10/07/2024
As someone who grew up living in rentals and with friends and family, I deeply understand the impact of housing instability. My partner and I decided early on to change that for ourselves, buying our first home at 21. It’s been life-changing, but now I see so many friends and family unable to do the same due to rising homeownership costs.
Everyone is feeling the pressure. Presidential candidates are proposing plans to tackle high housing costs, people at coffee shops are debating mortgage rates, and my neighbors are staying put despite their growing families and wanting more space. As a realtor, I witness this struggle firsthand through soaring home values and a hyper-competitive market.
I highly recommend you listen to this podcast episode of The Daily (linked below), where they introduced a powerful metaphor: our housing market is like a sick patient, getting worse each year.
It struck a chord with me, and I want to rally everyone to push for real change by supporting programs that restore the health of our housing market. If you're interested, the episode did a fantastic job breaking down how we got here.
Some key takeaways:
- This crisis has been building since 2008 when mortgage-backed securities collapsed. New construction fell from over 2 million units annually to about 600,000—and still hasn't recovered
- Builders aren’t profiting from building small houses
- Millennials—one of the largest demographic groups—entered the market in the 2010s, absorbing existing inventory
- The pandemic accelerated migration, fueled by lifestyle shifts and remote work, and low interest rates further boosted demand.
Inflation and appreciation have since driven prices sky-high
We’re now left with scarce inventory, unaffordable housing, and no easy solution. We urgently need to support initiatives that incentivize building smaller, more affordable homes. Middle-class housing must be a priority—our communities depend on it.
The roots of the property crisis run deep and have proved very hard to fix.
