I truly believe that student loan debt is the elephant in the room...it is the anchor that is going to hold back the buying power of my generation and those after mine which will affect all sorts of industries.
Are we entering another US housing bubble?
- Thread starter rgw
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I truly believe that student loan debt is the elephant in the room...it is the anchor that is going to hold back the buying power of my generation and those after mine which will affect all sorts of industries.
Anecdotal, but I drove past a billboard bank advert today, pointing out, "No money down mortgage loans!"
That is probably not a good sign.
That is probably not a good sign.
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Yah, it seemed like that for a year or so after the collapse a few years ago banks were requiring heartier down payments (not quite in line with the historic numbers, but not the 0% that had become common), but that seems to have gone away. I don't know that everyone qualifies for loans now that did 10 years ago, but I can't imagine loaning someone cash who doesn't have 'skin in the game' so to speak...
I think it is unsurprising that the responsibility post-crash is diminishing. People my age over the last 50 years or so usually end up being new homeowners but it ain't quite working out like that anymore due to the economic instability, wages not keeping up with inflation, student loans, etc. The banks have had to lower their standards again to get people back into house buying. The sad thing is hearing that rent isn't going down but in fact going up as more people cannot even gather enough capital or credit-worthiness to buy houses.
I hope people are careful. We were having our home remodeled when the last one happened. We did a nice remodel and added about a thousand square feet and the appraisals from before to after dropped $50,000. I had to pay that much out of pocket to make it fit into a mortgage. Ouch!
During the worst of it, my current firm did a new classroom building for the Alpharetta GSU campus. They had a 10 million dollar budget 30,000 square feet plus parking and landscaping and kept coming in under budget by 2 million. They kept throwing more and more new things into the building and the landscaping. Now we are adding to this project 4,000 square feet (we started with 10,000) and some minor demolition and rebuilding of landscaping and parking. 5 million dollar budget, we are struggling to keep it under budget. We have taken out a ton of stuff and we are still borderline. The client cannot understand why. We keep having to explain that 2008 prices do not equal 2017 prices. In 2008 people were desperately trying to get work so they were charging the bare minimum, now subcontractors and contractors are not desperate at all and know they can be picky and charge a whole lot more.
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