Exclusive: most renters surveyed by Harris Poll say the areas they live in have become so unaffordable they are ‘barely livable’
The poll, conducted by the Harris Poll Thought Leadership and Future Practice, asked survey takers to identify themselves as renters or homeowners, along with other demographic information. Those polled were asked their opinion on home ownership in the United States. For many, especially renters, the outlook is bleak.
Though the vast majority of renters polled said they want to own a home in the future, 61% said they are worried they will never be able to. A similar percentage believe no matter how hard they work, they’ll never be able to afford a home.
“When you think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and housing is right at that foundational level of security, the implications on consumer psyche when things feel so unaffordable is something that will impact everyone,” said Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at Harris Poll. The American dream of owning a home “is looking more like a daydream for renters”.
My wife is selling her first home now that we’re in our first joint home. For reference, she’s 26, I’m 28. I have some thoughts about this whole thing because the house is not selling and it’s generally for stupid reasons:
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Interest rates are high, so the monthly payment is going to be twice what ours used to be when the house was bought in 2020. Interest rates are never going to be that low again and anyone without a sizeable down-payment just can’t afford it. Young people generally don’t have sizeable down payments, because they’re not selling a home to get their first.
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People continually complain about inexpensive cosmetic work like cabinet doors and floors. They walk away from a house with zero real issues because they don’t want to fix things like that.
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Builders are offering great deals on new homes. No closing costs, paying lawyer’s fees, etc. The problem is that new build quality has been fucking awful lately. Before my wife and I bought our current home, we took a look at a new-build neighborhood and even the example home had glaring issues.
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Investors. We had an offer for cash, as is, and took it because people with loans just can’t compete with that. Why wouldn’t we take someone who can pay cash and doesn’t care about inspections or cosmetics?
My take? Young people have no money, interest rates suck, but when a home becomes available that is affordable, they don’t want to put in the work to fix up cosmetic issues. They expect new-build appearances, but don’t realize that comes with poor new-build quality. It’s a multi-faceted issue.
My take? Young people have no money, interest rates suck, but when a home becomes available that is affordable,
We had an offer for cash, as is, and took it
Sounds like an issue of being unable to get into the market (that you continued to propogate). Young people are poor, so they’re unable to compete.
I hope you also realize that, at your age, you and your SO are major outliers. Most people your age will never be in a situation even close to what you describe.
Perception doesn’t meet reality in this case.
Admittedly we are at a high point and prices are strained, and we should work to reverse that trend. However, home ownership is still very much obtainable. Gen Z is already doing better than millennials.
https://fortune.com/2024/01/17/redfin-baby-boomers-gen-z-housing-market-homeownership/
Gen Z already is at 26%.
WTF? Aren’t the oldest Gen Zers only like 25? Never mind doing better than millennials; 25% of 25-year-olds owning houses is surprising for any generation.
About 36% of US population rents (same as developed countries like Denmark and New Zealand), so I am confused why this is being framed as a uniquely American problem? I think the issue with real estate being sold to corporations is the main problem (which happens everywhere) as unreasonable expectations for continued growth and lack of new housing prices people out. Where I get the figures: link
If the article was titled differently it could say American dream of becoming a millionaire is dead, majority of non-millionaires say.
Just another article creating division in America during election season.
Not American, but the basis of America being “the greatest country on earth” (lol) was in working hard and contributing to society would give you ownership and freedom.
If that degree of ownership is equal or lower to every other developed country, that indicates that perhaps America is no better than anywhere else. It’s also worth noting that in some cultures people don’t care as much about home ownership, whereas in Western culture it is highly desired to own your home. If it’s as bad as places like the UK, which is currently in recession, and has had over a decade of low spending/earning, there’s something clearly wrong.
So, it is a relatively unique problem for America that they are equal or worse to other countries that either struggle to buy, or don’t care about buying.
Okay, I get what you’re saying. The poll in the article is on a U.S. based population and concerns their views on home ownership. The poll specifically asks the question “The American dream of home ownership is dead”, which I think is such an emotionally laden question that I wonder about the motivation of the pollster.
Regardless, if people have such perceptions then there’s a reason for them. My point was that we all know that countries like Denmark have better social safety nets for their population, and so that’s what I was comparing: homeownership is not any different in a country with better social safety net.
I think the root cause here is corporate access to real estate mortgages, and no country is brave enough to policy them out of such real estate purchasing (I think someone did, I think it was Canada, but only against foreign companies?). So it doesn’t matter what perception America has of itself, or any other country for that matter, if their home ownership levels are the same despite social safety nets in other countries. The root cause of people not becoming home owners seems to be unaddressed, regardless of country
For working class people home ownership was really the primary way to stabilize and build wealth. Which is important since we don’t have a social safety net, most of our retirement has been privatized, healthcare and education are dramatically more expensive etc. etc. and since working class folk can’t build up generational wealth we are moving into technosurfdom. I don’t know if it’s unique but it sure do suck over here for a lot of people.
