Bidding Wars and Shortages are a Housing Disruption

• Author: Kelly Cooke
• Posted: 2024-09-16

According to a new housing report released on Wednesday, Dec 8, the housing shortages in America are considered a 'disruption' to the normal, organic process of the market's typical ebb and flow. This, of course, is a gross understatement and does not address what's really happening with the market. Not only are people dealing with a shortage of available homes, but they're also dealing with much wealthier people who are instigating bidding wars over these homes. Different data out there show that over half of these wealthy people driving up home prices with bidding wars are not actually moving into these homes. They're fixing them up and flipping them for a huge profit, thus further keeping poorer people out of the market. This is a very unique sort of housing crisis in America, and one that the government really refuses to address.

America has seen more than its fair share of housing market collapses, with the most recent happening in late 2008 due to a subprime mortgage fiasco that really shone a light on some seriously unfair lending practices by mortgage companies. It also exposed a private-public partnership, wherein government officials were also getting rich by betting and speculating on mortgages via Wall Street. 13 years later, however, and nothing has changed on either end. Huge corporations keep charging insane interest, and politicians are still allowed to get rich by playing the stock market.

The only thing that's really changed is that now even qualified homebuyers with money are priced out of these houses due to the bidding wars. And there seems to be no end in sight.

It Never Has Gone Smoothly

The fact of the matter is that the American housing market has never been a smooth operating machine for everyone. There was a very long time in this nation where only White men could own property at all, and only they would be given mortgages. Even after Jim Crow segregation ended in the late 1960s, a lot of mortgage companies upheld those abhorrent discriminatory practices for decades. Even moving racial discrimination aside, there is still so much to look at in terms of unfairness in America's housing market. Poorer people have never been given a fair shake, no matter what their racial identity was. The huge banks controlling mortgages demand money; and if you don't make enough of it to satisfy their arbitrary standards, you will likely never be a homeowner.

It's this sort of thing that has a lot of people demanding that housing become a human right. Because it is just not right that a person can work a job in this country, be independent, yet still be told no when it comes to being a homeowner. It's very hard to get ahead when you cannot own property, and America's government is asleep at the wheel when it comes to their natural citizens suffering. They only seem to care about cutting big checks to immigrants.

Government Intervention Doesn't Help

Not that government intervention has ever done much to help the problem anyway, mind you. At best, the government overpays by a factor of ten for some high-rise projects that just become inner city slums in a decade. Or they invest money and about $10 million of every $1 billion gets to where it's supposed to go. The net worth of the politicians goes up exponentially, while the wealth gap increases at double that rate. It's all so odd to watch. It's like you're witnessing true criminality in action, but somehow it's been made legal. The truth is that the government could help, if they wanted. They could put controls on what private companies are allowed to charge, which would compel more to hand out more mortgage loans. Then again, to do this, a lot of politicians would no longer be receiving campaign donations from huge corporations.

Banks Could Solve the Crisis

Speaking of banks, they could solve this crisis overnight if they wanted to. They could stop giving out mortgages to wealthy people who are just looking to flip homes and jack up the current rates. They could instead give more mortgage loans out to people who really need homes. They could slash their adjustable interest rates to give people more security. They could do all of this and still profit in the billions every single year.

They won't, however, because that extra money at everyone else's expense is just what corporations do. Until someone solves this issue, the average person will be involved in high-priced bidding wars if they want a home.