Tuesday, November 5, 2019

A look at trends in homeownership.

Here's a new post I have up at the Bridge, at Mercatus.

Here's a chart from it:


The brief summary is that there hasn't been any recovery in homeownership rates at all from the bottom of the housing bust for middle aged households.  The small amount of recovery we have seen recently is all among young households - generally households that were young enough to miss the crisis.

And, of course, I revisit the basic point that it is a myth that there was excessive or unsustainable homeownership during the housing boom.

Here is a Jed Kolko piece at Trulia that adds some interesting details to the story.

3 comments:

  1. We tell voters they should believe in free markets and free enterprise.

    But look at the cost of housing along the West Coast, in New York or Boston and now in Austin. $2500 to rent a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles.

    Medical care is a whole 'nother topic, but it is also frightfully expensive by any metric.

    But what the voters hear from elites is that what America needs is more "free" trade, more immigration and to maintain US influence in Syria.

    Having Detroitified the Industrial Heartland, and Hong Kongified the coasts, the elites have already lost control of the GOP, and may lose control of the Donks too.

    The last presidential election very nearly featured Sanders versus Trump. Only money and fixes allowed Clinton to prevail over Sanders.

    The last gasp for the establishment is now Joe Biden.

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  2. OT but in the ballpark.

    Here is a funny one, neither here nor there but interesting.

    OK, years back when people still built houses in LA, the city core began to die and lose population. There was flight to West LA, Orange County, Venture etc. It was very smoggy and Hollywood and many mid-city regions became dodgy, and South Los Angeles was dangerous.

    OK, housing became so expensive, while the air got much less smoggy. New construction was effectively banned in West LA. So people began to backfill from West LA into Hollywood and Downtown.

    Okay, NYC, Brooklyn dies in 1960-80s, then long recovery, and even the Bronx now.

    I wonder if the creepy parts of NYC and LA would have recovered if there had been no property zoning? As it is, poor people are getting shoved inland in SoCal. Waaay inland. We are talking Bakersfield. Phoenix and LV.

    Just a thought. I still think property zoning needs to banned.

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    Replies
    1. I think there is something to it. You could also compare Chicago today to NYC and LA. Chicago has had outmigration recently, but it isn't the sort of cost-of-living migration that happens out of the closed access cities, and Chicago has a crime problem.

      It's not everything, and it's probably not even the biggest thing, but having a constant flow of low SES leaving and high SES coming in surely is having a compositional effect on those city populations.

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