Excellent article. I noticed this ten years ago when I learned that many of my nieces friends were attending the same college she was. I knew they were not star students and from families not poor enough to receive Pell grants but not wealthy enough to afford tuition. My niece explained they were able to get these hugh loans without the consent of their parents. It seems liked a bad idea to me at the time. And turns out it was.
I was in charge of a scholarship organization. We would give entering students for their first year of college. The city college said hey, we don't care about you financial standing everyone gets "free."
Our applications dropped. At the same time gov. stepped in and said almost the same thing when they said we underwrite student loans. We started seeing a significant increase in the cost of schooling. All of sudden we were the stepchild of scholastic aid.
Here is the turn around particularly the 4 year colleges better take note of.
The "Trades are back." Plumbers, electricians, auto repair, and or course computer repair/IT management. All of these can be learned without college. You work your own hours, the pay is good, and if you are honest the work will flood in. Want a home, there it is. Want a great work truck watch the pennies and nickles and all of a sudden it is paid off 2-3 years before.
The next time your kids turn up their noses at plastering, sink repair, etc. ask them how long that cost of the 4 year degree will take to pay off? Better yet ask them how much they will have to pay for what they should know as basic living?
I have been interested in, invloved in as an Architect, and extensively studied the housing issue or 50 years !
The main reason homes are so expensive is the land.
Years ago the land component of housing was 10% and the construction cost 90%.
Today the land component of housing cost is 60% and the construction cost is 40% .
The reason for this is the zoning urban limit line!
For 200 years cities could expand to provide adequate and cheap vacant lots to build new houses on. The zoning urban limit line ended all that and the urban limit line ended an adequate supply of low cost vacant lots to build new homes on. This, in turn, caused no new homes to be built and the supply became fixed while demand skyrocketed because of population growth. (the simple but true economic law of Supply and Demand!)
There is but one solution and that is to remove all urban limit lines and also to create "new towns" (with new industry located there with jobs) all across America.
I propose a new city, on the 101, half way between Santa Barbara and Santa Maria. It would have light rail service to jobs in Santa Barbara. This new supply of housing (and jobs located oit of Santa Barbara) would lower rents and housing prices by over 50%!
The second most cause of high housing prices (and high rents) is the huge demand by students! California put in place a new law allowing city colleges to now provide housing for its students. If UCSB and City College provided housing for housing would instantly lower rents and housing prices by well over 25%!
Excellent article how the younger generations have been squeezed out of economic opportunities. I believe due to the dying Petro dollar and its value degradation over its 110+ year existence. The younger generations been bamboozled and robbed. We need to find ways to include all Americans, young & old, in the revival of America as we move forward into The Golden Age…good start would be to eliminate property taxes for owner occupied housing + 50-year mortgages with interest rate discounts for owner occupied primary residences + Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go public for public financing…and wipe out the Cabal controls on land use planning at the state & local levels…Build Baby Build!
Trump is doing his part at the National level…We The People, will need to provide remedies at the State & Local levels…Be Ready
PS, remigration & the elimination of government subsidies for illegal migrants should also free up much needed housing for more Americans…
DLDawson: Good ideas, but your interest rate discounts for owner occupied primary residences would immediately be gobbled up by a coterie of Democrat political lowlifes (Laeticia James, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, ad nauseam), who would claim their false status and scam the system!
In the case of Ms. James, just last week, a Grand Jury refused to bring charges of mortgage fraud against her, right after a judge a week prior, thru the case out. I doubt if the other cases will be even be brought to trial, let alone result in 34 felony convictions.
Decades ago I spent an afternoon as a guest in the classroom of a client who taught high school in Camarillo to a group of Seniors enrolled in an "entrepreneurship" course. They were the children of farm workers, and without exception EVERY one of them was headed to college, presumably on loans or scholarships. They had absolutely no entrepreneurial intentions or aspiration. They were precisely the generation that should have been trained in the trades, establishing skills with a goal of business ownership. No doubt that was the dream their immigrant parents had for them, but the educational system had them convinced that a college degree was the only was the only way.
Yes, excellent observation of one component of the heavy burden pushed onto our aspiring youngers by those smart folks in the big business of higher education across the country! From the supply and demand angle locally, our awesome workforce has been forced into long daily commuting on the 101 due to the unconscionable, woeful and ongoing lack of adequate student housing being provided by UCSB. Did you know they currently invite in @30,000 students a year (undergrad and grad), yet only provide housing for @8000 students? Yes, that is a 22,000 shortage of housing in Santa Barbara every year, which assures very high housing costs and the long, slow commutes for our workers to/from more affordable locales will continue. UCSB leadership must take responsibility and develop a serious building solution, serious, not incremental. FYI, the average private college provides housing for over 60% of its students, which is also not adequate, as the off-campus students squeeze out others/young families/elders for housing. The business of higher education nationally thrusts @10 million students/transients a year into local communities looking to rent, chronically worsening our housing crisis!
