50% of Americans Can't Afford Their House

I hate to sound like a broken record....but America is headed for financial trouble.  The signs are everywhere...but many of us are too busy buying stuff and entertaining ourselves to see them.

Here is just one more sign;

As the housing market slowly recovers, a majority of homeowners and renters are finding it hard to meet rising rents and mortgage payments, new research finds.

Over half of Americans (52%) have had to make at least one major sacrifice in order to cover their rent or mortgage over the last three years, according to the “How Housing Matters Survey,” which was commissioned by the nonprofit John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and carried out by Hart Research Associates. These sacrifices include getting a second job, deferring saving for retirement, cutting back on health care, running up credit card debt, or even moving to a less safe neighborhood or one with worse schools.

“Affordability issues are real and a major hurdle,” says Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, an industry group. Home prices have increased 20% over the past two years while wages have barely gone up, he says. “Only by adding more new supply, via housing starts, can home prices be tamed,” Yun adds. In fact, construction of housing units has averaged around 1.5 million a year for the past five decades, he says, but it’s likely to be less than 1 million in 2014.

What’s more, at least 15% of American homeowners (or residents of 78 counties across the country) were living in housing markets where the monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home requires more than 30% of the monthly median household income — long considered the maximum for rent/mortgage repayments. Housing costs above that threshold are “unaffordable by historic standards,” says Daren Blomquist, vice president at real estate data firm RealtyTrac. In New York county/Manhattan, mortgage payments represent 77% of the median income and in San Francisco County represents 70%.

But they’re still suffering the aftershocks of the property bust, experts say. In the years after the recession of 2008, more than 7.5 million homeowners lost their home to foreclosure or short sale and about 9 million more homeowners are still underwater and owe more than their property is worth, Blomquist says. “If one looks at the last seven years as a predictor of housing market behavior in the future, it certainly should give one pause about whether buying a home is a good investment or not,” he adds.

Here;  http://www.marketwatch.com/story/over-50-of-americans-struggle-with-home-affordability-2014-06-03

How many of us live in massive homes with dining rooms we seldom use, bedrooms that just end up being storage lockers for all our "stuff"...and then pay enormous utility bills to heat them all winter and huge upkeep costs...so by the end of the month we end up "house poor".

Sadly, the American Dream has led people to believe that they really aren't worth much if they don't own their own homes.  Since we all want to achieve our "dreams"...many end up way out over their skis in houses they can't afford...or in apartments they can't afford.

This push-cycle of lenders lending money to people to push them into houses they can't afford is what led to the almost collapse of our economy in 2008.

The Bible tells us to seek God first...and then He will make our paths straight.  Of course America and Americans would be in better financial health if we lived by God's principals...instead of following the American Dream...which has nothing to do with the Bible.