HOUSINGNEWS REPORT
PERSISTENT HOME PRICE APPRECIATION PRESSURES MARKET ORTHODOXIES
AVERAGE U.S. HOMEOWNERSHIP TENURE (YEARS)
earlier. And while the usual suspects in coastal California and New York were part of that 45 percent, also in that 45 percent were counties in Houston, Denver, Dallas, Austin and Nashville. Not only is ownership off the table for many potential buyers, so is renting. Freddie Mac reports that “as of 2016, 15 percent of young adults aged 25- 35 were living in their parents’ home, which is five percentage points higher than in 2000.” Living at home with Mom and Dad is hardly ideal but it could be worse. Rental costs are so high in hot markets that we’re beginning to see the emergence of people who are employed but lack the income to rent, the working homeless. A December report by Axios found that the working homeless can now be identified in such metro areas as Washington, Boston, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco.
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higher borrowing costs, making a home purchase impossible. Equally problematic on the affordability front are soaring home prices in highly desirable markets such as San Francisco. “The median SF house sales price in 2017 was $1,420,000 (up from $1,325,000 in 2016), and for condos, it was $1,150,000 (up from $1,095,000),” says the Paragon Real Estate Group.
High-priced markets such as San Francisco are, logically, most likely to hit affordability ceilings that may constrain demand, but the affordability crunch is also spreading to some surprising places. Homes were less affordable than historic affordability averages in 45 percent of 406 U.S. counties analyzed by ATTOM Data Solutions in Q3 2017, up from only 21 percent of those same counties below historic affordability averages a year
The efforts to convert renters into owners is now floundering.
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FEBRUARY 2018 | ATTOM DATA SOLUTIONS
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