The students also register to vote and heavily impact the local community with woke indoctrinated ideology when they actually have no understanding or commitment to the area, they are just passing through.
Great thoughts Mr. Mason. Another contributing issue that exacerbates the situation and is a hot topic to mention is how government also flooded the market with new people needing a place to live. That's more gas on an already hot fire.
Excellent article. Especially the fact that the cost of a college education has no correlation to the actual cost of a student's education. Back in the mid-1990's, we were preparing to send our son to college -- just at the time that public and private colleges were at the start of raising tuition annually to exceed the cost of living. I remember an interesting coverage of the tuition spikes in one of the weekly national magazines, Newsweek or US News. One article profiled Penn State, a heavily endowed school. The article revealed that there was enough money for Penn to cover the cost of every undergraduate's tuition, room, and board -- without touching the endowment's principal!
Well stated regarding young folks. Plus they complicate their situation by getting degrees in ‘the biology of newts in Botswana’ and wonder why they cannot find a job. Plus as you point out People think real estate has gone up in ‘value’ and are proud they invested wisely. As you point out house prices are simply a reflection of a devaluing dollar and little else. Since 1913 the dollar has lost over 90% of its value. In reality the higher the price of your home the more concerned you should be about the dollars value. Investing in assets like real estate , gold, bitcoin etc can keep pace with the devaluation but the real solution is to curb government spending of course. We should look forward to the day when our house values are flat. That could mean the dollar is finally holding its value.
Well written article. I have long stated that we need to stop federal guarantees for student loans to private universities. Private universities have endowments into the billions and can easily make loans for their own students. Let's see what degrees are generated then.
Excellent article. I noticed this ten years ago when I learned that many of my nieces friends were attending the same college she was. I knew they were not star students and from families not poor enough to receive Pell grants but not wealthy enough to afford tuition. My niece explained they were able to get these hugh loans without the consent of their parents. It seems liked a bad idea to me at the time. And turns out it was.
But the good news is they’re all impeccably educated in CRT.
I was in charge of a scholarship organization. We would give entering students for their first year of college. The city college said hey, we don't care about you financial standing everyone gets "free."
Our applications dropped. At the same time gov. stepped in and said almost the same thing when they said we underwrite student loans. We started seeing a significant increase in the cost of schooling. All of sudden we were the stepchild of scholastic aid.
Here is the turn around particularly the 4 year colleges better take note of.
The "Trades are back." Plumbers, electricians, auto repair, and or course computer repair/IT management. All of these can be learned without college. You work your own hours, the pay is good, and if you are honest the work will flood in. Want a home, there it is. Want a great work truck watch the pennies and nickles and all of a sudden it is paid off 2-3 years before.
The next time your kids turn up their noses at plastering, sink repair, etc. ask them how long that cost of the 4 year degree will take to pay off? Better yet ask them how much they will have to pay for what they should know as basic living?
Good article Mr. Mason
Another change is an attitude of entitlement.
They have every electronic device, with all the streaming etc available.
Eat out regularly, attend concerts and spend holidays at resorts, not to mention their clothing budget.
No one is entitled to live where they can’t afford to.
My first home wasn’t where I wanted, it was where I could afford to buy.
Yes they’ve been deceived and as usual government help usually doesn’t help.
This article is right on!
I have been interested in, invloved in as an Architect, and extensively studied the housing issue or 50 years !
The main reason homes are so expensive is the land.
Years ago the land component of housing was 10% and the construction cost 90%.
Today the land component of housing cost is 60% and the construction cost is 40% .
The reason for this is the zoning urban limit line!
For 200 years cities could expand to provide adequate and cheap vacant lots to build new houses on. The zoning urban limit line ended all that and the urban limit line ended an adequate supply of low cost vacant lots to build new homes on. This, in turn, caused no new homes to be built and the supply became fixed while demand skyrocketed because of population growth. (the simple but true economic law of Supply and Demand!)
There is but one solution and that is to remove all urban limit lines and also to create "new towns" (with new industry located there with jobs) all across America.
I propose a new city, on the 101, half way between Santa Barbara and Santa Maria. It would have light rail service to jobs in Santa Barbara. This new supply of housing (and jobs located oit of Santa Barbara) would lower rents and housing prices by over 50%!
The second most cause of high housing prices (and high rents) is the huge demand by students! California put in place a new law allowing city colleges to now provide housing for its students. If UCSB and City College provided housing for housing would instantly lower rents and housing prices by well over 25%!
