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Perhaps because your state legislature has not yet woken up to current housing reality?

My state's legislature recently overrode local zoning laws to force acceptance of ADUs and duplexes in all areas zoned SFR-only. Numerous people afraid of 'those people' don't like it, but can no longer stop it.

 

Townhomes get built around here. They don't see much cheaper than single homes.

It's what friend of my wife did.

 

They've started building multi-family homes with government funding. I'm not sure if it's a state thing or a local thing. But it's just getting started. There were some 20 or so homes built, but now have plans of doing entire subdivisions. 600 homes out East of town are scheduled to be built within the next few years. The problem is even them are a bit too expensive. I think I said $200,000 earlier, I meant $300,000 each, for a 2 bedroom condo. And that's with incentives and restricted deed! No down payment though.

 

Plenty of private funding here jumping on the ADU and duplex bandwagons. In certain denser zones, triplexes too.

 

These here are triplexes and quintaplexes mostly.

 

You've lived through a period of constant growth. Ahead lies a period where there just won't be as many people hitting "house-buying age" as there are hitting "cemetery plot buying age."

There will be too many houses overall. Obviously some will be in desirable areas and they won't see much reduction in demand or price. But there will also be entire zip-codes where everyone just walks away and nobody wants to pay to deal with what's left.

It's going to be pretty rough for the ones who don't want to just walk away, but can't afford to move anywhere stable because they had all their wealth locked up in their homes.

 

37 years at the same company I worked for when I got out of the service. 14 different company names owned over that time. I was willing, capable and flexible. Always said yes when asked if I would do XYZ. IT world is crazy but was always growing. Retired as the longest continuous service employee at 62 after a blunt discussion asking for succession planning because I wasn't going to be around forever. Curiously 2 weeks later I received a patent I had been working on for 5 years.

It is still possible.

At 81 have an application in for an assisted living community. 2 year wait to get what we want. Challenge is fitting a 5 bedroom house into 2. I dispose of things easily, my dear wife has sentimental attachment to everything. What do we need 2 set of silver for 12, 2 sets of china for 12, and crystal for 12. Kids don't want anything that doesn't go in the dishwasher.

Moral of the above, start downsizing now. Learn how to sell online.

 

we need us a khrushchev to build 5 story concrete bunkers

 

Sometimes I want to sell everything and downsize everything I own into a suitcase or knapsack. The wife also feels otherwise.

 

when i did that mrs b asked me, 'are you preparing to die?'

 

is anybody planning not to?

 

I'm just dying to know the answer!

 

I obviously bought my house in the wrong community and neighborhood, having only a 500% gain over 35 years. Compounded, that is just 5.25% per year, far less than the 15% and 56%/yr rates in your examples.

The S&P500 has gained 1560% over the same period, or a compound growth rate of 8.4%, not even counting dividends. Good thing we bought just a comparatively inexpensive 'starter' home and never moved up, instead putting the rest of our spare change into stock market investments instead of a bigger 'better' house.

With the property tax rates here, combined with all the house operating and maintenance and insurance costs, most homes are an expense, not an 'investment'. Our property tax alone 'confiscates' a home's entire value over a human lifetime, admittedly a bit longer than one's typical adult home-owning / renting years, but the primary winner of real estate appreciation is still the property-taxing government. Through luck or prescient planning, some people do manage to 'win the lottery' by selecting a neighborhood with above-average appreciation, but most don't. So here, the primary financial benefit of owning one's home is stable housing cost, avoiding the volatile and unpredictable and sometimes unstable rental market. For investment gains, there are better choices.

 

Don't forget the pollution controls too. Without these 'government regulations', many cities would still have very toxic air, with air pollution deaths greatly exceeding even old-era car crash deaths.

 

Depends on how soon the Lord returns ... wars & rumors of wars, knowledge exponentially increasing, good is called evil & evil called good.

We took an alternate approach. Buying houses more & more expensive over 4½ decades .... except the very last house we bought - which WAS a rental property originally - that we moved into upon retiring (ages 62 & 65.). Our thinking was, "okay we spend 1,000s for title insurance / deed inspections / escrow, realtor feesl Etc ... but with South OC CA being some of the highest property values, do we on want to increase our nest egg % a few 100 thousand or a + million amount of investments. So we risked a lot & shoveled nest eggs into realty, at one time acquiring mortgages on several properties at the same time. Sure we made a lot of equity on those, but lost some on the downturns. Entrepreneurial risks. The basis of the USA.
After it all, my notion was to seriously downsize. The better ½ said "I'm not living in a trailer in Kentucky!"
Our current retirement residence is in montana, a reasonably nice compromise, but I do prefer our remaining Nashville rental - as our daughter & grandkids are there.


All that to say risking a lot to grab a rental is very precarious ... but often times it pays off.
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I've thought about putting more money into the stock market, such as the S&P500. It's just getting hard to do when rentals are starting to become 50% of one's income. I'd also feel a bit of a hypocrite if I invested in companies that I do not agree with.

 

I heard of one who says he will live to 200. His doctor said it anyway. Never heard of anyone else directly say that long. The Bible has people living much longer in the ancient days, but not sure if that is just figurative language or something.

 

That's the exact idea behind mutual funds that pool investments from people who have similar preferences on what to invest in.

In recent years, interestingly enough, there's been a political party making culture war over such funds, as if the idea is somehow antithetical to capitalism. Seems sho-nuff like capitalism to me....