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Table of Contents

Summary & 3 Solutions

#1 – Despite Our Extremely High Mortgage Debt, the U.S. has a Below Average Home Ownership Rate

#2 – The Real Reason House Prices Skyrocketed After Covid

#3 – For Black Home Ownership, “Affordable” Housing Policies Have Been Worse Than Jim Crow

#4 – The U.S. Home Ownership Rate Increased the Fastest When Mortgages Were 20 Years Long and Down Payments Were 20%

#5 – The Home Ownership Boom After World War 2 was Due, in Part, to New Houses Becoming a Lot Smaller

#6 – U.S. Home Ownership Fell More During the Great Recession than During the Great Depression

#7 – For the Money the Fed Spent Buying Mortgage-Backed Securities from 2009 to 2015, We Could Have Bought ALL Houses Foreclosed On from 2006 to 2013

Economics

#8 – House Economics in One Sentence, “House Prices are Determined by the Amount of Money Chasing Houses.”

#9 – The Fast and Slow Economic Fundamentals of House Prices

#10 – The Economics of Houses are Different

#11 – The Supply of Houses Grows More Slowly than the Supply of Gold

#12 – Houses are Also an Investment Good

#13 – The Desire to Own the House You Live In is Extremely Price Inelastic

#14 – Higher House Prices Can INCREASE Current Demand

#15 – More Reasons Why House Prices Can Increase Surprisingly Fast

#16 – Economic Fundamentals Explain Less Than Half of House Price Changes

#17 – U.S. Housing Policies Almost Moved Toward Vienna or Singapore in the 1960s

Black Home Ownership

#18 – FHA was Extremely Racist

#19 – Worse Than Redlining

#20 – From 1940 to 1970 the Black Home Ownership Rate Increased More in the South than the North

#21 – Redlining was a National Policy to Segregate the North

#22 – The National Association of Realtors Opposed the 1968 Fair Housing Act

#23 – The 1968 Fair Housing Act had Very Weak Enforcement

#24 – The Same 1968 FHA Program that Devastated Many Black Inner Cities Caused a Boom in New Home Construction in the White Suburbs

#25 – The Black Home Ownership Rate is Higher Today in the South than in the North

#26 – The Black Home Ownership Rate Is NOT Getting Any Closer to the White Home Ownership Rate!

#27 – Famously Liberal Minneapolis is the Worst City in the U.S. When Comparing the Black Home Ownership Rate to the White Home Ownership Rate

#28 – Past Redlining Has Often Been Used to Justify Government Policies that Encourage Selling “Affordable” (Higher-Foreclosure) Mortgages to People of Color

Mortgages

#29 – For Mortgages, “Affordable” is Code for “Higher-Foreclosure”

#30 – Mortgages Are Phenomenally Riskier Today Than When the U.S. Home Ownership Rate Increased the Fastest

#31 – All Those Decades of “Affordable” Mortgages Didn’t Increase Home Ownership

#32 – “Affordable” Mortgages are Affordable for the Government

#33 – Easier Mortgages Easily Turn Into Higher House Prices

#34 – The Mortgage Interest Tax Deduction Increases House Prices which Lowers Home Ownership

#35 – When House Prices Go Up, Foreclosures Go Down

#36 – Fallacy of Composition – Foreclosures

#37 – Fallacy of Geographic Composition – Foreclosures

#38 – The “Affordable” Mortgage Cycle

#39 – The Real Reason for “Affordable” Higher-Foreclosure Mortgages

#40 – Real, Inflation-Adjusted, Fannie & Freddie Loan Limits are 2 to 3 Times Higher Than in 1980

#41 – Mortgages That Would Have Been Considered Predatory in Earlier Times Were Considered as Wholesome as Mom and Apple Pie in 2006

#42 – Mortgages are Only 20 Years Long in Many Countries

#43 – Portable Mortgages Would Prevent Today’s Mortgage Lock-in Effect

#44 – Lower-Only Adjustable-Rate Mortgages (LO-ARMs) Would Stabilize Home Ownership and the Economy

#45 – The U.S. Mortgage Industry is Largely Nationalized

#46 – Since Our Mortgage System is Nationalized, Shouldn’t We Get a Better Deal?

