Squeezed by high interest rates and record prices, homeowners are frozen in place. They can’t sell. So first-time buyers can’t buy.
If buying a home is an inexorable part of the American dream, so is the next step: eventually selling that home and using the equity to trade up to something bigger.
But over the past two years, this upward mobility has stalled as buyers and sellers have been pummeled by three colliding forces: the highest borrowing rates in nearly two decades, a crippling shortage of inventory, and a surge in home prices to a median of $434,000, the highest on record, according to Redfin.
People who bought their starter home a few years ago are finding themselves frozen in place by what is known as the “rate-lock effect” — they bought when interest rates were historically low, and trading up would mean a doubling or tripling of their monthly interest payments.
They are locked in, and as a result, families hoping to buy their first homes are locked out.
Give me 750ft^2 and 5 acres of woods with enough sunny space for growing some food.
I’d be thrilled.
My wife’s best friend, however, has decided their 3500ft^2 2.5 floor + basement house on 3-4 acres with two sheds and a small barn (or xl shed?) isnt enough space for 2 dogs 3 cats and her and her husband.
They just bought this house last year.
I do not understand some people.
“I just want so much land such that if everyone wanted the same amount, there wouldn’t be enough land in the world.”
Different strokes and all that, but I tend to say the more space you have, the more shit goes in it. We have about 1350sf, two kids, cat, on a quarter acre. We rely on the kids being able to (when they’re a bit older) go out around our town, which are homes on properties just like mine, but with parks and a downtown and a meandering Brook with green space all around it. I say to my wife, could we use a little more space? Absolutely. Could we use the space we have a little more wisely? Also absolutely. I just know that if we had more space, we would instantly fill it with more crap, so we’re good.
Isn’t that essentially worse? I get it on an individual level and having near private access to that much outdoors would be pretty sweet, but even if a small, but sizeable, portion of the population wanted something similar how tenable would it be?