The Never Before Seen Housing Market

All of my life house prices have gone up and up and up (with some downturns because of bankster caused fiascos)

And this has been most people's experience too. Many real estate people say "Housing never goes down" when selling a client on a house, or just talking at a dinner party.

However, we have just passed the peak, and it is forever downward from here.

Still, so many people talk about buying investment property, flipping houses and that this will just be another downturn in the market. How can they say this when every metric is against this happening?

I can understand that there is still money to be made, even in a collapsing economy, and a turning-to-dust housing market, but i feel that everyone should be fleeing, not trying to enter.

Demographics rules

Right now there are very few people buying houses. It is only the upper middle class that is buying anything. (and so, the mean house price seems to be high, but that is only because only the high houses are selling)

There aren't any real buyers. The houses are priced out of the young person's price range, by a lot.

The boomers have priced everyone out of the market (got to keep those home values high) and now, when they are going to sell (it's inevitable) there is no one to sell to.

Further, boomers own 25% of the houses. 25% of the houses will be on the market within ten years. And this huge surge in inventory is going to hit when no one has money or jobs to buy them. Further, there aren't enough people to buy them. The boomers were the biggest generation. In most countries birthrates have just dropped off, in America, we had one more big generation, and then its dropping off.

Never bet against demographics. We have always had just not quite enough houses, but now we will have way too many houses. And, i mean, WAY too many houses.

• Boomers are vacating
• VAXXXed deaths are increasing
• Immigrants are about to flee

Breakdown of the economy

One thing that has spurred house prices in the near past has been investment. Investment groups have been buying up houses to rent and make an income off of. Even the bigs like black rock have gotten in on this. They all expected rents to go up and up and up. (that was the trend line)

However, people are losing their jobs. Layoffs are happening. And the Fed thought it was a good time to raise interest rates causing the recession to be even worse. People were way overspending on housing, and now, they have no money. People are making decisions to pay for food or pay for rent.

So, if you are going to rent in this economy, you are going to have to massively lower rents.

And so, you are going to have to buy your investment property for even less. The correlation is that many investors are going to have to dump their houses on the market, or the banks, having foreclosed, are going to have to dump them on the market.

If the banks try to do what they did last time, in 2008, which was to keep houses off the market, they are going to find people moving into them. The people are not going to suffer an empty house like they did then. The economy is bad and getting worse. People will do desperate things.

Breakdown of society

Which leads to a breakdown of society.

Cities will become areas of crime and poverty. Anyone who can leave the suburbs will leave. The suburbs in blue cities will become barren wastelands. Imagine 50% of the people dying of old age and disease, meaning 50% of houses are empty. Then add on top of that anyone who has the ability has left. More than 3 out of 4 suburban houses will be vacant.

At this point, house ownership means nothing. Property rights mean nothing. Squatting is the norm.

There isn't a real estate market anymore. Anyone who wants a house just has to defend it from others moving in. And, i mean actively defending your property.

Stores in cities, and Portland and Seattle are leading the way, will become concrete bunkers with bullet proof kiosks and one way stainless steel doors. Or, in other words, the city lifestyle that many people like will be gone from these places.

There will come a point where there is nothing left in cities to attract anyone to want to live there. Except maybe corporate jobs in a walled city, as you see in cyberpunk dystopias.

We are witnessing the end of real estate.

Of course it will take at least a decade, but looking back on it, the collapse will seem quick.
Right now, we are seeing commercial real estate just die. The higher interest rates and the work from home mentality and the companies downsizing are just gutting that market. We are seeing big properties selling for 10% of what they used to be listed for.

This is coming for the housing market too.

In the future, there will be small communities dotted all over the place. Only those without the ability to leave will exist in cities. And all that housing, will as Kunstler puts it, will be as all misallocation of resources has ended up, abandoned.

All images in this post are my own original creations.