People should pick a month and just stop paying their credit bills as a protest. Suddenly overnight there will be a debt jubilee announced.

I'm really struggling to do that, because trading up in areas is difficult, I'm looking at a doubling of housing costs (plus all the other costs of moving) in exchange for ~20-30% more pay in a more affluent area. There are a lot of people like me, trapped in crappy areas with low housing costs and unable to trade up despite being full-time employed. I feel like I just exist here, weekends are my escape but I need to escape forever.

Some dead or dying places are so cheap that you can not even get loans to fix properties. Which itself is an different issue.

Some reasonably growing areas have quite affordable old housing.

I have family in Michigan. I checked home prices and you can still buy a house (not a condo), in a nice town with very good schools for $200,000. With property tax, insurance and mortgage your total home expense would be ~$1,000/month, even at today's interest rates.

Plenty of jobs that pay $60,000 there, that's $7,000 per month take home if you're married with two wages earners, leaving $6,000 left over each month, or $60,000 per year.

You will often have weather to deal with.

And if you’re young and willing, buying a fixer upper is still a workable strategy - and youtube makes this actually much more workable than even 20 years ago. Sweat equity works wonders.

Part of the trick is that lots of jobs are not actually IN the city - they will be to one side, so live on the side that your job is.

This is why a few cities, like Pittsburg, have seen a resurgence -- cheap housing and the benefits of an actual city.

As a homeowner I don't mind if house prices fall, that means more people will be able to afford to live in their own house. I still get to live in a house. It's a win win, until I try and sell my house and small amount of that imagined house value is gone, but maybe living in a farer society makes up for that.

I'm with you, though—as long as I can afford to live here, the value of my house doesn't matter so much because I like it and don't want to sell it. But part of me knows (and hates) that this house is also the biggest slice of my net worth, and its value heavily impacts any future financial leverage...

It wasn't always viewed that way in the US until the past few decades. And in many places, it's not viewed that way at all, more of a "store of wealth", rather than a "good investment".

And until quite recently, in most of the country, this basically help, once you factored out size increase (modern housing stock is much larger on average than housing stock from the 50s or even 70s even as families are smaller) and also factor out mechanical improvements - modern houses are built better in many ways that do cost more.

I wish more of the indicies that track this stuff did more to track the land and the improvements separately.

Because most of the increase in valuation of land comes from the old farmhouse now being inside the city boundaries.

That's Robert Shiller's claim when you look at average home prices across the entire country over a long enough period.

Contrary to popular belief, there has been no continuous uptrend in home prices in the US and the home prices show a strong tendency to return to their 1890 level in real terms. Moreover, he illustrates how the pattern of changes in home prices bears no relation to changes in construction costs, interest rates or population

Am I missing something in my inflation calculation, have we divided into areas with steady growth and increasing incomes vs say non tech cities without rising incomes and people moving there or is it something else? Because there are lots of cities, like stereo-typically mid-west cities that have struggled to maintain their population after major manufacturers leave.

Of course, at that zoomed out view it becomes "houses are more expensive where people want to live" which is kind of tautological.

The conclusion goes beyond that. The argument is that local areas may see price inflation, but over time they trend towards the mean (you can't have the average be inflation otherwise).

So basically people may enjoy an increase worth of their property, but it's not a long term trend but rather something that happens in distinct periods, usually followed by a price drop or stagnation that pulls the average back towards the mean.

It's simply impossible on a long term over a long area.

And, as HN commentators, we have been accustomed to appreciation in "our areas" for nearly 40 years now - and that has covered many "mistakes" that may not be covered in the future.

I think that in the expensive tech cities (for lack of a better description), like seattle, austin, SF/bay area, prices have generally increased over time much faster than inflation, and they aren't losing that lead. It's actually true that people can hardly afford to live in those places because hourly wages of $20+/hour is just not enough to pay for housing. Using a multiple of avg salary seems wrong because where does the average come from, because avg in that area?

It's simply too expensive for most regular workers, teachers, police, but also that person working at a coffee shop can't afford to live there. It's not a good thing. I recognize we need to build more housing and I'm part of the problem because I bought a house in mine a long time ago.

This is encouraged. So when there is legislation or regulations that would reduce the price inflation of properties they are the first to complain. They usually have more political influence too by way of being regular voters etc. And so instead of the mentality you share, they don't see owning properties other than a means of "semi passive" income.

It made a lot more sense 10 years ago, but the data would seem to suggest that it's not a massive driver of sales right now.

Like the Irish property market is insane right now, but I suspect that much more of the rental purchases are driven by small investment companies as that makes much, much more sense from a tax and overall expense purposes.

Sadly for them, eventually they learn why professional landlords want to see debt service be 50% or less of revenues. And it’s not because they get to pocket 50%.

It’s been covered up because appreciation has been so high as to cover the bad accounting, but a few years of increased rates and near zero appreciation will put the hurt on them - and then watch out!

There are some good statistics here in the CSO (Central Statistic Office) for Ireland.

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp1hii/cp...

A bit further down you can find the age gaps between "Outright ownership"

"Figure 3.5 Tenure status by age of householder, 2016" Particularly glaring.

> I suspect that much more of the rental purchases are driven by small investment companies

On this topic, yes for new builds, pretty much investment companies will come in and buy them up prior to being built. This has always been a thing, but is not helping the situation for normal people just looking to buy somewhere to live.