Kill the billionaires who horde homes.
Ban, and jail, participation in price fixing systems that most people use, especially apartments, to price their product.
Kill the billionaires.
Put caps on resell values of 5% per year to stop flippers.
Again, kill the billionaires.
Set maximum rent increases to 5%.
Kill the… etc.
Billionaires and rent-seeking companies. There are at least three national companies I can think of who are hoarding single-family homes in major cities and renting them out.
Generally they purchase at scale via REO scenarios, and provide no value whatsoever while driving up prices drastically
One example is a company called “Progress,” no better or worse than the others but with a meaningful web presence if you’re curious.
Whatever happened to public housing? City governments should start getting into the development business and light a fire under these greedy mfs with $200,000 starter condos.
Yes. Unfortunately city gov’t always reasons that the public money will be better spent if developers front the cost of building, but the developers aren’t building the kind of housing that houses the populations that need it (and in the Bay Area many of these luxury towers have very low occupancy). I wish my tax money would go directly to building affordable and dignified housing that would be managed by a public trust or similar.
I wish we had social housing like in Vienna
A starter home isn’t just “the cheapest thing in a given market.” Some neighborhoods aren’t starter home markets.
You can’t say “It’s a starter in Malibu” or “That’s starter home prices in downtown Manhattan.” Neither of those locations have starter homes in them.
That said, abolish NIMBYs but let’s be real, no one can afford a “Starter” in those places because they aren’t Starter locales.
Also nearly 1/3rd of all homes in the USA are purchased with cash, no financing.
Salaries in the US are a bit mad though, so it’s mostly inflation surely?
No. Wages have remained stagnant and actually have gone down. The median salary is $74k, and remember that half of people in the US make less than that. 62% of Americans can’t afford to buy the cheapest house in the cheapest state for housing.
