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comment by snoodog
snoodog  ·  2970 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Dow's record highs mask deeper troubles

    How does inflation affect housing? Cause I'm asking for a friend . . .

Its good for cheaper housing bad for house prices. Reason being that most houses prices are driven by ability to make house payments. At 4% rates you can afford to buy significantly more house than say 8% because a fixed payment of 2k a month pays for a 600k house at 4% but only a 300k house at 8.

Lowering rates naturally drove house prices to the moon, raising rates will slowly cause them to come back to earth.





kleinbl00  ·  2969 days ago  ·  link  ·  

a 2k a month payment at 8% for 30 years gets you a $275k loan.

a 2k a month payment at 4% for 30 years gets you a $420k loan.

A 4% interest rate hike decreases your buying power by $145k, not $300k

So you're not wrong in theory, but you're off by a factor of two in practice. Mortgage insurance, property taxes and all the rest complicate the issue further and eat further into the difference.

snoodog  ·  2969 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The numbers you use are a better estimate. I used really rough mental math and it came out to a larger error than I expected. Probably because I didn't account for principal payment. As you state the effect is probably additionally decreased due to insurance costs.

asteroidblues  ·  2970 days ago  ·  link  ·  

wow that was well explained, thank you