I’m relatively lucky but shit be hard here.
I’m currently selling my house because I can’t afford it anymore. When I bought the house I made sure it was 20% below my income. Mortgage went up $600 this year along with everything else I got robbed of home ownership. I worked tirelessly to buy the house and now being forced to sell I feel absolutely defeated…
If it’s 600 per month (as I am assuming), and it was split evenly between taxes and insurance, that would mean an increase in taxes of 3600 and insurance by 3600. My insurance for the entire year isn’t even close to that. My taxes went up on my million dollar (thanks to a nearly 50% increaseduring the pandemic) by 5%, which is less than 40 dollars a month. So I find it hard to believe that it is just the taxes and the insurance.
As I said, I was assuming they meant per month, but I could be wrong and it’s only 600 for the year. But then if a 50$ increase per month in expenses pushed them the edge, they were never in a really comfortable territory to begin with.
I’m at a fixed rate and my mortgage went up by $1200 a month. Mostly due to taxes increasing so drastically. They didn’t forecast the increase being so much so that caused problems in itself.
When I bought the house I made sure it was 20% below my income.
I’m not sure what you mean, but if that’s 80% of (post-tax?) income, that’s way too high.
Veterans get their loans backed by the government, so no down payment.
It allowed me to get a decent sized 3 bedroom house on almost an acre inside of a metro location… For $400 more than a 1 bedroom apartment down the street a decade ago. I got two friends as roommates at first, paid lower than my old rent and they saved up their own down payments and both moved out into homes they bought in just a few years because I charged really cheap rent.
I just checked, my old apartment has went up $700 in that decade.
The Down Payment is the hardest part of buying a home. You can’t save up 25k while paying what’s essentially a mortgage payment.
Give first time homebuyers the same program, and loads of people who think they’ll never own a home would be able to do so and pay less than renting within just a few years.
If we don’t do anything, those people are going to be lifelong renters.
We were lucky enough to buy in 2019 before everything got out of sight in our area. We used a FHA loan which required a 3% down payment and I got a first time homebuyer grant that covered all of that which allowed us to pay closing and moving costs since we were leaving in a hurry due to the small podunk town we lived in for 12 years stopping extra trash haul off and allowing trash burning in town instead. Almost every day my house was full of smoke. I had to choose between my home or my health. We were outbid on about a dozen houses by landlords. With the loan type we got stuck with a PMI, but even with that and extortionate Texas home insurance rates we still pay half of the renters in the house next to us. Although we’ll never be able to afford moving now and if we had waited any longer we would have been stuck in the corrupt small town EPA violation. We paid 96k for a brick 3/1 and five years later it’s shot up to 240k in value. I feel bad for the people that can’t get one now because I fear it’s more going to get any better when half the country cares more about voting for the people they believe hate the same people they do.
because I fear it’s more going to get any better when half the country cares more about voting for the people they believe hate the save people they do.
This is absolutely not an endorsement of fascist traitors and everyone should absolutely (1) vote and (2) pick Biden, but I feel compelled to point out that a lot of the factors causing the housing crisis (car dependency, NIMBYism, etc.) are thoroughly bipartisan.
How so? This is about home ownership. People who own homes don’t want new apartment buildings going up next to them so vote against that. But apartment buildings do not have home owners.
People are perfectly fine living in suburban sprawl which is what NIYMBism is most often associated with. So there is some argument that this causes higher rent but it seems quite the stretch to apply it to also blame it on home prices.
I mean absolutely. Lobbying, no party actually representing progressive ideas, and corporatism insures that if nothing else does. I’m just saying that the people who tend to vote for the fascist traitor always vote against their own interest. I’m sure it’ll trickle down any old time though. checks watch
There is a federal first time home buyer program even for non military members. You can put basically 0% down on your first house. You just also have to pay PMI until you have 20% equity in your home. So you are better off making as large of a down payment as you can but it can be as low as 0%. Of course there’s still closing costs but that doesn’t cost too much more than most rentals charge for a security deposit anyways. As far as PMI goes it isn’t that expensive. With the PMI, taxes, and insurance included my mortgage payment on a 3 bedroom house is still less than rent on a 1 bedroom apartment in my area.
It’s better than renting, but PMI is a racket and needs to be discontinued. It’s a handout to the wealthy. The mortgage insurance is the property itself. If you don’t pay your loan, they take the property. It’s a hassle to foreclose a house, but I think mortgage lenders do just fine overall. They must assume some risk, it’s part of the deal.
