They did this in 2008-09 with an 8k payment to homebuyers that wasn’t a loan and didn’t have to be repaid. This enabled me to but a foreclosed house and make it livable, and I’ve been living in it since then. It didn’t raise prices in my area, because no one was buying houses anyway because regular possible couldn’t afford it.
I don’t know if I would have been able to get so financially situated if that payment wasn’t there. I could’ve bought the house, but I would not have been able to fix it enough to ever stay on top of the maintenance and bills.
Would this be exactly the same situation? I dunno. But I know a similar push sure worked in the past.
The argument isn’t that this payment won’t help people in the short term, it will. The problem is that if you have an extra 25k to spend and it’s given to every first time buyer, they’ll just shop in a 25k higher price range. And if the sellers know this, they’ll adjust the market for what everyone can afford now.
This is basic economics, you lower the quantity of available housing by allowing more people to afford it and the price will go up. There’s a reason our solution to every affordability problem works this way and breaks things. For student loans for instance, sure we can pay them off for you, but does that bring down the cost? No. It just means the government pays universities. Same thing here, the government is just letting you use your taxes to give to a real estate agent instead of addressing housing costs.
They did this in 2008-09 with an 8k payment to homebuyers that wasn’t a loan and didn’t have to be repaid. This enabled me to but a foreclosed house and make it livable, and I’ve been living in it since then. It didn’t raise prices in my area, because no one was buying houses anyway because regular possible couldn’t afford it.
I don’t know if I would have been able to get so financially situated if that payment wasn’t there. I could’ve bought the house, but I would not have been able to fix it enough to ever stay on top of the maintenance and bills.
Would this be exactly the same situation? I dunno. But I know a similar push sure worked in the past.
Different situation, as that was after the market crash.
The argument isn’t that this payment won’t help people in the short term, it will. The problem is that if you have an extra 25k to spend and it’s given to every first time buyer, they’ll just shop in a 25k higher price range. And if the sellers know this, they’ll adjust the market for what everyone can afford now.
This is basic economics, you lower the quantity of available housing by allowing more people to afford it and the price will go up. There’s a reason our solution to every affordability problem works this way and breaks things. For student loans for instance, sure we can pay them off for you, but does that bring down the cost? No. It just means the government pays universities. Same thing here, the government is just letting you use your taxes to give to a real estate agent instead of addressing housing costs.
And didn’t advertise it well. I bought my house then and didn’t know I had this until it was too late.