>>To solve the housing crisis, Americans need to be deprogrammed out of this belief that owning a home is supposed to yield a return.
> Markets don't quite work like that. A seller will sell at the highest price offered (as same as the buyer will buy at the lowest price), if you were able to "deprogram" this behavior, you'd put the entire market, not just the real estate, in complete chaos.
I don't think your criticism here works. The point is that people buy with expectations of return, and therefore are willing to pay investment prices rather than just equivalent-to-renting prices. Your reply doesn't address that at all.
If I understood correctly, you are saying that the buyers on the RE market pay more than they could have to clear the deal? I'd like to see some sources for that.
No. I'm saying that the demand side price for "a place to live plus an investment" is higher than for "a place to live"[1]. Within that dynamic, prices are where they have to be to clear the deal.
[1] I think this is intuitively obvious. The promise of future return will never have a price of zero.
That's quite possible but then I don't understand your critique. Investment driven demand appears to result from the already raising prices. I don't know who could possibly manipulate the market if it has been naturally declining, the capital requirements for that are insane.
I'm saying that, in your reply to _vertigo, you are thinking (or at least replying as if you think) that _vertigo wants to break the "accepting the highest price offered" behavior of sellers. I don't think that's _vertigo's point at all. I think the point is to change the "I can offer more because it's going to go up in value after I buy" psychology of buyers. That will change the offered prices, of which sellers will still accept the best.
> Investment driven demand appears to result from the already raising prices.
This is more on point... and it's also almost the definition of a bubble (people buying as an investment because the price is going up, and the money coming in raising prices further). I don't know any way to fix it except to increase supply enough to soak up all the money coming in, plus a bit. But, worse, I don't know any way to fix it that won't damage people who bought it as an investment.
I guess the only thing I can see is to build more, but not absolutely flood the market, so that the price goes down (or at least stops going up) but doesn't absolutely crater.
Yeah, _vertigo is mistaken IMHO, believing that the prices on housing raise through some kind of "programming" and not through the market as I observe in reality.
If people believing something is a sound investment made something an investment you could just buy random equities on the stock market and make bank as everyone* on that market believes that they make a sound investment.
* Statistically everyone, there might be some individuals intentionally taking a loss, I imagine.
> Markets don't quite work like that. A seller will sell at the highest price offered (as same as the buyer will buy at the lowest price), if you were able to "deprogram" this behavior, you'd put the entire market, not just the real estate, in complete chaos.
I don't think your criticism here works. The point is that people buy with expectations of return, and therefore are willing to pay investment prices rather than just equivalent-to-renting prices. Your reply doesn't address that at all.