Home sales last year dropped to the lowest level in nearly three decades, after elevated mortgage rates and a lack of homes for sale shut out buyers. Existing-home sales slid 19% in 2023 from the prior year to 4.09 million, the National Association of Realtors said Friday. That total was lower than during the subprime crisis and the lowest full-year level since 1995. But the housing market is showing some signs of life as mortgage rates ease, and it’s possible that last year represented a bottom for sales activity. https://www.wsj.com/economy/housing...ar-low-in-2023-3da220e1?mod=economy_lead_pos1 Affordable housing should be a constitutional right. Not everybody is an Elitetrader and can afford $20M+ housing, right?
Easy, 1) stop allowing hedge funds to buy real estate as an investment. 2) Stop allowing foreigners to buy real estate as an investment. Or just tax both so returns becomes unattractive. It'll change the inflation profile, tho. Other products/services become that much more expensive then. It's not like people will suddenly have extra money in their pocket which they don't spend. Prolly just inflate other investment products.
Or maybe they can stop backstopping the markets as a whole. The fed should have NOT saved anyone during the financial crisis and should have let the housing crisis fall apart on its own and let it crawl its way out of its own demise but they didn't and thats why today you have crazy prices in all housing across the US.
This news means absolutely nothing to wallstreet, in fact most news these days no matter how negative or extremely questionable bothers stocks or wallstreet.
Why not just go with the flow and accept the fact that when central banks are pro gdp growth and low unemployment then the result can only be higher stock market? If you saved and just bought the index every month with part of your salary, you'd be ahead of the curve. There is no such a thing as a bubble when you have CB's balance sheets continously growing throughout time.
Every single bit of this rally and every rally around the world is based off central banks unlimited printing games. They flood every market with unlimited money to prop up every asset possible. There are no free markets and never will be.
And? Free markets are switched for free money. What's wrong with that? It's not really serving anyones purpose to take the money out of the system and deal with high unemployment and lower standard of living. Real inflation (relative to income) will be bigger actually.
To be fair they should peg your bank account to match the inflation of the housing market. In 1960 a house cost $12,000 now it's worth $400,000, so let's have free money for every bank account and not just Wall Street.
Found this statistic The median price of a home in the US more than doubled from $24,000 in 1970 to $55,000 by 1980. So that was sort of the uptick until late 80s when housing prices started falling. .. Adjusting for inflation that $55,000 median price should be approximately 203,000 in 2023!!! Yet if you look at the median housing price from 2023 it's a staggering $385,000 to $400,000 so very very far from that inflation adjustment of $203,000! ... Wallstreet greed is to blame for these figures but most would disagree.