Why housing prices SHOULD be stagnant.

So it's been six years since the housing bubble peaked, and people are concerned that prices have remained relatively flat in most markets. Never mind that millions of people are still facing foreclosure, and even more are underwater in cities where industry has been gutted. There are some good reasons that housing prices should NOT be rising now or any time in the foreseeable future.

1. