Rent decreases across the US, but only for high income households. Poor pay more - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-expensive-cities-rents-fall-for-the-rich--but-rise-for-the-poor/2018/08/05/a16e5962-96a4-11e8-80e1-00e80e1fdf43_story.html Since last summer, rents have fallen for the highest earners while increasing for the poorest in San Francisco, Atlanta, Nashville, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, Pittsburgh, Washington and Portland, Ore., among other cities. In several other metro areas — including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Houston and Miami — rents have risen for the poor and the rich alike. In part based on that theory, cities have approved thousands of new luxury units over the past several years, hoping to check high rents that have led more than 20 million American renters to be classified as “cost burdened,” defined as spending more than 30 percent of one’s income on housing. “For-profit developers have predominantly built for the luxury and higher end of the market, leaving a glut of overpriced apartments in some cities,” said Diane Yentel, president and chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group. “Some decision-makers believed this would ‘filter down’ to the lowest income people, but it clearly will not meet their needs.” Remember the trickle down theory? Now we have the filter down theory with low income housing.

Rich keep getting richer. I can't wait for a societal collapse.

I really hate everything about the housing market. When I was 21, it was 2008. I had the opportunity to buy a home then, but didn't because of job market volatility. Now that I've finally found a long term spot that I can actually count on, housing is skyrocketing. A 4br, 2ba around here was ~$170k in 2011. A 4br, 2ba around here now ~$340K. Wages are still about 2011 levels, but the houses are double the cost.

I just graduated and got a decent salary. Basically my range was like $1800/mo for rent. There were plenty of those fancy gentrified apartments and areas I could choose from, but when I actually went to visit them, I realize three things: 1.) I really really really hate the city and want to live in the suburbs 2.) Those gentrified areas really only offer easier access to more expensive chain restaurants 3.) The stylized apartment you get might impress visitors but it offers less flexibility with interior design as you have to work with the cabinets, trim, and flooring of the apartment complex. With beige carpet and neutral cabinets/trim you can choose whatever couch you want and don't have to worry about it clashing with whoever designed the apartment Those gentrified places suck. I chose a nice quiet suburban apartment for way less instead.

problem is, that idea mindset is spreading to the suburbs too. Most new houses are "luxury" houses that charge 200-400K for the same size house as an starter for 150K. Problem is, homebuilders can make their starters into luxury for chump change, so there's less and less starter homes being built, or their prices hiking up with them.

My hometown is like the definition of Suburbia. Most houses are like 3 bedroom things, or a townhouse. A house like what my dad just sold can go for like $600,000 easily. This house in my hometown, for example, is listed as ~$600,000 https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/132997/7d5f1c21-4a66-44b1-a69b-b7bfaf346555/Screen Shot 2018-08-07 at 11.54.16 AM.png Basically you need a net household income of $200,000 to afford a mortgage in my area

So are houses in general moving towards a medium or something?

Its a medium, but a medium that only rich/middle class couples can afford. like I--------------------0-----------I kinda scale. It makes sense on paper, You can use the same amount of material and labor and call it a luxury home because it has an extra 800 bucks in features, while charging 200K more in price.

Yeah. It's pretty stupid.

living in Loudoun County VA is pretty much impossible if your not a soft/desk-bound government employee that makes way too much money for doing nothing other than making power points for a living. seriously a cheap house/condo over here will cost upwards of 600K. and that's for a baseline place that was built in the 1990's and falling apart. in most cases developers will rape and destroy what ever nature is around and plop cheaply made million dollar homes in place. pretty much exclusively for government pukes and tech industry people. this is a serious problem for anyone young in northern VA, unless your born with the silver spoon and connections. I make a decent living in the private sector over here in VA, yet still have trouble finding an affordable place to live.

I live in an area where Realtors are buying up every small home they can find just to tear them down to build 3 story $1m mcmansions on the land, a lot of historic and rather nice homes just gone as they continue to push lower income home owners out of the area. Hell my neighbors across the street bought the home next to them and demolished it so they could build a pool on the land.

You really sound like you've got a lot of contempt for people who work for the federal government?

I get a little of that for the post, but I also can apply his model to loads of commuter suburbs around me that do the same thing - lots of shitty big-family housing tracks that cost loads of money, and zero starter homes or even non-luxury apartments. Anything in the start-up range is demolished to make way for McMansions and the like.

It's this a question or a statement??

