America's 'Rent Crisis' May Be Ending (fortune.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Fortune: A new study suggests that nearly a decade of housing shortages and rising rents in the U.S. may be reversing course... From 2010 to 2016, America added nearly a million renter households a year. But the census showed a decline in that growth rate in 2016, and some early 2017 data shows an actual decline in renters so far in 2017. Recent census data also shows a rise in vacancy rates.

According to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, that's because foreclosure numbers have declined and young homebuyers are re-entering the market. Home ownership in the U.S. took a big hit from the foreclosure crisis and Great Recession of 2007-2012, while the rental market struggled to meet the new demand. Other insights in the report mostly follow from that shifting reality. Rents are increasing more slowly. Fewer renter households are "cost-burdened," or paying more than 30% of their income in rent, than they were two years ago.
The report also predicts that many high-income households may continue renting rather than buying a home. But it'd be interesting to hear how that compares to Slashdot readers around the world. Are you renting or buying -- and if renting, do you feel that your rent is too high?

Comments

OR, owners no longer up-side-down sell their homes

[misnohmer]

In my neighborhood there were a whole bunch of rental homes, all owners who couldn't sell their homes because the home values have dropped (some have been holding onto those since before 2008). This year home prices finally reached pre-2008 levels and a whole lot of those rental homes suddenly went up for sale - owners happy they can finally get rid of them without writing the bank a large check.

Re:No, it's all going to hell again

[drinkypoo]

Perhaps the idea was that California is so populated that significantly rising rents in California may outweigh on average the decline elsewhere?

No, but it's that too. The rents up here in much of nocal (anywhere you could conceivably commute from) have about doubled. There are literally people commuting through Lake county where I live to get from where they live in Mendocino county to where they work in Napa county, or even the hind end of Sonoma, and that was true even before the fires up here. You can expect essentially the same thing to happen in socal now. Probably central California will not rise too much, but since the rents there are already exorbitant and well beyond the reach of the average family, this is not much consolation.

California has taken on a large number of people from other states, who came here seeking a liberal refuge. Thanks to the way our presidential selection system works, this has had a deleterious effect on political sanity in America. It will be interesting to see what effect some degree of exodus results in, which will depend very much on where those people wind up. That will be fascinating in itself...

Re:Millennials having kids

[ranton]

As a general rule (an unresearched, unscientific gut-feeling kind of rule!), people do seem to get more conservative as they age. I think it's fear - fear of losing what they have accrued, fear of a lifetime of experience becoming less relevant as they age, and an unwillingness to re-examine things they think they got figured out decades prior.

I don't think becoming more conservative as you age has much to do with changing political views. In fact the only research I have seen who track actual individuals' views over time has shown that supreme court justices become more liberal as they age. (although that may be because they are already older when they become justices) From what I can tell it has more to do with the difference between social and fiscal liberalism and how societies become more socially liberal over time.

I for instance am a social liberal and fiscal moderate. This means in 2017 I clearly lean Democrat. But in 2047 all of today's socially liberal battles will probably have been won. Or at least not nearly as big of issues as they are today. So I will likely be a social and fiscal moderate in my 60's. My views of women's reproductive rights, LGBT issues, and safety net programs will not have changed, it will be society's views on them which have changed.

While I am a proponent of a basic income today, perhaps in 30 years I will be against it going up from $30k/year to $40k. Then I might consider myself a fiscal conservative.