Housing is the world’s biggest investment class, with home prices more than quadrupling in real terms during the past 70 years, and yet housing is damaging the U.S. and other developed economies around the world. Housing is simply too expensive, and that is suffocating other components of the economy.
Those are few of the conclusions made by a major housing report published by the Jan. 18 edition of The Economist. The statistic-rich series of articles note the rate of U.S. homeownership slumped to 62.9 percent during second quarter 2016 — its lowest rate in 51 years. (It currently stands at 64.3 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.)
Meanwhile, millennials, laden with student debt and working lower-paying jobs than their parents and grandparents, have found homebuying to be out of reach. Also, during the past 10 years, the homeless population in Los Angeles has risen by 50 percent, and it rose by 60 percent in New York City during the same period.
