Across America, the average worker can't afford the median home

In 74% of US counties, the average worker can't afford the median home. It's getting worse: Six months ago, it was 71% of counties. The results come from Attom's new survey of house prices.

Not owning your home is a worse deal than ever, too: as private equity takes over the rental market, rents and evictions are skyrocketing, while the safety and quality of rental housing is plummeting.

What's more, the monopoly rents that hedge funds extract from tenants are used to fund incredibly high-priced, intensive lobbying campaigns to restrict tenants' rights.

"Prices are going up substantially faster than earnings in 2019 without any immediate end in sight, which continues to make home ownership difficult or impossible for a majority of single-income households and even for many families with two incomes," Todd Teta, chief product officer with Attom Data Solutions, said in the report.

The major factor driving home prices higher as of late for most of the country has been the lack of homes for sale. After the recession, home-building activity was slow to rebound and mostly concentrated in the most expensive tier of the market for single-family homes.

As newer homes didn't come on line to meet the growing demand, particularly for cheaper starter homes, competition for properties heated up, and bidding wars pushed home prices even high across much of the country.

There are precious few places in America where the average worker can afford a median-priced home [Jacob Passy/Marketwatch]

(via Naked Capitalism)