We tried this in Oz. House prices immediately go up 5k.
Government effectively funding the housing bubble.
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
147 points (95.7% liked)
politics
19136 readers
3717 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Some part of me thinks that many of the backers of this idea want exactly that.
I suspect that the goal with this program is to advantage first time home buyers over their competitors, such as REITs and hedge funds that have been indiscriminately buying up housing across the country. Obviously the devil is in the details but there's a way to implement this that makes sense and isn't insane, but we'll have to wait until the bill passes to see if that's the path we take.
That's not what happened the last time they did this in the states.
The housing crisis won't end until (among other things) corporations cannot freely own limitless numbers of single family homes. We will see perpetual renting because it's effectively passive income for the corporations, and they have deeper pockets than 99.9% of individuals.
As companies own more and more, but don't sell, supply dwindles, and the bubble never bursts.
It won't end until we have significant growth in the supply of housing units in the places people want to live relative to the number of people we have. Anything else is just window dressing.
We've been chronically underbuilding for decades, while population continued to grow. What would you expect to happen?
This (correct me if I'm wrong) does nothing on the supply side, and only raises the amount that prices could be artificially increased by that to offset it, isn't that the way these things play out?
The more houses that actually sell on the market, the lower the prices due to competition. The trouble is getting this initiative out. It needs to come out election year or it's not happening of course.
This could back fire in a drastic way. If those families sell those houses to large companies; those houses will go off the market (perhaps permanently) to be part of renting farms where those big companies set the rent to whatever they like.
I think Biden has something to deal with those large companies but if they are not discussing it during an election year, "Forget about it."
That's what I would worry about also, companies are trying to buy every house on the market it seems, and this just gives them more to buy
You cannot set the rent to "whatever you like". There's a reason why my NYC apartment is $2500 a month and not $250,000 a month. If a corporation does take an owned unit into the rental market, it'll be competing with all other rentals. That will decrease supply for the ownership market, yes, but it also increases supply in the rental market, which tends to consist of people who are financially struggling more than people looking to buy a house.
Regardless, the actual solution is to just build some more god damned housing so that it stops being an attractive investment in the first place. Housing cannot be both a good investment and affordable.
I understand prices are not arbitrary numbers but prices are different in markets that have many players versus ones that have only several big ones.
Building more houses is a good long term solution. I agree with you there. Another one is too set a penalty for owning single family homes so ideally you would only want to own just one anyways.
This is only available to first-time buyers, not universally, so it wouldn't be quite that simple. If you're confident your house will sell quickly, yeah, you'll just increase the price by 5k, but if you've been having trouble finding a buyer, the credit might tip your current price into being affordable to a first-time buyer that would otherwise pass it up, so you may hold the price steady.
That said, subsidizing demand like this while ignoring the core supply crunch issue is generally not very helpful.
Like the issue is still supply and getting NIMBYS/cities to fuck off, lack of middle + government housing, etc right? These first-time buyers things dont seem to be effective because the issue seems rooted in artificially restricted supply and overwhelmingly accelerating increase of demand (corporate purchasing and in my country at least, unsustainable international "student" policy to enrich schools and a fundamentally unsustainable immigration frenzy writ large
Nothing against students and immigrants (we'll need them since none of us non-blessed can reproduce) but we're lying and taking advantage of many who aren't rich and are banking on our rosier international reputation when the reality is its all fucked and everything that is seen to be done pours lighter fluid on the fire.
Im so tired of all this 😭
Trolls seem to be saying nothing is better than something. Didn't he just lower the credit card penalties? Didn't he lower the cost of insulin?
That's great and all, but 5 grand won't even make a dent in the money you'd need to put as a down payment to get a mortgage that you can actually afford to pay.
Build more houses, please. Especially more low and middle income complexes. The government is the only entity that has the ability to do so, because the private sector can't make money off of low income sales.
This is just paying lip service to the problem, not solving it.
Add 2 zeroes
You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. We just bought our first home last year and found out then that the tax credits I grew up hearing about ended several years ago and now it’s back now that I’m no longer qualified :|
You own a home, why are you disappointed about this?
Humans are fucking weird, man.
Biden throwing Americans the smallest bone possible with this tax credit. The ruling class has no interest in offering anything meaningful unless forced.
Wow, 2-4* whole months of payments on a 30 year mortgage, what an incentive! /s
(*Depending on location)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Biden will also call on Congress to provide a one-year credit of up to $10,000 for families who sell their starter homes, so long as their houses are below the median price in their county.
The idea is to free up a part of the market that has been effectively frozen, as thousands of homeowners cling to low mortgages of 2 or 3 percent and avoid buying a new home with a much higher rate.
Meanwhile, some housing experts raise concerns that new credits could inject even more demand into the market while supply is still catching up — possibly pushing prices even higher.
And Biden will unveil a new $20 billion competitive grant fund as part of his budget, expected next week, which would support the construction of affordable multifamily rental units and remove barriers to housing development.
Those include steps taken to reduce closing costs for home buyers, which the White House stresses can add thousands of dollars to a purchase and put it out of reach.
“President Biden is absolutely right to lay out his plans to make housing more affordable,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a left-leaning think tank.
The original article contains 978 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Instead of funding the creation of rentals, which will only lock Americans into renting forever, why don't we fund low cost condos? Literally the same buildings as apartments but with individual ownership.
I will keep my 2.2% thx
LOWER THE COST OF GROCERIES !!!
FUCK
A tax credit of $5k for a house that is overvalued by $300k-$500k with like 7% baseline mortgage interest?
Fun stuff.