The Goat Pen

Tree,

If the American public refuses to buy these assets (and largely, they do) then they are for sale to whoever is the highest bidder. At the moment, that is asset firms. For people who own these assets (and want to sell) they are only too HAPPY to sell to these firms at the price they are offering or else, they would not sell. The American people (for whatever reason) are hunkering down and not buying very much of anything....

...other than stocks. The people keep buying those like crazy. Stocks and BitCoin.

What is the American dream?

Americans largely can't afford homes anymore. Because these firms exist, prices have gone way up.

hedge wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2024 1:43 pm What is the American dream?

Just playing by the rules, obeying the law, and working hard, anyone can be a success and your children will have a higher standard of living than you do. That is what was promised. Billy Joel wrote a song about that. That IS the American dream.

That dream is gone. Blame globalization for that. Blame the concept of "work smarter, not harder" for that (dumb people can't work smart.) Blame the breakdown of the nuclear family for that. Blame an open borders, all-are-welcome immigration policy embraced by the left, for that.

Tree wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2024 2:08 pm Americans largely can't afford homes anymore. Because these firms exist, prices have gone way up.

No.

Young Americans can not afford to buy a nice home as a starter home. And they are not willing to settle. They are not willing to settle because the apartment they are currently renting has a nice social club, Starbucks around the corner, an indoor pool, large fitness center with yoga room, and a rock climbing wall. They live in rental paradise even though it costs them a fortune. Now they have the good sense to realize that they are just throwing money away on rent every month so it would be wise to own. But all they can afford (all ANY OF US could afford when we didn't already own a home) is a small, old, and crappy place to live. That they could afford. But that is far less of a life than what they currently have as a renter. And they are not willing to make sacrifices.

People who own their own home refuse to sell because they know they have such a low interest rate on the mortgage they currently have, that they couldn't possibly get another mortgage with anything close to that rate. So they stay put. They don't sell. And because they aren't selling, prices on single family homes, they are not going down.

My first home was a piece of shit. I lived in absolute squalor for 4 years and a month until I saved enough (and had enough equity in my shithole) to cash out and buy my first McMansion. But that is what you are supposed to do. Most hard working bachelors (who don't have to answer to a fussy, wife-gets-what-wife-wants) wife, take that exact real estate path. But it means sacrifices. Bachelors are willing to do that. Women and married men, won't.

Bro when prices go way up, that means purchasing power for large swaths of ppl goes down. It's not rocket science. Everything else you wrote is just needless posturing that you know shit you really don't.

I'm not your bro. And I've been buying and selling real estate for 30 years. I have seen 3 market crashes over those 30 years. And I understand how twenty somethings and thirty somethings feel about real estate. You know how I know? I rent to them. And I listen to them bitch to me the same way you are bitching now.

When I post, read. And think. And learn. If you disagree, not a problem. But it would be wise to use logic and facts to explain why you disagree. There has never been a time in this nation's history where large swaths of the population could afford to own a house that they truly wanted to live in. Through much our nation's short history, the large swaths of population settled and made sacrifices when buying a home.

There has never been a time in this nation's history where large swaths of the population could afford to own a house that they truly wanted to live in.

What country are you from brah? That's some shit a foreigner would say. In the 60's and 70's pretty much any male not completely retarded or crazy was guaranteed to get a good paying job where he could afford a house, a nice wife who didn't have to work, and kids including all the horseshit they need, including college. If they were white at least. That's a fact.

Tree wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2024 6:29 pm

There has never been a time in this nation's history where large swaths of the population could afford to own a house that they truly wanted to live in.

What country are you from brah? That's some shit a foreigner would say. In the 60's and 70's pretty much any male not completely retarded or crazy was guaranteed to get a good paying job where he could afford a house, a nice wife who didn't have to work, and kids including all the horseshit they need, including college. If they were white at least. That's a fact.

You don't know anything. That's a fact.

In the 1960s, people lived in little teeny-tiny homes. Kids shared bedrooms and had "bunk beds" (remember those?) That is because the house was so small the kids did not have a bedroom of their own. They shared. And the house had one bathroom. And one was enough. Because dad was the only one who worked and he couldn't afford to do a remodel on the house to add one. And don't you dare bitch to him about that or you will get spanked. He had pride, not money. His check paid for everything and left nothing else.

Little teeny-tiny houses, you actually think the large swaths of the population WANTED to live in those? You think they wanted that? How about, that is what they lived in because that was all they could afford? I grew up in Massachusetts. In the late 1950s and very early 1960s, a real-estate developer bought up a large portion of the shitty city of Brockton. His name was Campanelli.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Campanelli

This developer subdivided all that land into one-fifth-acre lots (that was after greasing the palms of the local politicians to justify such a small residential subdivide.) Then he started building. The houses he built in Brockton were shitty little pieces of shit. They had no basement, just a slab of concrete. That is because it costs too much money to dig a damn hole. They had one bath and three of the tiniest bedrooms you could ever imagine. My walk in closet was as big as those bedrooms. So why would he build these tiny ranches with virtually no yard, in a city people hated, single family houses that no one really wanted to live in? Why?

