Housing in America may be a microcosm of the nation itself: a bit less
dynamic, far more costly and uncomfortably more unequal than we’d like.
More at: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-state-of-the-nations-housing-stagnant-unequal-far-too-expensive-2018-06-19
55 comments:
Well, my unequal house is too big for 2 people. And the.lot is too big, except if we had kids playing football games which we did for a while, and then my mom in residence. It is pretty, or will be if it ever gets finished. Some of it is my feeble attempts at luxury.. if you have 6 kids and a live in maid and butler, and your feeble parents and a care taker, yeah, you do need space. Virtually nobody has that and it overbig is not comfy or friendly anyway. Beautiful art is pleasant to live with, as are grand gardens or views. With gardeners.
By the way, it could easily be made into 2 apartments. And the back could easily have a house on it. I was told that was legal. Don't know.
I am reading the Woodward book and T come off as slightly less horrible than I'd expected. Just as dumb and impulsive and self.indulgent as I thought though. His handlers seen to spend an incredible amount of time trying unsuccessfully to tame him. And save him, and us from himself. And Express what needs to be done in just the right manipulating words.
As to tariffs that I'd liked to see imposed from HCN days, the latest is t's 10% tariff, is balanced.by a 9% decrease in the value of Chinese currency, which is . . .1%. Whooppee Ding. Not gonna worry about that. And sooner or later their misallocation of resources will bite them in the back.
"affordable housing" is an issue that I don't see getting better. The developers don't make money off of small houses, even though that's what would increase mobility. I've own a 40 year old 3 bed, 2 bath 1,100 sqft home that is perfect for just the wife and I. That is a home that would never get built today. Starting costs are too high to build something that small.
Sears used to sell houses you could.put together yourself. I understand some of them are still around. We can't do that, at least for some?
There is no app for that. In other words we have a can’t do country with to much government control. Houses are no longer about shelter but cash machines including the tenants, government, banksters. Debt tread mills.
What would you do to fix this.
I have read that there are fewer cash out Regis, and equity drawing 2nd mortgages, but it's starting. How much equity is building?
Refis
Greetings fellow programs.
I'm back from Houston, where I attended my Dad's funeral ... 5 days short of exactly one year from when my Mom died. Not exactly been a banner year for me.
On the plus side, I missed about 6 days of media coverage, which means I missed the parade of Kav victims coming forward.
Good morning!
LL, most of it needs to come from teaching discipline at home and school, to late for that. Government side could do a lot to slow down the trend by limiting loan subsidizing and limiting government backed loans to two person in a life time. No government backed refi. Lose the first one and you don’t get an other. Lots of little things.
Sorry to hear about your dad.
LBD,
Agree that education regarding basic finance is deplorable in America. But, I don't see how kids can hope to learn anything from parents who are clueless victims of the current reality. I graduated 3rd in my HS, got a BA from UNC 4 years later, and entered the workforce LUCKY to have had an intro to Macro Economics, and one Accounting class, (both electives). But, in hindsight, Econ 101 was laughable theory having little to do with reality. And the Accounting class was more a foundation to potentially learn bookkeeping - again, with little practical data for how PERSONAL finance actually works.
I am pessimistic about the future, since it is ONLY those running today's financial chicanery that are actually advertising education - which is 100% slanted to convince individuals to make choices which are all directed at maintaining and expanding the current financial skim.
If the only educational inputs for parents are coming from Fidelity and Schwaub, et al, the battle for the future is already lost.
I personally think it is not hard to figure out and I am no scholar. Common sense is now the cutting edge thinking. Very sad.
"What would you do to fix this." -LL
I'm not a developer, but they are my clients. What I have picked up on from working with them is that there are higher construction standards and more regulatory hurdles to clear that drive up the cost of land development. In areas where there are fewer regulations you have the overhead costs of pulling municipal utilities out to the project which is hugely expensive. Either way, the houses need to be a certain size before the single family model makes sense financially. I can't speak to what made smaller houses work in the past, but my hunch is that they built a lot of houses that shouldn't have been built because they are in the floodplain, etc. or that they were able to work out cost sharing with the municipalities based on the promise of "increased tax base".
Condolences. I'm gonna try not to watch.
No cash out. 2nds for roof repair only
Who is buying these very expensive houses?
My little sister just dropped some serious coin on her new pad in La Jolla. Her taxes are more than my PITI combined.
Hereabouts the first $80/sf goes to the municipality (and school districts) just because. Then the actual municipal costs start piling on. And land is expensive. Easier to spread all that over 4000 sf of $600/sf housing than 1600 sf of $220/sf.
"Who is buying these very expensive houses?"
Not me.
She is rich?
I did some Googling, and found a 2016 reference that indicated "nationally" - when adjusted for inflation - house prices have been a pretty consistent $120/sf since the '70s.
But, the size of houses has more than doubled in that time.
While I consider CA it's own particular outlier for dozens of reasons, my intuition is that over the past 50 years in housing is similar to what's happened everywhere else.
Consolidation, mergers, etc., has largely illuminated actual competition in place of industry-driven policy that if not out-right collusive is so ingrained as to be heretical to deny.
In simple terms, the larger the house, the larger the margins. Everyone understands the basic math there. So, the PROVIDERS have a built-in incentive to always be pushing to sell the biggest they can. I tried to find what margins really are - and found a repeated reference to one specific survey where "speculative" builders SAID they had a 5.9% margin. But, I found another reference where the total costs vs. revenues for the industry were examined, and the margin was 18.9%.
