The Washington Post reports that Montgomery County home prices have risen nearly 70% in the past three years.
This represents a huge and unfair transfer of wealth from non-homeowners to homeowners. It hurts young single people like me, because we aren't usually homeowners. And with housing prices rising and rising, maybe my whole generation will be shut out of home ownership and condemned to second class status.
Housing prices have risen not by accident, but because of government policies that prohibit new home construction, resulting in an artificial shortage of houses. But this obvious reason wasn't mentioned in the article, because liberals will never say anything in favor of construction.
4 comments:
And you're subsidizing anyone with a mortgage to boot. Yay!
Land is scarce, but our ability to make residential living space out of it is nearly infinite.
The same lot used for a single house could support a skycraper with hundreds of units. Local governments choose not to allow the land to be developed.
Also, let's not forget that the primary factor driving the housing bubble is central bank manipulation of money and credit. More specifically, the Fed is supressing interest rates which artificially raises demand for housing thereby fueling the speculative mania. The December 11th issue of The Economist thinks the current global housing bubble might be "the biggest financial bubble in history."
This represents a huge and unfair transfer of wealth from non-homeowners to homeowners. It hurts young single people like me, because we aren't usually homeowners. And with housing prices rising and rising, maybe my whole generation will be shut out of home ownership and condemned to second class status..
As a young, single homeowner in Montgomery County, let me just say: Woo-hoo!Now that the gloating is out of the way, why is my choosing to invest my money in a house which has subsequently appreciated in value a "huge and unfair transfer of wealth from non-homeowners to homeowners?" When property values fall, is that a "huge and unfair transfer of wealth from homeowners to non-homeowners?"
The housing around here has always been expensive because of demand. Lots of people want to live here and a lot of the people who already live here don't want high-density housing (apartments) near their expensive homes because rentals decrease property values.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...whining is unattractive...
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