Housing affordability in the USA in recent decades

German, French and Italian real housing prices since 1975

image

Source and notes: International House Price Database – Dallas Fed June 2015; nominal housing prices for each country is deflated by the personal consumption deflator for that country.

@AndrewLittleMP @jamespeshaw @BillEnglishMP Real housing prices New Zealand, Australia & USA: 1975 January quarter – 2015 June quarter

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Source and notes: International House Price Database – Dallas Fed June 2015; nominal housing prices for each country is deflated by the personal consumption deflator for that country.

New Zealand housing prices were pretty stable until the passage of the Resource Management Act in 1993. After that, prices took off New Zealand and didn’t slow that much for the recession subsequent to the Global Financial Crisis.

American prices just had a bubble because of loose monetary policy by the Fed and loose lending criteria by banks at the behest of regulators. Real housing prices in the USA started to rise again last year after a dramatic fall.

Australian prices were rising steadily until about 2000 but then took off with a strong economy and the usual restrictions on land supply by local governments at the behest of the existing homeowners.

Increase in the Cost of Housing in the US 1901-2002

Will Auckland become like San Francisco?

https://twitter.com/JoshZumbrun/status/652517712070082561/photo/1

NZ Home ownership, 1916–2013

Source: A century of censuses – dwellings and households

Generation Rent comes to Scandinavia in lockstep – real housing prices in #Finland, #Sweden & #Norway since 1975

image

Source: International House Price Database – Dallas Fed

Note: The house price index series is an index constructed with nominal house price data. The real house price index is an index calculated by deflating the nominal house price series with a country’s personal consumption expenditure deflator.

No Generation Rent in #Nihon – real housing prices in #Japan and #SouthKorea since 1975

image

Source: International House Price Database – Dallas Fed

Note: The house price index series is an index constructed with nominal house price data. The real house price index is an index calculated by deflating the nominal house price series with a country’s personal consumption expenditure deflator.

Real housing prices in Australia and New Zealand since 1975

image

Source: International House Price Database – Dallas Fed

Note: The house price index series is an index constructed with nominal house price data. The real house price index is an index calculated by deflating the nominal house price series with a country’s personal consumption expenditure deflator

No Generation Rent in #Deutschland! Real housing prices in #Germany, #France & #Italy since 1975

image

Source: International House Price Database – Dallas Fed

Note: The house price index series is an index constructed with nominal house price data. The real house price index is an index calculated by deflating the nominal house price series with a country’s personal consumption expenditure deflator.

 

US and UK Real Housing Price Index, 1975 – 2015

image

Source: International House Price Database – Dallas Fed

Note: The house price index series is an index constructed with nominal house price data. The real house price index is an index calculated by deflating the nominal house price series with a country’s personal consumption expenditure deflator.

Much higher house prices and the political sustainability of a return of inflation

Mortgage interest rates were last in the double digits in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since then, housing prices have exploded in New Zealand and barely paused for the recession in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis.

image

Source: International House Price Database – Dallas Fed; Housing prices deflated by personal consumption expenditure deflator.

With house prices and mortgages several times what they used to be, the ability for any household income to absorb the sudden return of high mortgage interest rates because of  a return of even moderate CPI inflation and double-digit mortgage rates is well-nigh impossible, politically.

image

Source: Reserve Bank of New Zealand Mortgage rates and Bryan Perry, Household Incomes in New Zealand: trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982 to 2014 – Ministry of Social Development, Wellington (August 2015) Table C.5.

The chart above shows that the number of 25 to 44-year-olds in New Zealand who have more than 30% of their income going to housing expenses has doubled since 1988 to nearly a third of all households. The number of 45 to 64-year-olds who pay more than 30% of their income in housing expenses has quadrupled to 20%. That is a lot of voters who would be offended by mismanagement of monetary policy.

None of these households would have much left over to absorb an increasing mortgage interest rates. That is very different political arithmetic too the last time both mortgage rates and CPI inflation were in double digits, which was more than 20 years ago. Not many New Zealanders under the age of 40 or 45 have an adult memory of high inflation and high mortgage rates.

@metiria @NZGreens child poverty is driven by housing unaffordability – by Green opposition to RMA reform

Nothing much has happening to child poverty before housing costs in New Zealand since the early 1980s. It is after housing costs poverty that is crucifying the children in New Zealand.

image

Source: Bryan Perry, Household Incomes in New Zealand: trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982 to 2014 – Ministry of Social Development, Wellington (August 2015), Table F6 and table F7.

From HES 2013 to HES 2014 median household income rose 5% in real terms (5% above the CPI inflation rate)…

On the AHC moving line measures, child poverty rates in HES 2014 are around the same as their peak after the GFC. A good amount of the rise from HES 2013 to HES 2014 is due to the large rise in the BHC median, as noted above, rather than a change in the numbers in low income per se.

Bryan Perry (2015, pp. 3, 7).

The parties that oppose measures to increase the supply of land and reduce the cost of housing through reform of the Resource Management Act and its many restraints on the supply of land are the New Zealand Labour Party and New Zealand Greens.

Liberal voting cities markets have higher income inequality and worse affordability

All homeowners have an incentive to stop new housing because if developers build too many homes, prices fall, and housing is many families’ main asset. But in cities with many Democrats and Green Party members, environmental concerns might also be a factor. The movement might be too eager to preserve the past.

Matthew Kahn

via Why Middle-Class Americans Can’t Afford to Live in Liberal Cities – The Atlantic.

The decline of home ownership in the USA

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