This is a fantastic article, speaking as an Austinite, but I think it slightly misses the point. The only people who think falling rent prices are a bad a thing are the people who wrote the cited articles who are fishing for clicks, like the WSJ, as well as the few people making money from rent. There isn’t a single goddamn real person in this town who thinks rents falling by an average of $100 after rising $400 over the past three years is a bad thing.
A totally separate problem in this article is how they diametrically oppose housing as a place to live vs an investment vehicle, and their criticism of this portion of the 2020 Democratic Party platform is totally unfounded. The reality of a mortgage is that your home could appreciate 0% over 30 years, but as long as you pay you will continue to build equity. If you buy a house for $300K, and it never appreciates, and you eventually pay it off, you still have a $300K investment to help you in your old age and/or leave to your children.
That equity is what constitutes generational wealth, and building that wealth does not require rising property values. Rising property values are a lagniappe.
The general public certainly has a skewed perspective about how housing supply and demand affects prices, though
Un-paywalled link
This is a fantastic article, speaking as an Austinite, but I think it slightly misses the point. The only people who think falling rent prices are a bad a thing are the people who wrote the cited articles who are fishing for clicks, like the WSJ, as well as the few people making money from rent. There isn’t a single goddamn real person in this town who thinks rents falling by an average of $100 after rising $400 over the past three years is a bad thing.
A totally separate problem in this article is how they diametrically oppose housing as a place to live vs an investment vehicle, and their criticism of this portion of the 2020 Democratic Party platform is totally unfounded. The reality of a mortgage is that your home could appreciate 0% over 30 years, but as long as you pay you will continue to build equity. If you buy a house for $300K, and it never appreciates, and you eventually pay it off, you still have a $300K investment to help you in your old age and/or leave to your children.
That equity is what constitutes generational wealth, and building that wealth does not require rising property values. Rising property values are a lagniappe.
The general public certainly has a skewed perspective about how housing supply and demand affects prices, though