#47 – A Big Reason the Mortgage Industry Always Pushes for Higher-Foreclosure Mortgages

#48 – Appraisal Creep

#49 – The VA Has a Lot More Zero Down Payment Mortgages Than FHA But the VA Has FEWER Foreclosures!

Real Estate Bubbles

#50 – Housing Bubbles Hurt Older Home Owners, Too

#51 – High House Prices Don’t Help Current Home Owners Much Unless They’re Last-Home Sellers

#52 – Housing Bubbles are Common Historically

#53 – 1 Secret Reason for the 2000s Real Estate Bubble

#54 – The Great Real Estate Bubble Was Amazingly Symmetric – Prices Often Fell Like They Rose

#55 – 17% of ALL U.S. Home Owners with Mortgages Were Still Underwater 5 Years AFTER The End of The Great Recession

Interest Rates

#56 – About 80% of House Price Appreciation from 1990 through 2020 was Due to Falling Mortgage Interest Rates

#57 – With the Exact Same Monthly Principal and Interest Mortgage Payment – In December 2020 You Could Borrow 31% More Money to Buy a House than You Could in November 2018 

#58 – From 2018 to 2021, Interest Rates Fell So Much We Could Have Converted From 30-Year Mortgages to 20-Year Mortgages Without Increasing Monthly Mortgage Payments

Landlord Tax Breaks

#59 – We Have 2 Completely Different Tax Codes for Single-Family Houses

#60 – The Landlord Next Door Gets a Lot of Tax Breaks You Don’t

#61 – Landlords Bought More Single-Family Houses from 2008 to 2012 than All New Single-Family Houses Built

#62 – Tax Breaks for Landlords Increase Homelessness

#63 – How to Easily Increase Home Ownership for FREE!

The Fed

#64 – The Fed’s Mandate is Stable Prices… EXCEPT House Prices

#65 – The Fed Happily Destabilizes Family Wealth to Stabilize Wall Street

#66 – The Housing Wealth Effect is a Double-Edged, Lopsided Sword

The Real Estate Establishment

#67 – The Largest Lobbying Organization in the U.S. is The National Association of Realtors (NAR)

#68 – 26% of Realtors™ Own Residential Properties for Investment

#69 – NAR Considers Landlord-Ownership to be “Home Ownership”

#70 – What You Can Do to Increase Home Ownership

#71 – Congress Almost Prevented 500,000 Foreclosures but the Financial Industry Stopped Them

More…

#72 – Most Developers Today Don’t Want to Build Inexpensive Houses

#73 – Did the Internet Make the Real Estate Market LESS Rational!

#74 – 6-Months of Inventory of Houses for Sale is a Lot More Than It Used to Be

#75 – Many YIMBYs are Really NIMBYs

#76 – A Huge Property Tax Loophole for Land Speculators

Conclusions

3 Solutions to Increase U.S. Home Ownership

Solution #1 – One Tax Code for Single-Family Homes and Condos – Eliminate All Landlord-Only Tax Breaks (By Far the Easiest, Cheapest and Most Effective Solution)

Solution #2 – Redesign U.S. Mortgages to Maximize Home Ownership Instead of Home Sales (Not Easy But Effective) 

The Mechanics of Changing American Mortgages

Solution #3 – Greatly Expand Non-Profit, Limited-Profit, Cooperative and Government-Owned Social Housing (Hard to Do in USA (apparently), Very Slow, but Eventually Effective and Easy)

More Solutions – More Ways to Increase Home Ownership, Household Wealth, and Financial Stability

Conclusion – 76 Secrets of U.S. Home Ownership

49 Ways to Increase Home Ownership, Household Wealth, and U.S. Economic Growth