I mean the numbers are just bad unless something changes. I have a small house with a low mortgage rate and low payment that's more than doubled in value over the last 10 years. Yet there aren't any near term realistic situations where it's worth it to sell unless interest rates go up by quite a bit more or the overall cost to rent crashes.
As it stands, rental income would be like 3.x the monthly cost. Even accounting for vacancy while assuming any kind of continued value growth is comfortably ahead of any reduction in payment on a new place that I'd get from selling.
The only things that make selling look attractive are much higher interest rates (IE something that would let common bonds approach 10% yield), or significant depreciation in home prices, or some combo of the two, neither of which look that likely for now. (I guess substantially lower rates without significant price changes would be a third option that seems even less healthy.)
At the same time I'd love to have more space, my house is waaay too cramped. But purchasing also looks like a non wonderful choice (since it's likely to increase monthly costs by > $2k for a mediocre larger house even taking rental picture into account).
At the same time you'd think at some point declining birth rates would become a factor and make houses cheaper again. Problem is also maybe partially that geographic concentration of economic activity into the top urban centers outweighs overall population behavior? And that household size it probably increasingly one person.
It's just too easy, all we had to say is that housing developers are evil capitalists and all the plebs bought it hook line and sinker.
Want to build housing? Good luck with the five environmental reviews you need to submit before breaking ground. And that make sure you have enough below-market rate units, and parking, and you only use union labor. oh does all that make the economics difficult? Such a shame, maybe it's just not a fit to build around here.
