• profdc9@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Helping with a down payment makes it easier for a homeowner to assume debt, but that doesn’t make the houses cheaper.

    • bitflag@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      This actually makes houses more expensive, because now buyers have more money to outbid each other.

      • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        So giving first time homebuyers cash assistance in buying a home is a bad thing, because letting millennial and gen-z Americans have spending power will just make things more expensive?

        I don’t buy it. How is $25k in cash assistance worse than no assistance at all? Would a $25k penalty be beneficial because buyers would have less money to outbid each other?

        This just sounds like a boilerplate argument against helping the working class.

        • bitflag@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          The issue with housing is that the supply is limited. If you increase demand and not supply you just increase prices. Giving buyers $25k extra to spend means every home owner is now gonna jack up their selling price by $25k. This is, in the end, a subsidy for existing home-owners. Who already are doing pretty well, thank you very much.

          Denying the existence of supply and demand always lead to policy failure. The way to address housing cost is to lower the cost of housing, not make housing more expensive by helping people outbid each others.

          • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            Its become a worldwide problem because airbnb brought in extra demand from the luxury hotel market. Even if you tripled the housing supply it might not make housing affordable given that like a security guard that wants to buy a house will never make enough to compete with like the millionaires going on vacation every other week.

            There needs to a be a large tax on airbnbs in residential areas that helps pay for public housing.

        • Andonyx@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Consider how the federalization of Student Loans has contributed to the price of college outpacing inflation by many times, and income by a magnitude.

          That’s still only part of the problem, of course, hiring university leadership from the for profit business sector, privatizing loan servicing, etc. have all made college tuition skyrocket, but the loan program is a major issue.

          A better option for college would be to subsidize universities directly with the requirements that their tuition stay within a linear relationship to inflation. Somewhat like state colleges offering low tuition for residents.

          Housing needs more federal controls, which, to her credit she has explored in her platform along with disincentivizing, exploitative investment in private housing.