Median house unaffordable to first-time home buyers

[WendyBG]

A friend of mine (whose parents lived in an apartment) told me a family saying: “A house begets a house.” This was a way of expressing how difficult it was for a first-time homebuyer without equity from sale of a previous house.

As it turned out, both that friend and I bought our own houses from scratch. But we were not median people. And median first-time home buyers are not able to afford to buy from scratch in today’s housing bubble.

Zillow has found '“Home prices and/or mortgage rates would need to drop by massive amounts to make a typical home affordable for a median-income family.”

Rate, Price Drops Won’t Substantially Improve Affordability

Holding incomes, home prices and all other housing-related costs equal, mortgage rates would need to drop to 4.43% in order for a typical home to be affordable to a buyer making the median income, assuming they put 20% down. That kind of a rate decline is currently unrealistic.

Not even an interest-free loan would make the typical house affordable in some expensive coastal metros without a substantial down payment. This is the case in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, San Diego, and San Jose. In these metros, even just taxes, insurance, and maintenance can cost over 10% of the median income. These high additional costs limit how much families can pay toward the mortgage at all, while keeping housing costs under 30% of their income….

Rather, the only sustainable solution to the affordability crisis is not through a fall in prices or mortgage rates, but through building enough to close the housing deficit… [end quote]

Location, location, location. The article lists cities that are absolutely unaffordable to median homebuyers and others that are affordable.

They also point out that only a serious recession would cause interest rates and home prices to fall enough to make them affordable in the higher-priced cities.

At some point in the future the Baby Boomers will begin to move out of their homes to assisted living (or the life in the great beyond). But that will take years to make a dent since the Millennial cohort is larger.

Wendy

[flyerboys]

Very important topic.

Not only do we not have enough housing, much of the existing housing stock is absurdly obsolete (especially regarding thermodynamics, insulation, etc., but also risky climate locations) and built to satisfy fantasyland desires that suck in hapless homebuyers who do not understand maintenance and risk.

Our politics is running off ever deeper into fantasyland and blame games rather than looking at what needs to be done and doing it.

[Goofyhoofy]

The way to afford a house is to buy the house you can afford. Look at a lot of properties, buy in a good neighborhood or area, then 3 or 5 years down the line, upgrade. You should be making more money, you will have some equity, interest rates will probably be lower, and you will be able to buy “more house”.

This is not new, and should not be news. Sometimes you have to buy the steak you can afford not the steak you want at that very moment.

[albaby1]

@WendyBG

Rather, the only sustainable solution to the affordability crisis is not through a fall in prices or mortgage rates, but through building enough to close the housing deficit…

The problem, though, is that housing is in some ways a positional good.

It’s like the Disneyland thread, lamenting that Disney now offers different “tiers” of experience based on willingness to pay. That is often a hallmark of a “positional good,” where the value of the good doesn’t like solely in having access to the good (yes or no), but based on the nature of your access relative to other people. Getting an Xbox might be an ordinary good; being the first to get an Xbox is a positional good.

Location is often a positional good (quite literally). Two people might each have a house. But if one person has a house that is closer to downtown, they get to enjoy something that is of a different (assume higher for this discussion) quality than the one that’s further away. A residential unit in Manhattan has a different value than the same unit in Brooklyn than the same unit in Pittsburgh than the same unit in rural Iowa.

The problem with positional goods is that you typically can’t make more of them. Their value is defined in part by their scarcity. A unit overlooking Central Park West in Manhattan is immensely expensive by virtue of its location, and you can’t reduce the price by making more of them.

If you have an economy structured around “spiky cities” - a limited number of very high-GDP/productive areas that are geographically limited - then a lot of the benefit of that economy will accrue to the people who own the positional goods that allow access to those economic powerhouses. IOW, the folks who own residential real estate near those economic centers. This was the big refinement after Piketty’s book came out, when folks pointed out that a lot of his arguments about returns to capital vs.economic growth were an artifact of the massive increases in value of housing, not other types of capital.

Can’t necessarily solve that by building more housing, because the places you can physcially build more housing cheaply aren’t places that have the positional advantage of the expensive housing.

[WendyBG]

@Goofyhoofy

The way to afford a house is to buy the house you can afford.

That’s what I did. My first house was very small, built in 1928, located in a NYC “target area” across from a giant garage where Staten Island buses came to sleep overnight and a smaller auto repair shop where the homies drank beer and played basketball.

The Zillow study is based on median buyers and median home prices.

If more first-time home buyers bid on low-cost starter homes the prices will obviously rise. NYC has a long history of neighborhoods being re-gentrified by artists and middle-class buyers displacing the poor and businesses. My father’s electrical contracting business was displaced several times, first from Astor Place, then from Spring Street (which became the SoHo art district), then from Broadway. (Jeff @OrmontUS could say more about this.)

Even my local radio station in tiny Sequim reads statistics on how many homes were sold over bid in our area.

Supply and demand. If the demand for tiny starter homes is higher than the supply the price will rise.

Wendy

[albaby1]

@albaby1

Can’t necessarily solve that by building more housing, because the places you can physcially build more housing cheaply aren’t places that have the positional advantage of the expensive housing.

