An autopsy report for affordable homes in Dallas-Fort Worth reveals the steady evaporation of affordable housing inventory in the DFW area. Recent data show that housing prices in the U.S. are currently at their least affordable levels since the financial crisis. The latest numbers on existing home sales showed that the median price of a home hit a new all-time high. So how did this all happen? Was it an accident? Is it due to our smashingly great economy? Let’s find out.
As investors and speculators have gobbled up lower-priced homes across the country to either flip or rent, affordable homes keep vanishing from the market. It’s enough to make a millennial’s head spin. Financialization, speculation and general distortion in the U.S. housing space has created a new level of anxiety among prospective home buyers.
Rising mortgage rates are certainly part of the problem, but the continued appreciation of home prices is still a primary issue that many within the real estate industry refuse to talk about. Home price inflation has been exceeding real wage growth for a number of years, yet you will rarely hear any real estate economists or professionals talk about why this has been happening. They will normally just mention a strong economy or jobs market, deflecting any other explanations. The current affordable housing crisis was no accident. It is the result of a concerted effort on the part of the govt and the Federal Reserve to cover up the last housing crisis.
As the attached charts show, home builders in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were constructing a lot of affordable new homes prior to the housing bust. Back in 2005 it was easy to find a decent new home in the DFW area below $200,000. That all changed when the subprime mortgage debacle and Wall Street’s greed brought the world economy to its knees.
The subsequent response to cover up the massive frauds that took place and reflate asset prices has produced some interesting dynamics, but chief among them is a severe lack of affordable housing. Aside from growing wealth and income inequality coming from policy responses to the housing crash, there is growing inequality in the housing space in general.
This was reflected in Harvard University’s most recent State of the Nation’s Housing report. Because of this growing inequality, young adults are less likely to move and millennial homeownership is still near cycle lows. Minority homeownership is also near cycle lows. Housing costs have soared, and the number of cost-burdened renters has also grown. As much as industry puppets will rail about excessive regulations, rising labor costs, zoning, expensive lumber and other factors pushing up the costs of housing, they all ignore the elephant in the room.
Just this year the Dallas Federal Reserve hosted a rather interesting event, an event that I wanted to attend but couldn’t because of schedule conflicts. The event, ‘Finding Shelter: Affordability Squeeze in a Tight Texas Housing Market’ now has the presentation materials online. I highly recommend you take a look, not for what’s in the presentations, but for what’s NOT in them!
There are some great data points on the disappearance of affordable housing throughout Texas, and some moderately plausible explanations for what happened to the Texas housing market. Missing in every single presentation, however, is THE SMOKING GUN. These are the charts you won’t see presented at a symposium on affordable housing (certainly not one hosted by a Federal Reserve bank), because they are taboo in the company of central bank puppets and the economists who do their bidding.
The Federal Reserve colluded with other major central banks to turn housing into a speculative asset…
Here is a clearer picture of the drive-by shooting of affordable housing in the DFW area…
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