Squeezed by high interest rates and record prices, homeowners are frozen in place. They can’t sell. So first-time buyers can’t buy.
If buying a home is an inexorable part of the American dream, so is the next step: eventually selling that home and using the equity to trade up to something bigger.
But over the past two years, this upward mobility has stalled as buyers and sellers have been pummeled by three colliding forces: the highest borrowing rates in nearly two decades, a crippling shortage of inventory, and a surge in home prices to a median of $434,000, the highest on record, according to Redfin.
People who bought their starter home a few years ago are finding themselves frozen in place by what is known as the “rate-lock effect” — they bought when interest rates were historically low, and trading up would mean a doubling or tripling of their monthly interest payments.
They are locked in, and as a result, families hoping to buy their first homes are locked out.
Yeah, I believe you will absolutely find something to put there. But I also write this from my dining room, which the China hutch behind me also has Lego sculptures and slime, and there’s cabinets with children’s art supplies and whatnot. And I to my right is the kids playroom, but also the way to our ground floor bathroom, and so you take your life (at least your feet) into your hands when nature calls. But I just tell myself, when they’re older, they have less shit, it’ll be better. Right?
My kids do each have their own rooms though, and I think that’s a fair line to draw. Boy and girl. Boy’s room is a shoebox, but he’ll survive.
Unfortunately, I renovated my detached garage into a place to hangout, and so I can kiss that goodbye in like 10 years.