Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Dr. Housing Bubble — The question of housing affordability

Housing affordability matters.  One of the biggest line items used to qualify home buyers is your household income.  This is why it is hard to understand why some people simply choose to ignore the most important factor in sustaining housing markets.  
Household income drives rental prices and also drives household values historically.  Should these ratios get out of whack because of exotic mortgages or imprudent lending then prices will rise but as we are seeing, will adjust lower back to more historical trends once the unsustainable trend pops.  Some arguments hold very little water in the current landscape.  Many markets in the US may be near market bottoms and we will highlight 17 of them.  
They all have very similar characteristics and some are here in California.  Other areas are still over priced by historical measures.  Let us examine the markets where price bottoms may have been reached.
Read it at Dr. Housing Bubble
The question of housing affordability – 17 US markets near potential price bottoms
by Dr. Housing Bubble

2 comments:

jj said...

Hi Tom, I don't know if you've seen this but the UK govt is considering issuing 100 year gilts:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17350397

Matt Franko said...

jj,

They probably want to "lock in these low rates" ;)

Resp,