So I was listening yesterday and the reported says something like… Young people have a hard time getting a mortgage because the older generation has low mortgage rates…blah blah…but now they’re all loosing jobs, getting sick etc so “that will unlock housing or mortgages” something annoying like that.
Well yeah. It happens every generation. Until I suppose nobody can make enough money to rent either much less have a mortgage. I much rather hear about mortgage rates coming down after another happy CEO event. Yeah fucking unlock that shit please!
Mortgage rates coming down is not the answer. It’ll only drive up demand while supply stays the same. There is a major need for more supply. People will reply with the number of vacant units, but vacancy is a broad measure that ignores things like a house currently being sold and going through the closing process.
The country, as a whole, needs something like 6.5 million more housing units to meet demand at which point prices would come down.
It’s unfortunately not going to happen without government (local or federal) intervention.
This Freakonomics episode focuses more on rentals but the basic concepts are the same:
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-rent-control-doesnt-work/