This whole thing reminds me of a female county commissioner locally, who made it her mission to oppose “density” of development while promoting “walkable communities” and bike paths.
That’s what happens when you rely on buzzwording via focus groups, but don’t really have a clue what the buzzwords might actually mean. Those are going to be some long walks and long bike rides, lol.
People bought the bigger houses with all the bells and whistles because they could and because they were appreciating in value, and women were the prime motivator behind it. Reality has smacked them all upside the head and there will be an excess of caution well past any literal market bottom.
This trend to smaller houses is being driven by reduced incomes and inability to get approved for larger loans, let alone actually coming up for 20% down on a whopping big house that formerly required no down payment at all, or could even be had for a 110% or more loan with money back at signing.
Apparatchiks and bureaucrats will mistake this for a grand opportunity to, again, start championing condos and walk/bike oriented center city living, nevermind that those properties are faring even worse than the hated suburban McMansions. People want a little privacy and the ideal of the cottage with a picket fence is a powerful one that will not go away any time soon.
Government-encouraged malinvestment looms yet again, to jumpstart residential construction. They’re going to slap up a bunch of very close together houses with condos intermingled, probably with subsidized low income individuals thrown into the mix, too. Wouldn’t be “fair,” don’t you know. Wrong, wrong, wrong, it’ll fail again.
They’ll never get it because they’re adverse and even hostile to the notion of people buying what they want themselves, not what bureaucrats and apparatchiks find fashionable on the basis of ideology.
Have a look at THE ICLEI MEMBER LIST. If your community is one of these dues paying members, you are paying for the loss of your unalienable rights.
We haven’t hit bottom. Prices still have to fall considerably before they will begin to approach. Year over year appreciation at 3 percent puts you at about 50 percent of present prices.
Then you have the negative demographic changes. Housing is a terrible market to be in.