Excellent article how the younger generations have been squeezed out of economic opportunities. I believe due to the dying Petro dollar and its value degradation over its 110+ year existence. The younger generations been bamboozled and robbed. We need to find ways to include all Americans, young & old, in the revival of America as we move forward into The Golden Age…good start would be to eliminate property taxes for owner occupied housing + 50-year mortgages with interest rate discounts for owner occupied primary residences + Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go public for public financing…and wipe out the Cabal controls on land use planning at the state & local levels…Build Baby Build!
Trump is doing his part at the National level…We The People, will need to provide remedies at the State & Local levels…Be Ready
PS, remigration & the elimination of government subsidies for illegal migrants should also free up much needed housing for more Americans…
DLDawson: Good ideas, but your interest rate discounts for owner occupied primary residences would immediately be gobbled up by a coterie of Democrat political lowlifes (Laeticia James, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, ad nauseam), who would claim their false status and scam the system!
In the case of Ms. James, just last week, a Grand Jury refused to bring charges of mortgage fraud against her, right after a judge a week prior, thru the case out. I doubt if the other cases will be even be brought to trial, let alone result in 34 felony convictions.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-allegedly-committed-same-mortgage-172927519.html
hmmm…I see all of those compromised evildoers in prison soon!
Well, the "no growthers" had something to do with this man made shortage.
Decades ago I spent an afternoon as a guest in the classroom of a client who taught high school in Camarillo to a group of Seniors enrolled in an "entrepreneurship" course. They were the children of farm workers, and without exception EVERY one of them was headed to college, presumably on loans or scholarships. They had absolutely no entrepreneurial intentions or aspiration. They were precisely the generation that should have been trained in the trades, establishing skills with a goal of business ownership. No doubt that was the dream their immigrant parents had for them, but the educational system had them convinced that a college degree was the only was the only way.
Yes, excellent observation of one component of the heavy burden pushed onto our aspiring youngers by those smart folks in the big business of higher education across the country! From the supply and demand angle locally, our awesome workforce has been forced into long daily commuting on the 101 due to the unconscionable, woeful and ongoing lack of adequate student housing being provided by UCSB. Did you know they currently invite in @30,000 students a year (undergrad and grad), yet only provide housing for @8000 students? Yes, that is a 22,000 shortage of housing in Santa Barbara every year, which assures very high housing costs and the long, slow commutes for our workers to/from more affordable locales will continue. UCSB leadership must take responsibility and develop a serious building solution, serious, not incremental. FYI, the average private college provides housing for over 60% of its students, which is also not adequate, as the off-campus students squeeze out others/young families/elders for housing. The business of higher education nationally thrusts @10 million students/transients a year into local communities looking to rent, chronically worsening our housing crisis!
The students also register to vote and heavily impact the local community with woke indoctrinated ideology when they actually have no understanding or commitment to the area, they are just passing through.
Great thoughts Mr. Mason. Another contributing issue that exacerbates the situation and is a hot topic to mention is how government also flooded the market with new people needing a place to live. That's more gas on an already hot fire.
Mortgage rates have been well below the historical average of 7 1/2 % since 2000. This is a significant contributor to home prices.
Yes I explain that all the time - think in terms of monthly payments!!
Excellent article. Especially the fact that the cost of a college education has no correlation to the actual cost of a student's education. Back in the mid-1990's, we were preparing to send our son to college -- just at the time that public and private colleges were at the start of raising tuition annually to exceed the cost of living. I remember an interesting coverage of the tuition spikes in one of the weekly national magazines, Newsweek or US News. One article profiled Penn State, a heavily endowed school. The article revealed that there was enough money for Penn to cover the cost of every undergraduate's tuition, room, and board -- without touching the endowment's principal!
Well stated regarding young folks. Plus they complicate their situation by getting degrees in ‘the biology of newts in Botswana’ and wonder why they cannot find a job. Plus as you point out People think real estate has gone up in ‘value’ and are proud they invested wisely. As you point out house prices are simply a reflection of a devaluing dollar and little else. Since 1913 the dollar has lost over 90% of its value. In reality the higher the price of your home the more concerned you should be about the dollars value. Investing in assets like real estate , gold, bitcoin etc can keep pace with the devaluation but the real solution is to curb government spending of course. We should look forward to the day when our house values are flat. That could mean the dollar is finally holding its value.
That is a perspective. I haven’t heard before. Great points.
Is it a wonder that communism is looking pretty good? Can we blame them.
Well written article. I have long stated that we need to stop federal guarantees for student loans to private universities. Private universities have endowments into the billions and can easily make loans for their own students. Let's see what degrees are generated then.