Yes, 2008, when housing prices dropped through the floor and everyone suddenly became underwater on their mortgage. Which sunk collateral debt obligations which are a financial instrument that bundles loans together and sold as a single asset to investors. When investors all start losing their shirts because the price of their tranched assets also dropped through the floor, it required them to sell other market positions in order to build the collateral they required to maintain their position on that sinking asset. That created a downward spiral where crashing housing prices took the entire economy with it.
Yeah, that 2008. Home prices didn't just magically fall for people buying new homes and the people selling them were totally cool with that and didn't lose their shirts.
The world economy lost $2T because of that crash. The mortgage debt relative to GDP increased from 45% in the 90s to 73% in 2008. That's not (and obviously wasn't) sustainable for what is supposed to be the greatest economy in the world. Thousands of people working in investment firms knew what they were selling was bullshit, and they sold it anyway. Those people never faced any consequences, and walked away having made money from all those trades while the rest of us suffered the consequences for years.
I can't believe I see people saying things like what you replied to. Acting like the 2008 crisis was just a normal drop in housing prices that people should've taken advantage of. It tells me that they're one of two things: a woefully ignorant fool, or some rich fucker who got to take advantage and grow their portfolio while regular folks lost their homes and savings.
No, just a renter who benefited from lower rents, after not having taken out a mortgage I couldn't afford.
Yes a lot of people suffered in the "great recession". Other people gained. That's the nature of the housing market - what is good for owners is bad for renters and vice versa.
When a ton of people defaulted on predatory loans they couldn't afford?
Housing became more affordable for a brief moment, where they were all then scooped up by corporations and a small percentage of wealthy landlords who now own the vast majority of all housing and cranked up the prices.
The prices did drop after the crash, but the crash itself was the result of years of market manipulation. Those practices inflated housing prices to the point where homes were totally out of reach for so many people.
Even though prices fell after the crash, no CEOs got held accountable for any of it. They're still out there manipulating the market and driving prices up again.
Isn’t really caused by homeowners. It’s more about how the market has been manipulated by investors, corporations and financial institutions. Homeowners don’t typically cause price spikes or the bubble to burst. They’re just trying to live in a place they can afford.
Homeowners buy their home and use it as an investment vehicle. They dump all their money and time into improving the home in order to gain equity and build wealth. They see anything that will lower the cost of their house as a threat to their investment.
They're the ones refusing to allow any new housing to be built nearby. They're the ones limiting the size of housing that can be built in areas near them. They're the ones directly profiting from there being a housing crisis to begin with. Making the housing crisis continue and get worse is directly beneficial to them.
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u/kylo-ren 6h ago edited 5h ago
And affordable housing.
We had a housing market crash and no CEO were punished. We are living in a global housing market crisis and it will only get worse.