It's a statement but with the end inflection turned upwards like I'm a 16 year old girl

RIch dudes have controlled everything and have been above the law for over four milennia. Now it's slightly better with democracy and courts

Who the fuck is buying these things? Is the upper middle class growing rapidly but we just can't see it? Are rich folks buying up multiple homes just because? Is this turning out to be some retarded MLM real estate scam where flippers buy shit houses to flip them and sell them to other flippers who will marginally improve it and send it down the line?

And there's the issue. A massive chunk of these houses are being bought by landlords or flippers who are using the current fucked housing market to charge more than what the mortgage is for free cash. Buy a house that is worth 120k, rent it out for $1,600 a month. 9-10 years later you have an paid off house that you get even more money off of. Renting is much more attractive because this generation hardly has savings for a down payment due to how fucked wage is.

The largish rancher that I grew up in sold for 1.5 million when we sold it. My parents bought it for 270k in 1991. It's been sold 4 times in the last 2 years. The value has gone up with every sale. It was resold for 1.8 million. Then again for 2.1 million. It was just bought for 2.4 million. It's the 4th time my childhood home has been bought and sold since I left it. The value it's generated as just an empty home is absolutely absurd, and well beyond it's real world value.

Also property tax is absolutely fucking retarded in a lot of places.

i'll be honest, its mainly just the northern VA wealthy Govt. employees. they tend to have a unique brand of arrogance, narcissism and vanity to them. and it feels like they really don't do all that much hard work. my contempt is personal because its seems that they have evolved from something that used to be considered as honest and stable work to me; into a sh*tshow of wasteful, overly wealthy, un-fireable knob-heads, and they've only multiplied in my area. I usually don't have many qualms with most federal/local city and state employees. just the ones that are useless and overpaid.

In a word: Mortgages. Lets say you buy a 1 million dollar house right, you can not only spend said house by pulling a mortgage loan out of it, you can also rent or have someone else purchase it for a higher amount than you did paying off your interest while collecting a fat stack or netting you a tidy profit, it's a way to store your money while accruing wealth passively at a much, much higher rate than say storing it in your bank account. There's also the fact that the amount you can take out of a house with a mortgage is backed by the "percieved" value of said house through a process called remortgaging which means it's a very safe investment. Now lets talk perception of value, you decide to buy up all the other houses in the area, and mortgage them all out except 3. You mark up the 3 houses by a ludicrous amount and some schmucks buy them, you can report that to your bank and remortgage your previous mortgages to the new amount you set claiming that the value of the neighborhood is going up. I'm grossly overgeneralizing here but the gist is owning or putting 40 year mortgages down on property is one of the safest investments to make while raking in the dosh. Also loans are not considered income and therefor not taxed on the initial transaction so living on loan is a good way to move a lot of money without uncle sam taking a slice of your pie.

This is one of the pretty sad things about the tax incentives targeted towards home ownership, they pretty overwhelmingly get utilized the rich and upper middle class who don't need it.

I'm from that area too and I've never seen it. First of all, the wealthy aren't government employees; they're government contractors. You make decent money as a government employee but not nearly as good as private sector. Second of all, from what I can tell, the "NOVA Arrogance" that I heard about is a myth coming from two camps: 1.) Teenage angst from the teenagers who grew up here and hate the suburbs. 2.) Richmond hipsters who talk shit about NOVA because they don't have cool IPA breweries like in Scott's addition. For the most part, every interaction I've had with a stranger in NOVA (having grown up here) is utter indifference.

I must be in a Loudoun County bubble, because it is rife here. most certainly not a myth in specific areas( hence, i'm realizing i'm probably in a bubble). its exploded in Loudoun County in only 3-4 years and has been standard practice in Mclean and Great Falls for a long time. your'e right, the contractors are definitely a big problem too. I was just venting with angst without trying to be specific about what government agencies tend to have a perceived culture of over-payed-ness and pencil pushing. mainly from people i've interacted with from a certain 3 letter agency that resides off of Chain Bridge road in Mclean that have the 'NOVA attitude' ....and it certainly doesn't mean all of them are like that, just a good bunch of them are; and enough for me to get all bitter and angsty about it. though NOVA's culture is really rapidly changing every minute, so my sentiment is liable to change at some point. but my sentiment still stands about employees that are useless and un-fireable though. and that goes for private sector too.

I've definitely seen people here in Loudoun acting like arrogant cunts. Mostly on the road, naturally, but I've had to deal with people who were pretty shitty before.