EP 526 The American Dream of Home Ownership Slipping Away From Many

 

While much of what’s been written recently about housing in America are the exploding costs and great value of ownership, between 2010 and 2019, the number of renters in the country grew twice as fast as the homeowner population.  In fact, renters now make up a majority of residents in large American cities.  The cost of owning a home has been eating up household budgets and eclipsing the standard of thirty percent as the basis for what you should spending on housing a month.  A hidden factor in all of this is how much housing stock was gobbled up after the housing bubble of 2008 by banks, private equity firms, speculators and overseas money.  Their goal has been to maximize profit by renting or selling properties at inflated prices.  Our guest, Andrew Ross, author of ‘Sunset Blues’ lays out the conditions that have made the housing market so problematic for so many and why the American Dream is becoming unaffordable in many places. His book focuses on a particular area of central Florida to make his point, but our conversation discusses the failure of the housing market throughout urban and rural locales throughout the country.

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