So currently I live in Chicago. I love it here, but to own a house in a decent area is pretty much out of the question. I've been looking at places that are up and coming and they are already pricey (hope there will be another housing crash soon). Even outside of Chicago, property tax is ridiculous. Oak Park is a very nice area but for a house that's listed as 200,000, taxes are 6,000 to 8,000. That is almost how much I pay for rent every year. Not quite but I can leave and not be stuck. I want a house with a garage so I can start playing with solar and wrenching on a car... and have a yard that's mine. Chicago is great but man, to have a place that's my domain is all I want. (1st world problems)
I see the same thing happening in every metro. Portland and Seattle are examples. Even rental units are ridiculously priced in those areas. Rental units are at an all time short supply everywhere, including small towns. The price here is skyrocketing. yet, people's incomes haven't budged in 20 years. This is what 'inclusionary zoning' is designed to address. People have to live somewhere. With "affordable housing" there are a shit ton of unintended consequences. I make my living off of those "consequences" by fixing the damage typical low income renters leave behind. My latest adjustment to my business plan is to shift towards taking those same units and upgrading them out of the affordable housing classification and into the mainstream housing to accommodate the higher income middle class renter so rents can be doubled. Not fair, but that's business and the property owners/conglomerates are cashing in on the trend. Unless things change, millennials are going to be stuck living in mass housing right next to drug houses/apts, violent drunks, mental cases, and career welfare recipients. While inclusionary zoning and affordable housing sounds good, in real life it's ugly and not something safe or pleasant to live with. And....I'm talking about here, in rural America. Cities like Chicago and the like are in a whole worse league!
200k? I can't find anything decent for under 350k here in Denver, thank god I get a rent discount for living on property.
New homes (mid range 3 bdrm, 2 bath, 1500 sq.ft.) are going for 250,000 here. The same type/size home rents for 2500/mo.now. A lot of homes are being bought up by conglomerates looking to cash in on rental shortages and millennials that won't be entering the home buying market. That's what it's like here. The big cities are gearing towards upscale mass tenancies. The kind of high density housing seen in movies like the newer 'Total Recall'. As those degrade with use, they'll be more like the tenancies in the movie 'Elysium'. Unless people are included in the 1-10% that will keep getting richer, life and housing isn't going to be pretty. Sure, some will luck out, but more and more will need subsidized housing. But there will probably be another bubble pop before it gets to that point. Mass subsidized housing (inclusionary zoning/housing) is already in the works in all major metropolitan areas and most smaller towns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusionary_zoning The housing market has to read 10-20 years down the road. The mortgage banking industry demands it. 10 years ago, everyone thought I was paranoid when I claimed this was how things were going to get. 10 years ago is when the plans, in the industry I was in, started laying the blueprints for what we are going to get in the next 10 years. We here in the news that the housing market is picking up. Yeah, the building of multi-family huge assed highrises and whopper apartment complexes is picking up a lot more than single family dwellings. that's where people are going to be pushed.
Hey, I've met quite a few tweakers! I spent the night at Miller's and 950's. Nobody's butthole was plugged.
In downtown Vancouver, a tiny little 1000 sqft (or close to..) house can go for $1M I live about an hour away from Vancouver and there are houses closer to 2500sqft that sell for $500k. I'm never going to own my own house as a single mother.
You are not alone GG. This is how Portland plans to deal with the housing shortage: http://www.bizjournals.com/portland...revised-demolition-tax-would-only-target.html In essence, contractors are being fined $25,000 if they do not build ultra high density housing projects when they plan to get a demolition permit. There is a scramble to build projects like what is now run down buildings in Detroit and Chicago. Now everyone gets to feel the pain i was feeling when the housing bubble burst. people have to live somewhere and the plan is to pack them into huge apartment complexes and we've seen how those turn out. https://rogueoperator.wordpress.com...nitiative-nationwide-housing-projects-slated/ Detroit: Chicago: The new projects will look a lot nicer.....for awhile. These projects were nice when they were new also.
You are not alone GG. This is how Portland plans to deal with the housing shortage: http://www.bizjournals.com/portland...revised-demolition-tax-would-only-target.html In essence, contractors are being fined $25,000 if they do not build ultra high density housing projects when they plan to get a demolition permit. There is a scramble to build projects like what is now run down buildings in Detroit and Chicago. Now everyone gets to feel the pain i was feeling when the housing bubble burst. people have to live somewhere and the plan is to pack them into huge apartment complexes and we've seen how those turn out. https://rogueoperator.wordpress.com...nitiative-nationwide-housing-projects-slated/ Detroit: View attachment 6337 Chicago: View attachment 6338 The new projects will look a lot nicer.....for awhile. These projects were nice when they were new also.
Yes, do not move to Colorado. It's terrible. Really the worst. So, how are we to deal with an increasing population in a landlocked area? Build down? Only allow the upper class to build new buildings?
A hot commodity right now.....is shipping containers...and they stack nicely . The amount of population isn't the issue. The affordability and supply of available units is. What I experience everyday: I renovate both so-called "affordable housing" and standard apartments in nice complexes. For quite awhile the affordable housing has been the main units that had high turnovers. I'd go to work at one of those complexes and it was noisy, congested, filthy and often a lot of violence. I dared not leave my vehicle or tools unsecured. No body worked so everyone was just hanging out wired on meth. Kids weren't in school and it was depressing. For the foreseeable future I'm inundated with work at an upscale complex. The very first thing I noticed was that by 8AM the parking lot was empty and there were no kids hanging around. Everyone went to work and kids go to school. They take pride in their apartment complex so it's really clean.The "affordable housing" tenants get it all paid for by HUD so they trash the place. It's no skin off their ass. So when you hear the terms 'inclusionary housing/zoning' and/or 'affordable housing' while it may sound like a Utopian blessing, in reality, it's not a pleasant thing at all. It doesn't mean "affordable" for you and I, it means affordable for HUD.
