The Rent Crisis Is About to Get a Lot Worse

[Ichingcarpenter]

How bad can rental affordability in the U.S. get? Even worse.

That's pretty bad.

The number of U.S. households that spend at least half their income on rent—the "severely cost-burdened," in the lingo of housing experts—could increase 25 percent to 14.8 million over the next decade. More than 1 million households headed by Hispanics and more than 1 million headed by the elderly could pass into those ranks. Households shouldn't spend more than 30 percent of income on housing, by the general rule of thumb.

The grim figures come from a report out today from Enterprise Community Partners, an affordable-housing nonprofit group, and Harvard’s Joint Center on Housing Studies. To reach their conclusions, the researchers considered various scenarios for wage and rent growth over the next decade.

Even in the best case posited by the report, with wages growing a full percentage point per year faster than rents, the number of severely-cost burdened households will barely fall, from 11.8 million in 2015 to 11.6 million in 2025. In the baseline scenario, where rents and wages (and inflation) increase at 2 percent each year, the researchers expect the number to reach 13.1 million.


snip


If rents continue to rise faster than wages, the number of households spending more than half their income on rent will rise, too. Wages grew 0.2 percent in the second quarter of this year, the slowest pace since 1982.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-21/the-rent-crisis-is-about-to-get-a-lot-worse

[99th_Monkey]

1. Big Wall $t. money is buying up single-family houses in Portland OR, for cash

which is spurring bidding wars on houses, and driving first-time homebuyers
out of the market.

It's sick, sick, sick. There oughta be a law.

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. Rent is more of an issue vs mortgage payments

though I agree with you on who is buying this up.

The largest U.S. single-family home landlords plan to raise their rents as much as 5.7 percent this year as they shift focus from buying properties to boosting their bottom lines.

“In the 2015 rental season, we’re really seeing the ability to move rents,” David Singelyn, chief executive officer of American Homes 4 Rent, the largest publicly traded single-family landlord, with about 35,000 homes, said at a conference in Miami Beach, Florida.
Corporate landlords are seeking to profit from increased demand for rental homes after building a new real estate asset class on the rubble of the housing crash. The firms slowed their expansion as housing prices rose and are focusing on operations to show investors they can be profitable managing thousands of scattered properties.

Large buyers -- those who purchase at least 10 properties a year -- have spent about $68 billion amassing about 528,000 single-family rental homes since 2011, according to a report last month by Haendel St. Juste, a Morgan Stanley analyst.
“The focus is now on optimizing revenue, compared to getting heads in beds,” St. Juste said in an interview at the Information Management Network conference.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-21/u-s-single-family-landlords-are-raising-rents-ceos-say

[99th_Monkey]

4. Indeed. Yet peeps wanting to escape rising rents via buying their own house, are screwed.

damn. Wish we had a Socialist running for President, so we could actually DO
something about this constant gouging of the working class & poor.

Oh wait! I heard about this guy, Bernie something. ... I'll check him out.

[Arugula Latte]

14. It is crazy here -- getting to be like the Bay Area.

I know people who are having to take their kids out of their long-time schools and move out of the city because rents are skyrocketing. People are being evicted from apartments for no reason other than landlords want to jack up prices by a huge margin.

[Le Taz Hot]

18. The value on our house went down by $15,000

in one month due to speculators buying homes here, then putting them up for Rent. My property values have PLUMMETED. When I moved here 16 years ago, there were maybe 3 rentals in this entire area. Now? Probably 70% of the houses on this block are rentals.

[Eleanors38]

20. In Austin, we're not Californicated, we are Florinated...

I've said for years that CA wasn't the big player in immigration, it is Florida. Sure enough, FL puts CA in a distant second place with Dade and Broward counties sending in residents with nearly a third more CASH income than CA. The main street through South Austin (other than I-35), South Lamar Blvd. is zoned its entire length of approx. 4 miles for condos, a distinctly South Florida business model. I speculate this is cash influx is from South American investors who made a fortune buying up thousands of condos (sometimes entire high rises) during the real estate crunch in FL, then flipping. The cash (and drug money) has to go somewhere. They don't need no stinking Wall Street.

