Average new home in 1960: 1300 sq/ft. (without garage)
Average new home in 2020: 2600 sq/ft (+ 2-3 car garage)
Average household size in 1960: 3.4
Average household size: 2.5
Number of households with 2 or more vehicles in 1960: 22%
Number of house holds with 2 or more vehicles in 2020: 59%
Ya’ll, I don’t know how else to explain this - the reason home ownership and cost of living is expensive is very straightforward. We don’t build or accept smaller homes, we don’t build enough of them, and we spend far more on vehicles.
Edit: if you want affordable housing, advocate (aka vote, canvas, donate) for candidates in your local government that support -
Zoning and regulations that benefits smaller home sizes.
Zoning that permits denser and missing middle development (for less need for vehicles)
This is a gross oversimplification and in part just illogical. Yes, new small homes would help everyone out. But compare house prices to purchasing power then vs. now. It’s absolutely incomparable to 1960. That’s not because of square footage. And car ownership as an input here makes no sense. The costs of a downpayment and mortgage are simply out of reach for many people irrespective of car count. I say all this as a homeowner.
Purchasing power is a function of how much you spend on rent, which is a function of housing supply relative to demand, which is a function of the zoning laws comment-OP referred to.
purchasing power is a function of those zoning laws. When you disrupt the free market (like a zoning law that says you can’t put more than three units on an acre of land despite a hundred units being more profitable
overall, just an example) people suffer and it gets worse over time. These effects build up.
Government meddling in the real estate market isn’t the only thing affecting that purchasing power, but it’s in the mix.
It really is not. I’m not saying there are no other economic challenges, but the vast majority of housing costs are effectively caused by this.
Here:
The median home price in 1960 was around 20,000. In inflation adjusted 2020 dollars that would have been close to 200,000.
This puts the price per square foot prices within the $100-150 range.
In 2020, the price per square foot was in the same range.
Wages have remained largely static. To be clear, this is NOT a good thing as productivity has skyrocketed, but is beside the point for now.
Effectively, the reason why people cannot afford a mortgage is massively influenced by the average size of home.
Cars make this fact even worse. On the mid to low income side of the economic spectrum, car ownership can easily cost 30% of household spending. A two car garage easily adds 10%+ to home costs.
Average new home in 1960: 1300 sq/ft. (without garage)
Average new home in 2020: 2600 sq/ft (+ 2-3 car garage)
Average household size in 1960: 3.4
Average household size: 2.5
Number of households with 2 or more vehicles in 1960: 22%
Number of house holds with 2 or more vehicles in 2020: 59%
Ya’ll, I don’t know how else to explain this - the reason home ownership and cost of living is expensive is very straightforward. We don’t build or accept smaller homes, we don’t build enough of them, and we spend far more on vehicles.
Edit: if you want affordable housing, advocate (aka vote, canvas, donate) for candidates in your local government that support -
This is a gross oversimplification and in part just illogical. Yes, new small homes would help everyone out. But compare house prices to purchasing power then vs. now. It’s absolutely incomparable to 1960. That’s not because of square footage. And car ownership as an input here makes no sense. The costs of a downpayment and mortgage are simply out of reach for many people irrespective of car count. I say all this as a homeowner.
Purchasing power is a function of how much you spend on rent, which is a function of housing supply relative to demand, which is a function of the zoning laws comment-OP referred to.
purchasing power is a function of those zoning laws. When you disrupt the free market (like a zoning law that says you can’t put more than three units on an acre of land despite a hundred units being more profitable overall, just an example) people suffer and it gets worse over time. These effects build up.
Government meddling in the real estate market isn’t the only thing affecting that purchasing power, but it’s in the mix.
It really is not. I’m not saying there are no other economic challenges, but the vast majority of housing costs are effectively caused by this.
Here:
The median home price in 1960 was around 20,000. In inflation adjusted 2020 dollars that would have been close to 200,000.
This puts the price per square foot prices within the $100-150 range.
In 2020, the price per square foot was in the same range.
Wages have remained largely static. To be clear, this is NOT a good thing as productivity has skyrocketed, but is beside the point for now.
Effectively, the reason why people cannot afford a mortgage is massively influenced by the average size of home.
Cars make this fact even worse. On the mid to low income side of the economic spectrum, car ownership can easily cost 30% of household spending. A two car garage easily adds 10%+ to home costs.
Okay so I’m with you on walkable cities being good, but everything else you said is offensively fucking wrong.