The Federal Reserve is signalling a change of course, and it's music to the ears of businesses, investors, and everyday Americans. After two years of aggressive rate hikes to combat inflation, the central bank is now laying the groundwork for a shift towards easing
It’s one of the things that has to happen in order for housing costs to come down. The first battle is getting inventories up, and this will encourage people to sell and builders to build. Additionally, there are steps (federally and at state and local levels) to block or disinsentivise corporations from buying everything as soon as it hits the markets but those measures are largely untested.
Once there’s inventory there’s still work to do, but none of that work will matter without the inventory.
I really hate to break it to you, but supply isn’t the issue, at least not the way you’re implying. There’s more than enough empty housing for every single person in this nation.
The primary issues are extreme amounts of land/property being bought up by investment firms only to sit empty in order to artificially drive supply down and only higher end housing being built new due to profit margins.
Yes, that’s what the second half of my post was referring to.
The point is the inventory is there. It’s been there. Anyone telling you “we need more supply” is blatantly lying, either because they’ve been lied to or because they have an agenda
This also indicates that a greater supply won’t fix the issue if we already have an appropriate supply. These corporations will just buy up new houses the same as they did with the old ones.
Furthermore, lower interest rates mean higher home prices as you’ll have more people competing for the houses when everyone (including wealthy corps) gets free and easy access to loans.
The inventory is not there. It’s the lowest its been in decades. If corporations own a house and they’re letting it rot it is still not available and thus is not inventory. I’ve been in RE tech for 15 years and our databases have never been this empty.
We generally measure inventory in months and considered 6months worth of sales to be the minimum requirement for a buyers market. We’re currently measuring it in days in may cities. Inventory is so low we had to add a 3rd type of market as this market is bad for both sellers and buyers. This is an investors market.
Honestly I don’t care what the official term, at all. If its empty housing, it’s inventory. If you’re sitting on empty housing because the rent isn’t high enough for you, you’re part of the problem. We have the housing. We also have limitless amounts of greed and selfishness.
Those are lovely thoughts; unfortunately not pertinent to what we’re talking about. The bottom line is the properties are not a available for purchase and the only force in the country likely to change that in the short term is a major recession. People can’t buy it, so it might as well not exist.
Remember, this is a country that legally requires restaurants to destroy billions of calories of perfectly good food and subsidizes farmers to let more food rot in fields all while children starve. Money being more important than lives is the basis of our economy. Corporations will only change if its more profitable to do otherwise or they’re force to by legislation. And half the government is pulling out every legal maneuver in the books to stop it any law changes. It sucks, but you have to see it to change it.