Because, he could sell them each for as little as $8000 a pop, that's why. And at that price (in 1960), people bought them. That was a $48/month mortgage payment on a 30 year mortgage. And now, some 65 to 75 years later, those houses remain. And today, they each cost about $385,000. And $385,000 (in Massachusetts) is all that young families can afford for a starter home. As of this post, there are 31 of them for sale. But no one wants to go and fucking live in the Campanelli homes in Brockton.

Do you understand, brah?

RETARD FIGHT!!

So now we have to distinguish between owning a home and owning a home you really want? Bro, you's a got damn mess. You're smarter than that. Come correct or don't come at all.

Jungle Rat wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2024 7:51 pm RETARD FIGHT!!

Are you slapping, yourself?

Tree wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2024 7:59 pm So now we have to distinguish between owning a home and owning a home you really want?

Damn Straight!

That is EXACTLY what needs to happen. That is EXACTLY the conversation that needs to be had when talking about this "crisis." But prior to you reading that here at The Goat Pen, I'll bet you never thought to think about it that way.

Hate to agree with Tree on this, but it's more than housing preference. I guess a retard scores a basket once in a while.

This link's main focus is the national debt, but has so many other statistics. In the bottom right quadrant of the site there are some boxes that compare median wages in 2000 to current, median house price 2000 to current, and median car price 2000 to current. Wages far lag the cost of housing.

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

"That dream is gone. Blame globalization for that."

I guess you're going to blame "globalists" for your idol Le Pen's crushing loss in the recent French elections (her fascist party didn't even come in second). Yeah, blame the globalists and ignore the fact that the majority of the French public doesn't want what she's selling...

hedge wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 10:10 am "That dream is gone. Blame globalization for that."

I guess you're going to blame "globalists" for your idol Le Pen's crushing loss in the recent French elections (her fascist party didn't even come in second). Yeah, blame the globalists and ignore the fact that the majority of the French public doesn't want what she's selling...

Well there is blame all over the place. The first piece of blame goes to the shitty way France allocates their legislature to elect their PM. In the first vote, the more conservative party got the plurality of the votes, but not the majority. So they had the most, but they didn't have half. So a second vote is ordered and that is where the other parties all "teamed up" against the conservatives to make sure it was mathematically impossible for them to get a majority. And that is how they did it. Its a bullshit way to handle legislature, multiple votes and run-off elections. But yeah, those two parties are more globalist and I guess they are okay with an Islamic France.

Not my problem. I'll never live there.

sardis wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 8:43 am Hate to agree with Tree on this, but it's more than housing preference. I guess a retard scores a basket once in a while.

This link's main focus is the national debt, but has so many other statistics. In the bottom right quadrant of the site there are some boxes that compare median wages in 2000 to current, median house price 2000 to current, and median car price 2000 to current. Wages far lag the cost of housing.

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

I notice you picked the year 2000 for a baseline. That is a bad baseline. In 1999 and 2000, wages were skyrocketing because of the Dot-Com bubble. Tiny little Dot-Coms were popping up everywhere and companies that had nothing but cash were offering all that cash to anyone with a fucking pulse if they could code. They were poaching everyone ELSE to get coders in their cubes to create websites. Wages were out of sight. So, for that one year only (until the Dot-Bomb and 9-11 crash a year later) wages far outstripped the cost of housing. So for that one year (and maybe ONLY that one year) housing was affordable compared to wages. 2000 was an outlier, a one-off.

Housing is definitely expensive, as is rent. Rent everywhere seems to be a million-bazillion dollars. We gave one of our renters 30 days notice that we are kicking them out and they have come back to use not once, but twice, offering to pay more rent each time if we would just let them stay. We keep telling them we need them out to renovate the house they trashed and fucked up but they think we are being cruel because they can't find anything else to rent that they can afford. They have nowhere to go.

That said, there are shitty places to buy that you can get for less money. People just don't want to buy them. I know I didn't want to buy the first place I bought. But it was cheap and I was a cheap bachelor (who didn't have to negotiate with a wife refusing to live in a place so small and shitty), I wanted to move out of where I was living, and I wanted a home of my own. So, I sucked it up and lived in a shitty place. And yes, back in 1996 (when I bought my first place) my wages lagged WAY BEHIND the cost of housing. Nothing has changed.

IB wears crocs with socks.

innocentbystander wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2024 11:03 pm

Tree wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2024 7:59 pm So now we have to distinguish between owning a home and owning a home you really want?

Damn Straight!

That is EXACTLY what needs to happen. That is EXACTLY the conversation that needs to be had when talking about this "crisis." But prior to you reading that here at The Goat Pen, I'll bet you never thought to think about it that way.

By that theory we’re going to have to build a whole lot more shitty homes so the middle class can own rather than rent the current ones that big money is buying up. Do you really think that’s where we’re headed?

I wish you were headed into a wood chipper.