The unfortunate reality is low-end, first-time buyers are stuck with manufactured housing (mobile homes), or "multi-family" (townhouse complexes). It's all that's available on the low end, (other than the new "tiny home" fad.
Hard to imagine an era when the Levittown Model House (976 sq.ft.) was being sold to millions.
15-20% margin. Less than that and it's not worth the time/risk and the property doesn't get developed yet.
The smaller the lot the higher the municipal margins thus big houses on postage stamps and all the congestion that goes with density.
What I'd like is more walking cities. Like Boston, which is too cold. Then, density is good.
Should the poor and lower middle just give up on Kali and go somewhere else?
Those grey and yellow areas are where real Americans live!!!! The other areas are where those elites are sucking on the hard earned taxes the real Americans paid!!!!
One of the many problems with Kalipornikateya is the job magnet areas of LA and SF are built out. The only way to increase housing is to go up. The areas where you might go up are wealthy and would resist to the death any high rise development. Re: Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton and Los Gatos. Others will have to list the areas in LA.
With no workers nearby, something has to give with job magnets.
Good morning!��
Workers will go to where their needs are met. At home the worker shortage is the dead small town, no fun for the youth, can’t pass a drug test or puff legally. Money is secondary as is responsibility. The new worker will cost more and do less, Tech is here.
FBI, FBI!
Liz:
Here is the Muddy Bloggers latest on rebuilding his house:
"Just got back from looking at the property.
Last truck load of soil was dumped today.
Compaction should be done by next Tuesday.
Then start in digging the foundation.
Oh yeah most truss companies are backed up at least 3-4 months already.
>FBI, FBI!
Probably right now behind closed doors Coons and other Dems are yucking it up: "I can hardly believe Flake fell for that one week investigation ".
Flake is a Flake! LOL!
104f here today 45f back home ��
Where is he?
Here is Lake Havasu AZ. ☀️
Good nite. I would prefer not to live in interesting times.
I meant Muddy.
The Dems didn't want the FBI, just the delay.
Had they wanted the FBI they'd have brought this up when they first received the information, but they already knew there was nothing there. By springing it now, they hoped to push confirmation past the election when they figured it wouldn't matter.
Now it's likely the worst possible outcome for the Dems. The FBI is highly motivated to confirm that their SIX prior background checks were correct, which would both pave Kavanaugh's way to SCOTUS and haunt the Dems in the mid-terms.
The DNC is it's own worst enemy.
W
We will just have to wait and see. In the meantime every woman who got groped will ruminate about it.
Back to housing and finance. It is so clean compared to politics. Even the scammers are more wholesome.
And in spite of gloomy talking heads, the economy is humming along, with low unemployment, but not low enough! Slightly higher wages after inflation, but not increasing enough! Higher stock markets and good profits, except for brick and mortar. Debt not so bad, except the Feds, house prices going up, but slowly. Etc, etc. Matbe underwater homes in Miami will finally stick their noses out.
Liz, you asked about rebuilding in Sonoma County the other day.
We lost a bit more than 5,300 homes, 600 are being rebuilt, about 1,800 more are somewhere in the permitting process, and approximately 600 burn lots have come on the market. Of those burn lots roughly a quarter have sold.
So, a little less than half are in the process of being rebuilt.
As to the rest, most of those people are still wrangling with their insurance companies.
Interest in those burn lots has declined, we had quite a few small time speculators buy a half dozen or so earlier this year who are now realizing that they will not be able to start building for 2--3 years at the earliest because there aren't any workers available and costs are going up.
The same thing happened with out of the area contractors, quite a few came in right after the fires and started bidding on jobs.
Then they discovered that no subcontractors were available and that there was no where to house workers if they brought them in from outside the area.
I am most familiar with Christopherson Builders, good people who have solid relationships with subs throughout NorCal.
They have locked up many of the best subcontractors from the Sacramento Area who are now having their crews commute.
2 hours plus each way.
This has affected existing home values as well, if there's any work that needs to be done by a contractor the lead time is substantial.
I'm looking at a property for some buyers that needs 3-4 days work and I talked to two contractors who owe me favors.
Early August 2019 if we sign now.
Interesting times...
Good morning!
Thanks for the info. The magnitude of the loss is far more then I imagined. Years to build days to destroy.
Import workers and put them in trailers, nice tents, provide water and electricity. Tell the nimbys to F off. Provide this stuff will be gone in a year and a half.
We needed a new roof long before the hurricane. No takers. Roof survived hurricane quite nicely. Afterwards found roofer and contCtr working away on other renovations. They are there, but it's taking such a long time. Grit and dust.
Kali can only be worse. Contractor parks his truck and trailer in front, when he needs to. Nobody cares.
Good morning.
Should these structures be rebuilt where they were and how they were built?
Geesh.
Is It possible to build mid middle class housing or housing for people who are just over Mid middle? And make a profit?
In the unsold burn lots? Who owns them?
I'd bet insurance companies.
The poor and working class live inland in the valley. I don’t think there is enough brush grown back for the illegals to live in either. The nimby folks don't care where they come from just as long as they get what they want. IMO.
They might not get what they want
What they don't want is no parking available, roads choked, schools crowded, police & fire overloaded.
There is a difference between:
"Wanting the same as what you have."
And:
"Wanting what you have."
And a new post.
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