Replying to my own post, because I forgot the other reason you can’t build your way out of expensive housing:

You don’t have a time machine.

If you’re buying a car, cheap cars are used cars. The same is true of houses. Cheap houses are used houses. Cheap houses are older houses. Cheap houses are houses where the stuff is older. Cheap houses are houses that were built when people used them differently, or were interested in different places, or wanted different things in a house. They’re the houses that are a little worn out, a little out of fashion, a little not exactly perfect for what today’s modern families are looking for.

In other words, houses built 10-20 years ago.

But we don’t have a time machine. We can’t go back and build more houses in 2007-2017.

Building more houses now can’t really fix the problem of the missing decade of low housing starts, because new houses - even the cheapest new houses - are very expensive. Well, outside of new large-scale greenfield developments, which are typically not available for development in the areas where housing prices are showing serious problems.

New Privately-Owned Housing Units Started: Single-Family Units (HOUST1F) | FRED | St. Louis Fed

[WendyBG]

@albaby1

Building more houses now can’t really fix the problem of the missing decade of low housing starts, because new houses - even the cheapest new houses - are very expensive.

They would be a lot less expensive if they were built to the old specifications.

1200 square feet instead of 2000 square feet.

Two bathrooms (or maybe even one!) instead of a bathroom for every bedroom plus extras for the kitchen and garage.

A one-car garage instead of a 2-car garage. Or maybe a carport.

Eight-foot ceilings instead of cathedral ceilings. (Cheaper to heat, too.)

Formica counters in the kitchen instead of Corian or granite.

Builders don’t want to build starter homes because they are less profitable.

Wendy

[ptheland]

What about the other side of the coin? Where does income play a role in this issue?

It’s been talked about previously how wages have not kept up with inflation over the last several decades. Assuming that is correct, finding a way to raise wages seems likely to be part of the solution as well.

[albaby1]

@WendyBG

Builders don’t want to build starter homes because they are less profitable.

My practice involves representing a lot of builders. It’s a little more complicated than that. At least here in Miami, which is the sort of “spiky” major metro that has a lot of affordability issues.

Builders don’t build starter houses for a number of reasons. In part, it’s because there isn’t any more starter land to build the starter houses on. Starter houses work on greenfield sites - big ag areas out on the edge of town. If land is cheap and you have 200-400 homesites per phase to enable the type of ‘cookie-cutter’ mass building that’s less expensive to do, you can aim your product a little more down market. But that type of land’s been gone for a long time. In the real dense urban areas (Boston, NYC, and the like), land prices are so high that even though construction costs aren’t much of an issue, you’re not going to make your pro forma work aiming for entry level.

Also, the economics of housing development have changed a bit (again, at least down here) with the increased use of impact fees, connection charges, “tap” fees, and other “per unit” costs. Basically, the developer makes pretty much the same dollars for the overall square feet that they’re building regardless of whether they divide that square feet into X units or Y units - but their costs go up if they build more smaller units than fewer bigger units. And with the evolution of development approval into a bespoke process, rather than as-of-right, it’s much easier to get fewer bigger units than more smaller units approved.

And as I pointed out upthread, the way people use homes has changed. With the internet, large-screen televisions, movies on demand, easy delivery, and the cultural death of group activities and going out for activities, you’re going to spend a lot more time at home. There’s been an exogenous demand for more space in homes.

And yes, because they aren’t competing with a lot of other new or near-new product, they have no real need to expand down-market to clear inventory - so they build the more expensive homes rather than the cheap ones, because they know they’re not facing much competition from cheap homes.

[DrBob2]

@ptheland

It’s been talked about previously how wages have not kept up with inflation over the last several decades.

Here is a graph of average income in real dollars since 1979:

DB2

[captainccs]

@WendyBG

They would be a lot less expensive if they were built to the old specifications.

Not too farfetched, Corvette Stingray prices 1965 - 2025 = 60 years

John Marcilha of Albuquerque, NM was working for IBM in Valencia Venezuela and he had a new Corvette Stingray which he wanted to sell as he was going home to the US. I asked how much he wanted. $5,000 which was the price of a brand new one. I just saw a convertible quoted at $90,000. That’s a 5% annual inflation or devaluation. Some of it is the shrinking value of the dollar, the rest new vs. old specifications. Sear belts, air bags and lots of whatnots.

The Captain

Marcilha and Albuquerque are Portuguese surnames.

[mostlylong]

@DrBob2

graph of average income in real dollars since 1979

Shocker: that is part of the story.

Shall we tell a more complete story?

@mostlylong

Over the last 60 years, workers are producing more additional real output for a lesser increase in real wages while corporate profits as a percent of GDI over this time period are the highest they have been.

[wecoguy]

@WendyBG

They would be a lot less expensive if they were built to the old specifications.

1200 square feet instead of 2000 square feet.

Two bathrooms (or maybe even one!) instead of a bathroom for every bedroom plus extras for the kitchen and garage.

A one-car garage instead of a 2-car garage. Or maybe a carport.

Eight-foot ceilings instead of cathedral ceilings. (Cheaper to heat, too.)

