New home sales increased slightly in places like Eagleville, Pennsylvania, while existing home sales fell sharply due to a housing shortage, record-high home prices and high mortgage rates.
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Melissa Williams says she did everything right. She has a college degree, works in accounting, makes a good income, and has no debt.
Williams, 38, is now on track to become a homeowner. But when she started looking at houses in 2022, she found she couldn’t compete with the sudden influx of people working remotely in rural North Carolina.
“I would call the day it came on the market,” she said, “and the real estate agent would tell me, ‘Yes, I can show you that property. But as you know, it’s already received two cash quote.”
Mortgage rates also rose significantly that same year, remaining around 7%, adding hundreds of dollars to typical monthly home payments. So Williams gave up buying and started renting, only to find those costs soared. “Right now, you can’t even buy a beat-up trailer in a not-so-nice area for less than $1,000 a month,” she said.
Williams said something has to change, and as the November election approaches, she’s frustrated she’s not hearing more solutions from President Joe Biden or former President Trump.
Housing policy and funding is very much a local issue. But continued record high costs across the country, including in battleground states, have made it a top issue for many voters, with overall affordability a major theme in the presidential campaign. Last month, housing concerns ranked second only to inflation in a Gallup survey of Americans’ financial worries. In a Harvard University poll of 18- to 29-year-olds this spring, housing ranked as the third most important issue, behind inflation and health care.
“This crisis is serious,” said Shams Rohrer, executive director of the National Housing Law Project. While there’s no magic bullet, he said “there’s no way we can solve this problem without a greater role for the federal government.”
Roller said housing costs now take up a large portion of income, and many people have had to cut back on expenses such as food, medicine and college or retirement savings. “So people feel that the cost of housing is impacting all their other dreams for life,” he said.
Biden and Trump propose starkly different housing plans
Biden and Trump have rarely talked about housing, even though it is a major driver of inflation. But Biden spent zero time on housing when he visited Las Vegas in March. He touted the billions of dollars in rental assistance his administration has provided during the pandemic and said expanded incentives and federal financing helped spur record new construction.
“The bottom line for permanently lowering housing costs is to build, build, build,” Biden told the crowd.
Housing experts agree that a decades-long massive housing shortage is driving up home prices and is a key reason homelessness rates are at record highs.
Nevada has one of the worst affordable housing shortages in the nation, with even a sizable portion of the state’s middle-income households facing cost burdens.
When the pandemic hit, “many families brought in parents or sisters, siblings and children to save money, help with care, and maybe all contribute to household expenses,” Rae Lathrop said. She runs the Desert Spring Community Resource Center, which started as a food pantry during the pandemic.
There are even people who want to move able Lathrop said she could afford the monthly rent but found herself struggling. That’s because landlords may require a higher credit score, three times the rental income, and application fees per adult tenant that can total hundreds of dollars.
Biden has met regularly with tenants’ rights groups who want more safeguards against evictions and excessive rents. This year, he proposed tax credits to help first-time homebuyers and moderate-income homeowners who want to upgrade, though some real estate experts worry the incentives could drive up home prices.
Biden also called on Congress to pass expanded tax credits and other measures to build and renovate 2 million affordable homes. This is an idea that Trump strongly opposes.
“The woke left is waging all-out war in the suburbs, and their Marxist crusade is coming for your communities, your taxes, your public safety, and your homes,” Trump said in one of the many short videos laying out his agenda. One of them said.
Trump, who began his career in real estate, has opposed loosening zoning laws to allow more multifamily apartments to be built; he says they lower property values. Instead, he wants to open up some federal lands for housing. Nevada’s Republican governor has made the request, and the Biden administration has said it will support the measure in Nevada.
Trump also wants to “stop the unsustainable invasion of illegal immigrants that drives up housing costs and provide tax cuts for American families, [and] Eliminate costly regulations,” campaign press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said in a statement.
But when it comes to affordable housing programs, the Trump administration has proposed deep funding cuts.
“They want to cut housing vouchers or eliminate housing trust fund programs, cut public housing programs, all of which will exacerbate our nation’s housing and homelessness crisis,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the company. Yentel) said.
When the dream of owning a home keeps fading
After going through a frustrating search to buy and rent a home, North Carolina native Melissa Williams said she ended up “kind of homeless.” She couch surfed for nine months. Eventually, she found a foreclosure house that her father liked and bought. She feels lucky to be renting from him at below-market rates. But her future remains uncertain as this is where he plans to retire in a few years.
“For people my age, we all see our families, our parents and everything they have, and we want to be able to give that to our children,” she said. “And we won’t be able to do that.”
Williams is still saving to buy a house. But with interest rates remaining high and prices still rising, “it feels like the goalposts are constantly moving,” she said. “So, like every year I don’t buy, I’m falling further and further behind.”
