Housing is a necessity. It shouldn’t outpace changes in the price of milk or gasoline. That it does should scare the hell out of us. The fact is we have painted ourselves into a corner by propping up insane housing valuations. I’m not sure what to even do about it at this point. Houses cost an order of magnitude more than they should but any correction will destroy the middle class.
Hypothetically (I expect the inverse to happen), if my value increases at this rate until my kids are moved out, I can sell this place for $1.5M. That would get me a LOT of house in one of those towns. But why? Who does that benefit? And does it push locals out of those towns, over time?
I don’t want to maintain some kind of housing homeostasis where values remain the same and no one moves. But the time scale here is ridiculous and it’s dramatically changing my region in bad ways, and I don’t see any net positives outside of very few people’s bank accounts.
Yet like I said, I do expect it to go the other way. I expected to lose 10% by now, not gain it. There should be a correction at some point, or things are going to be radically different where I live very soon. People are really at their limits.