How the Cost of Housing Became So Crushing

Excellent overview.

What about private equity buying up apartment buildings and swaths of housing, jacking up rents and home prices?

I think we really need to build more cities. Trying to cram more housing/living spaces into existing cities is just going to make more congestion.

This podcast can't help but come off sounding like insufferable elitist snobs. Those homes are "ratty" in your estimation? No walk-in showers or gleaming granite kitchens? Those are homes you're disparaging for the pettiest of reasons have ably and proudly sheltered families for decades. Stfu.

Making zoning in urban areas just a little footnote is an odd choice, esp. for the "New York Times". Why emphasize the number of single-family homes built? The white flight era is over and urban centers should be booming with housing construction but they're not.

The demand has no choice to find empty lots, and there are none in the areas where it would be most efficient and sustainable to build. Sorry, but pouring government money into housing without mandating upzoning would be a disaster we would come to regret.

Just how bloated are the suburbs of this country going to become because of this myopic view?

Much of the housing shortage was being talked about in the 1980's. Why are SO many new houses needed each year? Is the population growing that fast? Really?

We aren't making more land, so where are the houses to be built?

I disagree on Conor’s statement that writing off mortgage interest is a subsidy of government. Yes it’s a write off for home owners but still income for the banks that they pay taxes on it, there is no subsidy here. In US, federal government has practically no subsidies for real estate market, even if you get a break, somebody else is paying for it It’s time for federal government to step in very carefully by not disrupting the market too.

Seizure of all golf courses through imminent domain. Build housing on them.

In 1970 there were 3 billion people on the planet . Today there is 9 billion fighting for its resources .

private equity, lack of development, and zoning laws. there is no mistery why there are no available homes left.

We need an old-fashioned land rush. There is plenty of land away from population centers.

The NYT is an open propaganda tool of the “Israeli” occupation. Everything single thing they say is suspect. No thanks.

People want houses but we need smaller regular houses like people lived in in the 60s or 70s.

Have the government subsidize construction of 1000sqft 3br or even smaller 2br houses for $125-$150k all over the country with low or zero interest but a percentage fee of like 10%. Everybody gets an truly affordable Wonder Years house.

Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit goes on the trail of The Minister's Millions to find out how he built a half-billion-dollar property empire - on a thirteen-thousand-dollar salary. Saifuzzaman Chowdhury, a close ally of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, bought hundreds of luxury properties in London, Dubai, and New York, but declared none of them to tax authorities in Bangladesh. The former land minister gives a guided tour of his $14m London home; he owns 360 in the UK alone. Now authorities in Bangladesh have frozen his bank accounts and are investigating claims the former minister laundered millions of dollars into Britain. He says he's innocent and the victim of a political witch-hunt.

It’s definitely nothing to do with printing trillions of dollars and mass immigration.

Episode summary:

Capitalism destroyed the housing market in 2008. Since then, capitalism has continued to make it worse.

The only solution is government intervention, but that is unlikely to happen because government tends to be in the side of capital.

Its the same story thats been written every day for the last 5 or 6 years.

The nyt is reading the talking points of the building industry which is always about more supply. However, the unprecedented printing of money through emergency low rates for more than a decade led to people bidding up the prices beyond their value and investors buying. This piece is oddly silent on the role of central banks, monetary policy, investors, Airbnb, etc.

This is surprisingly informative. Here in Denver there is a movement to end local zoning regulations that limit density and add red tape to the process of building homes that suppress supply and inflate prices. Some communities will fight that change tooth and nail and may delay progress in court for years but there has to be a compromise solution that meets the moment.

Pex plumbing is going to cause health issues overtime. Will be the chemical leakage that will affect it overtime

Zoning is the issue and city sewer/water process plants limits in cities that have it.

Same w septic design on small multi families

Zoning is the issue and city sewer/water process plants limits in cities that have it.

Same w septic design on small multi families under 4 units

Back in the day, when I purchased my first home to live-in; that was Miami in the early 1990s, first mortgages with rates of 8 to 9% and 9% to 10% were typical. People will have to accept the possibility that we won't ever return to 3%. If sellers must sell, home prices will have to decline, and lower evaluations will follow. Pretty sure I'm not alone in my chain of thoughts.

Not a fan of this format. Sounds like two people griping and gossiping instead of getting ro the point. This could hve been an infographic.

Modernize, NYT.

My husband and I take exceptionally good care of our home so our youngest won't have to pay rent in her senior yrs after we're gone. It's a damn shame she has to wait so long to have a place of her own.

What's important to understand is that nothing will be done about it.

Yeah. And you don't even touch in the slightest on how big money is buying up housing units and then price-gouging, nor how they force smaller owners to charge both buyers and renters a much higher price than they need to shore up the inflated rate of profiteering being engaged in by those on top. You just want the government to throw our tax money at it so that the rich can get richer. Thanks so much.

