A homebuyer now needs to earn at least $114,000 a year to afford a $431,250 home – the national median listing price in April, according to data released Thursday by Realtor.com
The analysis assumes that a homebuyer will make a 20% down payment, finance the rest of the purchase with a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, and that the buyer’s housing costs won’t exceed 30% of their gross monthly income — an often-used barometer of housing affordability.
Based off the latest U.S. median home listing price, homebuyers need to earn $47,000 more a year to afford a home than they would have just six years ago. Back then, the median U.S. home listing price was $314,950, and the average rate on a 30-year mortgage hovered around 4.1%. This week, the rate averaged 6.76%.
No. The spaces with more density and better infrastructure have also bigger commercial demand, as offices, malls and such. Well, where I live we don’t have zoning laws, so maybe it’s different in your land of cowboys and coyotes, but I think rented apartments still fit the definition. And already developed places are more contested than empty areas. The function is quadratic, so in uncontested areas it’s commercially viable to own and support homes cheaper than renting. The expenses of living there come from transport, fuel, anything from food to matches to medicine being more expensive due to logistics (except probably for things produced nearby), worse connectivity, electricity outages, having to spend a lot of time to get to work.
Provided the supply isn’t artificially prevented from reaching the demand. Which is what, I’ve heard, your country does have as a problem.
I’m not totally sure what you’re saying no to, but detached single-family homes are mostly financially unsustainable for a municipality. They just don’t generate enough tax revenue. You can check out this video for why (apologies for a YT link):
https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0
I’m saying no to you treating this as if there were too much space to build on. Detached homes take more space, but they are also a bit more autonomous, so can exist further from the city.
Suppose even renting an apartment means most of your wage going to pay that rent. While an hour further from the city center you can buy something, eh, almost like a doghouse (one-story one-room), but that is a house protected from rain, snow and such (actually how Dorothy’s house is described in the Wizard of Oz, LOL), there are some utilities and some land near it to extend it, maybe, or keep your stuff, and in general it’s livable. And it’ll cost similar to rent in the city for maybe a year, and likely less.
OK, it’s Moscow, so - renting here is really expensive even kinda far from good transport, and it’s not as if supply were competitive, mafia and all.
There are cooperatives of owners which support some utilities, the road till, ahem, the real road, garbage disposal and some other maintenance together (membership payments, electricity is paid by usage of course). They do not consist of rich folks, it’s almost like a village. So a municipality doesn’t spend anything on such.
I will watch your video, but I suspect it’s about wrong (in such case) model being treated as a constant and a pretty normal way of living being discarded because of that.