Now, "everyone" can afford a vacation property, but depending on how much money you have, it depends on low interest rates, and as-close-to-full occupancy on AirBnB as possible just to pay the mortgage.
It's like when "hey, maybe our household could use a second income" turned into "everyone needs 2 earners to get by". It's inflation.
I reached the same conclusion as you about people "condensing expenses". I was puzzling over how the economy is on fire, and yet businesses "aren't able to find workers" (read: workers who will accept what they're offering in pay) on the back of a huge unemployment spike, where you'd expect that previously-unemployed folks would be desperate for a paycheck. Some people point to Covid unemployment assistance, which is going away, but they must have compressed those living expenses in order to afford to demand higher wages.
Or, they simply left while out of work and everyone on the remote work end of the labor pool was taking walks, on zoom meetings, baking banana bread. In texas, I feel like we got an influx of low wager earners from other states because cost and really more open economy. Meanwhile a good portion of our existing low wagers went south.
My other proposal would be to enact laws against buying a home and not living in it, but again, not sure how legal/morally right to prohibit property ownership just like _that_
I wonder how many people moving here know that the lake was supposed to be a superfund site...or that their nice little cottage was a meth lab just a decade ago.
And that is why.
Heavy metal contamination...and not to mention the arsenic. 100 years of mining silver did a number on the downstream (Lake Coeur d'Alene).
Unfortunately, I think the crash will come first
You could cap the number of occupancy credits per sqft to keep things reasonable.
It would also help with things like state taxes based on primary residence.
/s
Particularly in governments run by politicians who agree with and were elected by folks that don't trust governments. Which means [that] government can't be trusted to maintain or upgrade infrastructure because that requires government to collect and spend tax dollars.
>my hope is all taxes from all those housing would be used by the government to upgrade the infrastructure and do something smart with it
"all taxes from all those houses" is likely not going to be enough to properly upgrade, let alone maintain, the infrastructure. I'm interested to see what those parts of Idaho look like in 5 to 15 years from now.
I short, I don't think there is anything abnormal about your claim that they are starting at $14 and unable to find anyone.
Our death rates here were not high for the age range that takes these jobs...we likely lost more to the opioid crisis than anything.
Coeur d'Alene was wide open for operation June 2020...the restaurants had a record year (due to Washington being locked down). I suspect this area will be one of the much studied regions in terms of Covid. Almost no lockdown, very limited mask usage, schools were largely open, as well as a very low vaccination rate in the county. I consider this area as close to a "control group" as you can get.
Housing market ramped up values. Landlords are raising rents across the board. There was a recent local article where one rent was raising from $800/mo to $1400. One of the apartment buildings in town went from $1250/mo to $1400 for a 1bd apartment (had to help move my friend from there) and apparently a large portion of the people in the building are behind on rent. When I went to rent a uhaul the lady said all her trucks have been pretty busy. All of their storage units are full of either people who are moving to town or people who have nowhere to go (her words).
The jobs which are unable to be filled local are the ones which were typically taken by the 18-30yr crowd. Even though they are paying considerably over minimum wage now there is still a massive shortage of workers (many restaurants are shutting down 1-2days a week due to lack of staff...particularly back of house staff). McDonalds in town is paying $14/hr now to start...minimum wage is $7.25. My pet theory is that the people who normally filled these jobs condensed their living expenses during covid. Moved back in with parents, moved into multi person dwellings. etc. but also even still they realize there is very little hope. If you make the average rate of pay in town $20/hr you can barely rent...and you need to make 3x that to even be considered for the "average house" in town. From my viewpoint I do not see a solution. Either we have tent cities or everyone who speculated and bought in a bubble without paying any attention to what "rent the town can bear" is going to take a massive loss (50% at least).
My personal opinion is that this issue is largely caused by vacation rentals. It isn't that everyone is moving here (we have had that since the 70s) it is that everyone moving here is buying 2 houses and turning what was once affordable rentals into unregulated hotel rooms that cost $6k/mo. Idaho enacted laws in 2017 to prevent any area in the state from blocking vacation rentals in any way. Ketchum, Coeur d'Alene, Boise...are all seeing this issue.
The next big crash will come when the large portion of remote workers who moved here are asked to come back to the office. If they refuse they won't be able to find a comparable job anywhere in the area. What was once a "steal" and "so cheap" now becomes way out of their price range once they are required to find local work. Again, I don't have a solution. Just observing from the trenches.