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Housing. It’s all about housing. And, related, mortgage rates.
by nytesky 3y ago
Housing. It’s all about housing. And, related, mortgage rates.
- travisgriggs 3y agoAnd transportation. And insurance. And energy. And health care.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoAll those payments are in the small three figures maybe a month while rents and mortgages are an order of magnitude higher.
- danans 3y agoIn absolute terms rent and mortgage tend to always be higher than the other categories for most people. The more pertinent question is how these have changed on a percentage basis, and relative to each other and median income.
- sanderjd 3y agoNone of those things are much more expensive in real terms now than they were a decade ago. Housing is, though.
- llamaimperative 3y agoMortgage rates are totally within reason. Housing prices are not.
- sanderjd 3y agoI'm convinced that the mortgage rate problem is not about the rates themselves, but about the second derivative. That is, the rate at which the mortgage rates themselves have changed. In particular, the giant spike from ~2% to ~8% in a couple years. If they are stable at 6%-7% for the next 20 years, you're right, they will absolutely be "totally within reason". But it's a big distortionary problem that a huge number of people have fixed rates at ~2.5% with almost three decades left on them, while the current rate is more than double that. It's super hard to eat an almost 5% rate increase to do the kind of normal nearly like-for-like home sale that usually comprises a big portion of housing turnover.