02/14/2026
ARE YOU A HOMEOWNER?
DO YOU WANT TO BE A HOMEOWNER?
DO YOU HAVE KIDS?
DO YOU HOPE YOUR KIDS CAN ONE DAY BE HOMEOWNERS?
We’ve been in the real estate business now for 18 years. We have seen a lot. And over the last few years, it feels more and more like we are living in a real-time Monopoly game. However, I am at present so deeply discouraged, disillusioned, and disenchanted with what homeownership is starting to look like in my children’s generation. My oldest is 20, and I have homebuyer clients in their early-to-mid-twenties that want very much to be homeowners. They’re graduating from college or their apprenticeships, they’re getting into their careers, they’re wanting to get married and start families, or they’re just simply wanting to adult and have their own homes. Here’s the problem: even with budgets $275-300k for their first home, the pickings are slim. IF a property does come on market that is in their budget, it’s lackluster. The floor isn’t level. The windows won’t open or shut properly. The cabinetry is beat to hell and barely hanging on. The list goes on ad nauseam. And always, ALWAYS, there’s a damned smell, either of mold/mildew, or old animal urine. Or, the other side of the coin may be true, where the house is a flip, a renovation, and the renovation was done really REALLY well. So what’s the problem? The backyard butts up to 640. Constant interstate noise. The neighboring homes look like they’re two years away from being condemned (because families are working so hard to pay the mortgage, keep the power on, and feed themselves, that there isn’t any extra money left over to maintain their home). The house is literally 10 feet off of a busy street. I am floored to see that this, THIS is what a quarter of a million dollars can buy you? I am watching my daughter and her friends and peers get pushed and priced out of the very communities that they’ve been born and raised in. I have some ideas that may help. But for someone who would rather err on the side of smaller and more limited governments, I almost can’t believe what I’m about to say, but here it goes:
We need a homebuyer’s eligibility checklist of sorts, and here is what I mean.
I suggest that when a single family home or lots/acreage go active on the market, the first 60 days of that listing, only local (state issued ID for at least 3 years) buyers who would be owner-occupants can make offers on that property. If that property doesn’t go under contract in the first 60 days, the next 30 days opens up buyers who would be out-of-state owner occupants who formerly lived in-state and are “coming home”, so to speak. If the property still doesn’t go pending, open it up to out-of-state owner occupant buyers. If that property still doesn’t go under contract, then the next 30 days opens up local investor buyers, but NOT local corporations or LLC’s or hedge funds or anything like that. I’m saying a local individual who would use it as a rental property, or they may want to flip it and re-sell it themselves. Make it to where selling a single family home to a corporation or hedge fund is literally the last option available after the timeline of hierarchy of other owner-occupant buyers has been exhausted.
We also need these government backed loans to amend their criteria on eligible properties. So government backed loans like FHA, USDA, VA, and THDA have a list of criteria that a property must meet in order for the property to qualify for their financing. Problem is, the properties in the price ranges of these young people, EVEN AT $275-300K, won’t qualify for these loan types because of the problems the property has.But I have young buyers over here, who are motivated, smart, and have strong backs and are absolutely competent enough to fix these properties themselves if they could just get the financing help they need. I don’t know if we need new loan products aimed at younger first-time homebuyers, or if the existing loan products just need to be updated, but the situation has multiple hinge-pins that are all failing at once.
And finally, we need the tax code changed. In my very humble opinion, the taxes that corporations, LLC’s, hedge funds, etc. would have to pay on SINGLE FAMILY HOMES that they own would be so profanely and egregiously high that it wouldn’t be worth their while to keep and they would offload the properties and sell them off and flood the market with these family homes. So then supply-and-demand. More inventory means more competition means home prices go down means more Americans become homeowners.
Something has got to give, here. I don’t have the answers, but I have ideas. And many of you much smarter than I am, talk to me here and weigh in. This would mean the government getting involved and passing legislation in order to make these “rules” take hold. And again, I’m at a crossroads here because this is the United States of America and who are you to tell me who I can and can’t sell my property to? But the flip side of that coin is, if things continue the way they’ve been going, we will be a nation of renters who are impoverished with extortionate rents (I think we’re there now, actually) on properties that are falling apart with no legal recourse. Things we NEED: food, energy, housing, medical care, these things should ALWAYS be AFFORDABLE BECAUSE THEY’RE NEEDS.
I personally do not subscribe to these things being free. I don’t think I’m entitled to someone else’s labor and materials. Yes we should absolutely pay the people who grow and farm our food, and who keep the power lines up and running, and who build our houses, and who diagnose our sicknesses and work diligently to heal us, but those things should be affordable to anybody and everybody. I’m so worried that the housing crisis is about to turn into a housing extinction.
Thank you for tuning in to my Ted Talk. We now turn you back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Marsha Blackburn
Rep. Tim Burchett
Senator Bill Hagerty
Rep. Diana Harshbarger
Congressman Chuck Fleischmann
Scott DesJarlais
Congressman Andy Ogles
Congressman Mark Green
Congressman David Kustoff
Congressman Steve Cohen
