bigger issue. A dehumidifier is a must!
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Reliance Project: here's one.
I love thi idea. I believe there is already one like this in the Library. It seemed they had an answer to the condensation problem. Another idea is to half bury them into the earth for heating and cooling control, insulated on the exterior.
You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again you did not know. ~ William Wiberforce
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This crisis brought to you
By the big Wall Street donors and Billionare disaster capitalists funding the DNC and Hillary.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
Someone's American dream
Looks to be unfolding quite nicely. It's time for unity dude, and treating the peasants 'dream' as anything real -- why would you do that?
Don't remember which year, was it 4 or 6 ago?, Where NYC had 'The rent is too damn high Party.' It should be brought back.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
I've been paying attention to it
For quite some time now
I remember back in the heady days of the Greed is Good eighties and Rrrrreaganomics when the tax deductions for interest all went away - except for mortgage interest.
Next came the ads touting second, and even third mortgages. And finally, for those smart people who'd paid off their houses long ago, reverse mortgages! All that money laying there in the walls and floors of your house doing nothing, when it could be taking you on a dream vacation! Paying off medical bills! Buying a new luxury car! Additions, upgrades, remodeling!
I looked at my, then, husband and said "they hate the thought of people actually owning something free and clear. They want us in debt for the rest of our lives. That's why only mortgage interest is deductible now."
We had a mortgage. We'd been paying on it 15 years and hadn't even made a dent in the principal. I felt certain that, before we ever got it paid off, something else would happen. Just for the record, it would have been paid off in 2008, unless we'd lost our jobs... or something. So I hatched a plan.
We took a second job working nights and saved to make extra "toward principal only" payments (which you can't really do anymore), and spiff up the house a bit. Then we sold it and used the money to pay off the mortgage with enough left over to buy some acreage. We also bought an older, but in decent shape, mobile home. We had to take out a small loan for some extras, but paid that off in three years. It's been free and clear ever since.
Back then my motto became - watch what they do. Try to discern where they're driving the herd. Then go the opposite way.
It's worked out pretty well, but I doubt anyone could do it now. For one thing, there's no such thing as cheap land these days. We paid $1000 an acre. Now "cheap land" around here is $8000 an acre. Only nobody is selling acreage now because they all leased their mineral rights and those frackers are gonna be back as soon as oil goes up again!
My one big complaint now is, absentee landlords. They've been paying way too much for houses around here for a decade now. Some dimwit up the road just paid $240K for ten acres of grass with a twenty-five year old moho on it. Why? See - "those fracker are gonna be back." And every time they do that everybody's taxes take a jump, because "well recent sales prices affect your property's value too." Izzat so?
Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons - For thou art crunchy and good with ketchup
reading into the dualistic meaning there
Looking at the wording a bit different, could mean we would like to go out with dignity and presence of mind intact. True, the politicians know it, the police and military and bankers know it, the media is fed it. The morticians are all over it. We need a dying option. Not something AMA or ACA provide. We are given little dignity in coming to terms with our own collective death. Maybe ACA missed that little table motion? Yes, we all outlive our bodies. Please allow us to live for a cause we believe in while here. The reason they don't talk about it is they are dead!
Hospice + funeral = my 1st thought at reading the title too. n/t
What Percentage is Paid Off?
Because that's important.
I kind of see it as the bank owning it until it's paid off.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
student effing loan debt
Got to thank the Dems for making it permanent. Can't even tdischarge it thru bankruptcy. At least, it can't be passed down beyond the deceased estate, but i'm sure $hillary is considering that for a policy priority.
Fighting for democratic principles,... well, since forever
Excellent, as always.
Good to see you over here on the Dark side MB
Seconded. Always happy to see you posting here. n/t
The ultimate goal - though
The ultimate goal - though "goal" really isn't the right term at all - is to turn the country, and indeed the whole world, into a kind of company town owned entirely by a stateless global elite, where merely existing legally obligates you to pay (and therefore work for) that elite for most or all of your life, and those who refuse are made into examples for the rest.
In short: welcome to Planet Plantation.
The reason "goal" is the wrong word is that this requires no great strategy, no conspiracy, and no particular sacrifice. The incentive to own property and then seek rent from it is simply a natural feature of capitalism. And if that property ends up in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of wealthier people and leads to fundamental changes in society and economy that benefit the owners even further, that too is simply a natural outcome of the same capitalism.
Originally
I was going to call this essay "Return of Manorialism"
The end of American home ownership is by design
And I'm not kidding. I would have to rummage around, but there was a joint White Paper by Treasury and Housing presented to Congress in 2011 (I think) that was about how these two departments (under Obama!) envisioned the future of home financing which is the future of individual home ownership. The creation of the Federal guarantors for mortgage loans was what enabled the American Dream in the first place.
Anyway our wonderful Cabinet Secretaries Giethner and Donovan saw a world where the private mortgage market took completely over and Federal underwriting would only apply to a very small sector of the housing market, about 8% as far as I recall. Under the private market, rates would be market rates at whatever structure they want and the average down payment requirement would probably be 20%.
Whatever the motivation, the end result would be turning the country into a nation of renters and making home ownership pretty much impossible for the average American worker.
" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "
Had to sell our home at a bare breakeven
in 2014 due to job loss and the difficulty of finding a new gig when pushing 60. "Build Equity"? Make me laugh. Walked away from the closing with less than the price of a nice dinner. I will never own real estate again, and am perfectly comfortable with that. My retirement plan is to die at my desk, and I'm now making my peace with being an asset-free person: my biggest possession is a car that is worth maybe $500 (and a couple of drum kits that nobody in their right mind would want).
If you have nothing, nobody can take it from you. Don't mind paying rent: not gonna feed the sharks again.
Another new affordable housing project
http://www.treehugger.com/modular-design/kasita-smart-portable-prefab-ho...
Dr. Jeff Wilson is a professor in Austin, TX. He lived in a dumpster for a year to find out about tiny living. Now he has invented a type of vertical trailer park - except the units are built according to international building codes. (unlike Texas mobile homes that fall apart in 10 years)
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
There is an affordable housing project proposed here:
high density detached single-family houses, with no driveways, just detached parking elsewhere on site. With a bicycle ride uphill and any work situation over two miles away. I don't see that as an answer, although the modular house models they conceptualize look promising. And that is that marketing strategy. EZ to spot.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Sounds like it's geared to upwardly mobile young singles
in perfect health, because people with any - and I mean ANY - type of handicap could not possibly live there. (If anyone so much as broke an ankle - which can happen at any age - they'd be screwed, blued and tattooed.)
Way to further segregate the population and ghettoize the "inferiors".
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Even a broken arm, TheOtherMaven. I know.
Missions to the car for bags of groceries? In the snow and dark? On ice?
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
I posted this on TOP
and almost every comment was either an "I don't believe it", or an attack on me.
I guess "everything is wonderful in Obama's America" is an article of faith now.