Ask Lemmy

US person here

I was lucky to be in a position to buy shortly after the 2008 crash, so another crash would erase a good chunk of equity (but I see most of it as fantasy equity anyway) but otherwise I'll be fine. I was in DevOps/SysOps for a real estate tech company at that time (and until recently) so I got to see the weird market moves in real time.

Nationwide we've already seen about a 4% drop from the end of the 2022 sales season (Memorial Day - Labor Day) to the end of the 2023 season. That decrease is actually as bad the height of the 2008 crisis but the drops were most felt in the most overpriced markets. This allowed the rest of the nation buffer against it so it's not having a big effect on main economy metrics (like the consumer confidence index).

Basically the bubble deflated considerably without popping, which is overall a guard against a (really bad) crash. Of course 1/3rd of China's economy is their housing market and it's on the verge of collapse... I don't know what that will do to the US but it won't be good.

I'm not selling in the foreseeable futher, so i care little.

Your house isn't increasing in value, the buying power of your currency is falling.

I am ready, my capital willing and able.

(I will be doing my best to make the housing available to who needs it, fuck profit for profits sake)

Home owner, I started buying back in 2007. Been through one crash, and if another crash makes it so I can move again, fuck it. Let the whole thing just burn.

I never counted on equity, and the system was fucked from the start. At least this way I wouldn't feel trapped.

I'm not planning on moving so it doesn't really matter what my house is worth. It was relatively cheap to begin with; 105k€. My monthly payment for the mortage is 520€ while the rent my friends are paying is usually 700€/month or more. That would cover my water and electricity bill aswell and I'd still have money left over.

In the US, at least, the last housing market crash was because people couldn't afford their homes. Since most homeowners are now on fixed rates and most people's incomes are significantly up since they purchased, there probably won't be a housing market crash like last one. Even with losing a job, a lot of these people could get a significantly less paying job and still be relatively okay compared to their Great Recession compatriots. With investors, most aren't in real estate for the short term. A lot sit on housing they don't rent or lease, even in a seller/landlords market. So you're left with poor investors and the short term housing investors, who can probably cause a collapse by themselves, but in an increasingly wealthy domestic and international market base, those will most likely be bought up before a significant dent in the housing market happens.

However, the federal government needs to increase housing supply and public transportation infrastructure by an obscene amount very soon, unless it wants a major economic and societal collapse in the coming decades that it may not be able to pull itself out of. A housing market collapse like 2008 should be the least of their worries.