Housing is so expensive that incomes would have to spike 55% for it to be affordable

While you are distracted with petty daily infightings, this has been silently underway. You will own nothing and be happy…

via businessinsider:

  • The housing market is so unaffordable that only three extreme scenarios would return it to pre-pandemic affordability.
  • US incomes would have to spike 55% to consider the current market affordable, an industry executive said.
  • Other scenarios would have to see home prices crash 35% or mortgage rates drop four percentage points.

The current housing market is so expensive that one of three extreme scenarios would have to play out for it to return to pre-pandemic affordability, according to Andy Walden, ICE vice president of enterprise research.

He told CNBC in an interview this week that one of those hypotheticals would be a sharp spike in US incomes.

“If you look at home affordability itself, and what it would take to normalize the market today, it’s a 35% correction in price, or a 4% decline in rates, or a 55% growth in income,” Walden said. “Some combination of those. Those are massive movements we’re talking about, and none of them are going to happen in a vacuum, and none of those one single factors are going to make the move.”