Rents here go up by the hundreds with the end of every lease period.

[hobbit709]

2. In Austin if you work full time at $10/hr you're sleeping in a cardboard box under the overpass.

At least 2/3 of available jobs here are low paying service jobs-a lot of them part time.

There's people renting ROOMS for $750/mo.

[yeoman6987]

6. I am disappointed these high rents are happening in liberal cities

We do great work over all but we are failing in the rent situation. Liberal mayors need to do something ASAP.

[freebrew]

5. When I had a job...

the guy from the 401K investment firm tried to get me to invest in something other than my home.
Land isn't a good investment, he said. So, when I was fired at 57, no prospect for work anywhere here, I had a place to live. I can afford the mortgage, and it won't go up.

Investments lost money as the company was not hired as a fiduciary, they made lots for themselves. Not much for us 'little guys'.

[KatyMan]

7. hence the 'tiny house' movement...

the 1% want people to have a place to live, but only a little one and only if they can rent the land to you. And then you are mobile enough to just follow the jobs. As long as you have gas. And can pay rent and hookup fees.

[Ichingcarpenter]

9. unsocial housing

[Eleanors38]

21. In Florida, during the 20s and 30s, they were called "Tin Can Tourists"...

owing to the empty tin can hung on the external radiator caps (a curious "up your's" symbol of defiance to those who disparaged them). They "visited" Florida via the first generation of paved highways, but many led a nomadic existence, going from place to place, staying on scraped over land that may have latrines and water (tin can camps) until finding more permanent residences. Oddly, they followed the old Cracker way of existing/migrating employed some 80 yrs earlier: Drive your livestock with you, squat on land until told to get off, and be ready to move quickly. The more substantial folks had 2-wheeled Cracker Carts drawn by a horse, mule or cow, which was directly ridden; the cart held belongings or family members who could not walk with the others.

[LittleBlue]

8. No way to avoid that if the population keeps rising

Our population is exploding and we can't create more land. The cost per square foot to build housing has exploded in the last 20 years as 1.3 billion Chinese chase raw building materials.

The best solution is population control. We can't keep increasing our population and expect prices to remain low.

[Ichingcarpenter]

10. Rental prices have more than quadrupled inflation

your solution and analysis is flawed

[LittleBlue]

13. Inflation is based on a basket of goods

Because the people who measure inflation realize that not everything increases at the same rate.

Inflation is also kept artificially low by outsourcing and inflation measurement fraud. Google Hedonic pricing. Basically your inflation numbers are lies.

The inflation numbers have been doctored for years.

[Ichingcarpenter]

15. You blame the Chinese and lack of land

If you want more urban sprawl then your solution might work

[LittleBlue]

17. Didn't mean to sound like I was blaming China

The Chinese are the only ones attempting to do something about it with the One Child Policy.

It isn't just the Chinese. Every census our population increases by 20-30m people. India has much more purchasing power in the last 30 years and they aren't curbing population.

[Marty McGraw]

16. Land isn't much of an issue

with our oversized population. Scarcity of water & Food is much more of the issue. There's a lot of empty crappy wasteland that can be homesteaded. Just need to find an efficient means for transit to employment, shopping, recreation and the sorts.

[zeemike]

11. Well the solution will eventually become obvious to us.

Become slaves.
Slaves do not have to worry about rent...the master takes care of that.

I have said this before, people are poor because they have no land. And at no time in our history has fewer people actually owned the land they live on.

[jwirr]

12. Spending more than half their income on rent. Considering the HUD thinks that

the average amount that should be spent on rent is 30% of your income that it pretty bad.

[a la izquierda]

19. It is cheaper for me to buy where I live.

If I bought a house for under $150K, I'd save anywhere from half to a third on housing. Rent prices are ridiculous here... In Morgantown, WV