My mother-in-law’s house in philly suburbs took 20 years to go up 200k (‘94-2014). It went up another 200 between 2020 and 2024.

This push for government subsidies here is disgusting. All that needs to be done is make it easier for builders to build homes.

You can have a healthy middle class that has strong wages and a bright futurre or a Wall Street profits and banks running the world.. you cannot have both.

Like everything NYT puts out, its mostly garbage. Housing is an a massive bubble right now, and so is Wall Street stock market.. and it will go poof.. because the Dollar is becoming worthless, corporations are shedding jobs like crazy and the economy is IMPLODING.. the whole SHAM IS A SCAM THAT IS FALLING APPART LIKE A HOUSE OF CARDS.

THERE IS NO HOUSING SHORTAGE.. the supply of homes is close to PRE PANDEMIC and the cost of HOMES IS STILL TOO DAMN HIGH!!!

Home Wreckers was a great book outling Obama giving federal funding to make house owners whole...but equity banks illegally foreclosed on 5.million people to utilize those federal dollars. Then very few houses were built...lead to the tight supply. Reagan shrunk government to the pointwhere Obama had to follow that blueprint of keeping government out if the topic which brought institutions in.

No mention of insuffient wage growth since the 1970s as part of the "disease"? Hum.

Well it's because Obama rescued the banks instead of home owners: i know because we bought a few foreclosure homes from 2009-2013 from home owners who walked away from their underwater mortgage. The prices had recovered since then but their credit were destroyed, so were the small builders.

Nobody wants to build them anymore. Its a crappy way to spend your day, building houses. Wages are going to go up a lot.

It’s very simple. Housing costs went up and out of control because of greed. A small group decided to get rich off the gullible and greedy. Whatever can be exploited will be. All for more money than they can spend. Fuck everyone else. America. ❤️ Don’t forget the company that colluded with the nation’s landlords to fix prices.

It is a simple demographic fact that the millennial generation was the biggest in history. There is just simply not enough physical units in America to support them as they aged into the home buying times of their lives.

I’m closing in on my retirement and I’d like to move from Minnesota to a warmer climate, but the prices on homes are stupidly ridiculous and Mortgage prices has been skyrocketing on a roll(currently over 7%) do I just invest my spare cash into stock and wait for a housing crash or should I go ahead to buy a home anyways?

one sentence, drug dealers became corrupt realtors and the rich home owners turned a blind eye while the rest of us got destroyed, but some of us just became strong like diamonds under the pressure

WOW . . . two academic people talking non-sense.

IMO what would really help is to quit subsidizing housing at every level. From federal all the way down to local propertu taxes. Renters are carrying an undue and unfair tax burden.

Moved 30 yrs ago from USSR to end up in USSA, where everything now comes back to this pathetic useless corrupt govt to “help”. When will people realize that this same out of control govt (at all levels) is the root of all our problems to begin with. Big surprise that landlords want to sell since the govt makes their life so difficult.

Easy. The price of items rise to meet the financing available to purchase them. Secondary education? Federally backed loans. Housing? Federally backed mortgages. Healthcare? How much equity are you sitting on? Get rid of jumbo mortgages, require 20% down, keep interest rates at normal levels, make the banks hold the loans they make, reduce the % of conforming residential mortgages held by Fannie, Freddie, FHA, and VA from 85% to 35%. Make it illegal for the Fed to purchase non-government debt... watch house prices return to normal. Unless the government plans to flood the market with inventory by paying for construction directly, then selling to families, any other talk is about keeping the money flowing and house prices high.

Inflation, ya dummy!

Building more units is critical for both renters and buyers is critical. More efficient building processes, smaller units, and density will follow. Post WWII suburbs are NOT the answer.

fear a housing crash due to people buying homes above asking prices with little equity. If prices drop, affordability and potential foreclosures may arise, worsened by future layoffs and rising living costs. I want to invest more than $300k, but I'm not sure on how to mitigate risk.

We are fortunate to have purchased a home in 2018 at a low interest rate (a smallish three story townhome) with the plan for it to be our starter home. I was pregnant. Then the pandemic hit and housing is now out of control. We’d love to buy a bigger family home but now it feels impossible. A good home in our area cost “only” about $900k five years ago…but now that same home is $1.6 to $2m. Could we technically qualify for it? Sure. But we’d be saddled with debt and have no money for life’s small luxuries and we don’t want to do that to ourselves. We’re in “golden handcuffs” as they say and our starter home is now perhaps our forever home. I know it could be far worse so I’m grateful for what we have. But us not being able to move on/up also means others can’t ever buy our current home. It’s all interconnected and MOST of us are screwed.

This is woefully incomplete. You say the 'disease' is the GFC, but you're not telling us HOW the GFC started. What actually CAUSED the so-called 'disease?' This goes back longer. Think the Reagan years.1980s. Second Thought got it right. Everyone should check out their videos, starting with Why Housing Keeps Getting More Expensive.

I wonder if there's a place where immigrant's life could be easy.