Formica counters in the kitchen instead of Corian or granite.

That fit our first home back in 1968, when I had returned from an overseas assignment, managed to save enough to get us in the door, taking over a CalVet loan from an AT&T fellow who was moving to Denver… A Young America, 100o sf, one bath, 3 BR, wall furnace, a single car garage… $13.8K, front yard a bit of landscaping, back yard, nothing but weeds…

I made a sketch at the time, we stayed there for about 6 years until a neighbor came along with 6 kids that were totally out of control, impossible to dal with, resorted to biblical quotes to excuse all his kids misdeeds, etc.. It was time to go.. Moved on to a 1,400 sf home in a quiet court, been here ever since.. No plans to leave… So if Young America could do it back in the '60s, and meet Codes of the day, I don’t see why it couldn’t be done today, other than how current events have driven material costs way up there, so maybe there is a chance, but so far our grandkids aren’t even considering anything yet… Ahh, yes, labor.. ICE scared off most of it… What a sad mess…

[btresist]

@WendyBG

Rather, the only sustainable solution to the affordability crisis is not through a fall in prices or mortgage rates, but through building enough to close the housing deficit

This stat may be relevant:

Nearly 27% of all homes sold in the first three months of the year were bought by investors — the highest share in at least five years, according to a report by real estate data provider BatchData. Real estate investors are purchasing more U.S. homes as high prices lock out would-be buyers - CBS News

A quarter of homes bought by investors strikes me as being a significant contributor to higher home prices. Perhaps substantially increasing the capital gains tax for sales of homes owned less than 5 years might help reduce home prices.

[btresist]

@ptheland

Where does income play a role in this issue?

The critical measure is the house price to income ratio.

Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we were able to calculate the price-to-income ratio for Americans in 1960 as well as 2019.

• In 1960, the median home cost $11,900, while the median income was $5,600, indicating a price-to-income ratio of 2.1.

• By contrast, in 2019 the median home cost $240,500 with an estimated median income of $68,703, a price-to-income ratio of 3.5. https://www.thezebra.com/resources/home/housing-trends-visualized/

[DrBob2]

@mostlylong

Shall we tell a more complete story?

Feel free, although it doesn’t mean that wage growth hasn’t exceeded inflation over the decades, contra what ptheland was assuming.

DB2

[mostlylong]

@DrBob2

Feel free

We are.

See bt’s post, above, and the home price to income ratio is even larger with more recent data, just ask the internet.

[intercst]

@Goofyhoofy

The way to afford a house is to buy the house you can afford. Look at a lot of properties, buy in a good neighborhood or area, then 3 or 5 years down the line, upgrade.

Don’t forget about “the skim”. You lose 9% to 13% of the sales price to transaction costs (and an even larger portion of your home equity if you carry a home mortgage.) Purchasing a new home with a mortgage typically comes with transaction costs of 3% to 4% of the purchase price.

Following the suggested “3 home cycle” of the American family (i.e., starter home, larger home to raise the family, and “downsize” before retiring) and you’ve lost 1/3 to 1/2 of your home equity to transaction costs over your lifetime. “Minimize the skim”.

intercst

[ptheland]

@btresist

The critical measure is the house price to income ratio.

Agreed. And there are two parts to that ratio. The discussion seemed to be focusing on home prices. I was trying to remind folks (probably badly) that income is an issue as well.

[MarkR]

@WendyBG

At some point in the future the Baby Boomers will begin to move out of their homes to assisted living (or the life in the great beyond). But that will take years to make a dent since the Millennial cohort is larger.

What exactly do you mean by “at some point in the future”? About 1/3 of the boomers are ALREADY dead, and have indeed moved out of their homes. And 2-3 million more die each year.

@WendyBG

Builders don’t want to build starter homes because they are less profitable.

This is inaccurate. Builders don’t want to build starter homes because they are NOT profitable. The amount of money required in various fees, and other rent-seeking behavior by government (all sorts of arbitrary rules in many cases), adds a “base level” of cost to all projects. And building starter homes including those base costs makes them completely unprofitable.

@intercst

Following the suggested “3 home cycle” of the American family (i.e., starter home, larger home to raise the family, and “downsize” before retiring) and you’ve lost 1/3 to 1/2 of your home equity to transaction costs over your lifetime. “Minimize the skim”.

Yep. This didn’t make sense to me and my wife, so long ago we decided to do our best to buy a home that we could remain in as long as possible, have all our kids, etc. So far it has worked out. About 30 years ago, with no children yet, we decided to buy a 4 bedroom home even though it was a stretch financially. We could have much more easily purchase a 2BR or a 3BR home in the same area. Now nearly 30 years later we are in the same home, all 5 kids were born here, grew up here, and we still remain here. It was a good decision and we avoided having to upgrade from a 2BR to a 3BR, and then from a 3BR to a 4BR. And we also resisted the temptation to move to a bigger house in the interim. At one point, I was tempted to add a second story to the house, but that would have entailed moving out for a year or two, and paying rent elsewhere IN ADDITION to paying for all the construction and upgrades that inevitably come with such projects. Instead we did moderate renovations periodically that served us well.