The number of US cities where first-time homebuyers are faced with at least a $1 million price tag on the average entry-level home has nearly tripled in the past five years, according to new research.
A Thursday report from Zillow indicates that a typical starter home is now worth $1 million or more in 237 cities, up from 84 cities in 2019, underscoring America’s ongoing home affordability crisis.
“Affordability has been strained across the board,” Orphe Divounguy, a senior economist at Zillow, said. “We see the largest number of million-dollar starter homes in expensive coastal markets. We see them in markets with very low homeownership rates and we see them in markets with more building regulations.”
If that’s even true, then that only means that most people can afford it. If nobody could afford it, then the prices wouldn’t be this high.
The areas where these starter homes are so expensive are areas with big disparities in income. Let’s look at the Bay Area, with all that tech money. There must be some people who can afford those prices. They are probably the ones making good money in the tech sector there. But then all their local services are provided by lower-paid people who can’t live there.
What happens when all those tech workers have kids? No matter where they send their kids for school, the teachers at that school can’t afford to live there and probably have 90 min commutes each way just to find one of those “starter” homes to live in. Ditto for the librarians, and bus drivers, and day care providers. Even the grocery store clerks can’t make enough to afford to live there.
People going massively into debt isn’t affordable.
Corporations are buying up these houses faster than individuals and are pricing everyone out of the market. Then they offer them as rentals.
Someone paying the rents? Seems like it’s priced well then. This is how the free market works.
It is how the free market works yes, the problem is that the free market itself is fundamentally broken
No it’s not broken just because things are expensive or unaffordable for some. You don’t have to like the system but that doesn’t mean it’s broken.
The “free market” has resulted in an average of 27 empty homes per homeless person in America.
https://www.self.inc/info/empty-homes/
Guess it isn’t priced well.
Well then the prices will correct themselves soon.
Based on what, your gut brain? This has been going on for years.
Based on supply and demand? Dense much?
Again- this has been going on for years. So when is it going to change? Tomorrow? Next year? Next decade? Next century?
Because people can’t afford houses today.
Telling me that the “free market” will solve it goes against what has actually been happening.
Essentially, you’re doing a “what are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” and then insulting me when I pick my eyes over you.