Comment by tptacek
3 days ago
None of this has anything to do with "affordability", which is not about shifting rentals to owner-occupied properties, but rather reducing the monthly cost of residing in areas with opportunity. The notion of home ownership as an absolute good is a driver of unaffordability.
Yup. Building wealth through home ownership directly implies homes becoming unaffordable for new buyers.
Right. There are good financial reasons to own a home even if you don't think it's going to be a great investment, just as there are very good reasons not to own a home even if you have the means. It's the absolute, which is the premise of this policy proposal, that's the problem.
And home ownership rates are well within the normal range for the US post war regime! So this is a policy proposal that will likely decrease affordability to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.
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I agree philosophically though there is a lot that can be done short of upending the entire American wealth structure like removing barriers to housing construction (to dramatically increase supply) as well as subsidizing first time buyers eg with preferential mortgage rates and tax write offs.
* Dramatically increasing supply will dramatically reduce home prices. That's the point.
* Subsidizing first-time buyers will increase home prices. That's the opposite of the point.
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