US Homes Less Affordable Than Ever
- Author: Monica Jackson
- Posted: 2024-02-06
This information is coming directly from financial sites and networks like Bloomberg and Forbes. The average home that cost $100,000 in 2019 is now close to $300,000 on the open market. That's a nearly 200% increase in barely over two years, and the fact is that people cannot afford homes these days, which leads them to rent. And with rent being more than it's ever been, especially in cities, tens of millions of Americans are financially struggling, as the current political administration stands on a podium and tells you how great the economy is booming now. For the average American, even buying groceries is a struggle, much less buying a new home for their family.
COVID Was a Boon for Lenders
You might not know it, but the housing market was booming initially under COVID-19. There was something about this crisis that was causing a huge boon in home sales. Especially among people who lived in densely populated areas and wanted to move, their homes were going up for sale left and right and were being purchased even quicker. However, this would quickly lead to high prices to try to control the market by leveraging the power of the sellers. What this led to was much higher prices for homes, and this trend has continued for over a year now. The same homes are nearly double the price now compared to this time last year, and that's an unprecedented turn of events that many experts claim is entirely unsustainable.
So while the virus and lock-downs were initially a good thing for the housing market, greed took over and the great American trait of taking advantage of people won the day, and there's no one doing anything about it. The government's main focus is turning the over 1.2 million illegal immigrants into voting citizens this year, while giving many of them a government check for over $400,000. That's where the government's priorities rest, not on average Americans trying to purchase homes.
Bidding Wars Drive Prices Up
The reason that the prices were driven up so much was that America's wealthiest people, who more than doubled their wealth during the pandemic, are competing in bidding wars with one another over homes. Whats worse here is that they're not even bidding these homes up to personally live in. They're trying to buy these homes up so that they can resell them on the market and profit more. So, if you have Average Joe, and two wealthy people, all looking at the same home, the Average Joe loses because the wealthy start bidding with each other for the prize of owning a home that they can hopefully get Average Joe to spend an excess $100k on for their own profit.
Yes, in the United States of America, this is considered perfectly legal, and insofar as the government decides to address this practice at all, they claim that it's a good thing and that it just proves how strong the economy is. Meanwhile, Average Joe doesn't get a home.
Right or left, Republican or Democrat, or something in between, you may be asking yourself why government isn't doing anything about this crisis. Well, in reality, between trying to grant amnesty to immigrants, and starting a war with Russia, the housing crisis isn't even on the government's radar, just like back in 2008.
