The other day, I heard one of my co-workers unsuccessfully trying to spend some cash.
A lot of cash.
She’s trying to buy a house on the Central Coast, and that’s apparently not an easy task.
“I just want someone to take my money!” she shouted to the heavens. “Give me a house, and I’ll give you my money!”
Her problem, it seems, is that there are a lot of other people out there who also want to spend a lot of cash by buying a house, and when all those people are vying for the increasingly scant homes available, prices go up and buyers have a hard time 1) getting something they both want and can afford and 2) coming out at the head of the house-hunting pack.
Homeowners are, I’m sure, thrilled that this nation is—despite the apparent odds—still successfully clawing its way out of the Great Recession, lifting property values and outlooks on the future with every fingernail and toehold. But individuals, couples, and families who didn’t or couldn’t strike while the cost iron was hot and low aren’t feeling the same sense of returning comfort.
My co-worker blames a lot of things, but among her blame-bearing crowd is investors snapping up properties with the intent to rent them out for profit. Yes, of course, people do that. They do it all the time. And it’s totally legit. But it doesn’t help the folks who’ve built up a down payment that may work to secure them a roof over their heads in a perfect storm, but that nonetheless pales in comparison to the financial might of a professional real-estate investor or banded-together team of investors.
It seems—to her, anyway—that the people getting the available houses are the people who already have houses. Houses and money, anyway.
Obviously, this isn’t a universal law. Otherwise, nobody would ever be able to get a new house. But landing a long-looked-for home does seem to be a challenge. One reporter we work with said that, anecdotally anyway, investors are buying up the properties in the lower tiers—foreclosures and fixer-uppers and the like—and are either flipping them, turning them into rentals, or just renting them out until the market gets even higher and they can sell them for an even better sum.
Again, all of that is legit. It is.
But also again, it’s not helpful to the people who see a house as an actual house. A place to live and build a family. A home. Not another source of income or a money stream or an investment opportunity. Homeowners can certainly consider their properties to be all that, too, but whatever happened to that place where your heart is? Your castle? That sweet location to which the wayward and far-flung children return for Christmas?
A house isn’t really any of that anymore. At least not in this area. A house seems to be something closer to a nearly unattainable American dream to the folks who don’t already have one of their own.
Don’t forget: This column is coming from the I-don’t-yet-own-a-house-and-likely-never-will-at-least-not-anytime-in-the-forseeable-future camp. Because it’s not as simple as scrimping and saving and “getting on the elevator”—as one colleague once put it. It’s luck and timing and grace and help and a whole bunch of other factors people who already found their house may forget.
Maybe sometime soon—even by the time this column hits the streets, perhaps—my co-worker will strike that odd balance and find someone willing to take her money. Or maybe she’ll keep looking as prices and rates continue to rise, watching the longed-for goal slip further away despite her doing the best she could. For doing the sort of stuff you’re supposed to do when you want a house. But not doing it fast enough, or at the right time, or in the right area.
The Canary is feeling sour today, because rent is going up soon on her nest. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 31 – Nov 6, 2013.