What’s ‘fair’ when it comes to housing?
Should you be able to purchase a home in the town where you were born using only income from an average local job? Or would efforts to bring a level of equality to the buying side unfairly take gains from those wise or lucky enough to have bought at the right time in the right place?
A recent report from San Francisco says that the average millennial can only afford 135 square feet of housing, the lowest buying power in the country.
We’re assuming numbers for Vancouver wouldn’t be a whole lot more hopeful for millennials wanting to buy a home.
But these are numbers for San Francisco and Vancouver – there are a huge number of cities in the world that have better options for most any subjective criteria you could name: culture, food, climate, etc.
If you’re priced out, what’s so horrible about moving and exploring new options?
In the first world, we’ve had the right conditions for a rising housing market for more than a decade now – prices have gone up all over, in some place more than others.
Is this ‘fair’ to those left out, who didn’t have the ability at the right time to buy?
On the flip side is it fair to those who stretched and saved every dime to purchase a home to have people wishing for it’s value to drop?
If you were king of the universe and could control the market what would be the best case scenario not just for you, but for society and the economy as a whole?
