We learned that people like to gamble and that it’s easy to push things forwards.
Also, better jump on the loan band wagon, or you’ll be left out. Anyone without a mortgage + houw which appreciated has basically been robbed by people who do
This is why I’m 100% sure we’re headed towards another real estate meltdown sooner or later. Real estate prices and rates have skyrocketed. The number of people who could afford 500k mortgages at 3% is much higher than people who can afford 750k mortgages at 7%.
But lenders aren’t going to suddenly go from approving 100 loans a month to just 10 a month. The incentive structures are designed to weasel and lie to pump out flattering bottomlines every quarter.
You can trot out the statistics but you can’t change human behavior without changing the incentives.
Looked at this a bit ago and share the sentiment. Vancouver, BC was an excellent case study. House prices average: ~$1.1M. Loan rate average: ~5%. Month payment: $5900. Yearly: $71k. Avg Salary: $60k (before tax). After tax: Maybe $48k or less. Result: No normal worker can afford the loan, and the bank won't give you the loan. You pay everything you can each year, and you owe more. This isn't even with property taxes, utilities, other basic Maslow's heirarchy stuff taken out.
Wonder what percentage of this demand is organic home owners vs. investors (including foreign investors).
There’s been massive capital movement across the globe. Money moving out of China and Russia in particular. And the gulf countries with a surplus of cash thanks to multiple years of expensive oil.
There might be something to that. Russia has become a bad place to invest money, while china’s real estate bubble looks to finally be popping. It could be that Russians and Chinese are accelerating on capital flight from their own countries due to current circumstances.
But it’s really just speculation. I haven’t noticed an influx of ore Chinese buyers into my market.
You can track political developments in China, Russia, and Saudi by the price of BTC and foreign housing (esp. places like Vancouver, Canada, or London, England).
Effectively a stealth tax for most graduates, if they can't ever hope to repay it. But regressive if you're rich enough to pay it off… or never have need for it to begin with.
The official term is SLABS: Student Loan Asset Backed Securities. Here's a recent paper on the subject.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3631953