HOUSINGNEWS REPORT
PERSISTENT HOME PRICE APPRECIATION PRESSURES MARKET ORTHODOXIES
PROPERTY TAX DEDUCTION CAP: IMPACT BY COUNTY HOMES WITH PROPERTY TAX $10,000+ PCT OF TOTAL HOMES -8.7% 73.6%
ATTOM affordability report in Q2 2017 – the first time since Q1 2012 that wage growth outpaced home price growth in more than half of those counties. That percentage dropped down to 48 percent in Q3 2017. One way to overcome potentially higher rates would be to build smaller homes, properties with perhaps 1,500 sq. ft. “There is a tremendous market – sparked by millennials settling down, getting married and having children – for smaller new homes at entry-level prices,” said Mendenhall. “However, it’s up to the homebuilders to make the decision on whether to focus more of the production on this segment of the market. The demand is there, but the cost to build also has to make sense. Homebuilding activity at the lower end of the market appears to be slowly increasing. That’s good news.” What the national and metro figures do not explain is that the concept of “income” is now changing for millions of Americans. A regular check every two weeks is not rare but it is becoming less common. While fixed-rate mortgage payments are the same every month, for many households incomes are not. The result is what might be affordable one month may be entirely out of reach the next. “Over the past two decades,” explains Politico, “the U.S. labor market has undergone a quiet transformation, as companies increasingly forgo full-time employees and fill positions with independent contractors,
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“There is a tremendous market – sparked by millennials settling down, getting married and having children – for smaller new homes at entry-level prices. However, it’s up to the homebuilders to make the decision on whether to focus more of the production on this segment of the market.” ELIZABETH MENDENHALL 2018 NAR PRESIDENT
on-call workers or temps – what economists have called ‘alternative work arrangements’ or the ‘contingent workforce.’” Politico went on to say that “most Americans still work in traditional jobs, but these new arrangements are growing – and the pace appears to be picking up. From 2005 to 2015, according to the best available estimate, the number of people in alternative work arrangements grew by 9 million and now represents roughly 16 percent
of all U.S. workers, while the number of traditional employees declined by 400,000. A perhaps more striking way to put it is that during those 10 years, all net job growth in the American economy has been in contingent jobs.” A 2018 NPR/Marist poll comes to a similar conclusion. It finds that “1 in 5 jobs in America is held by a worker under contract. Within a decade, contractors and freelancers could make up half of the American workforce.”
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FEBRUARY 2018 | ATTOM DATA SOLUTIONS
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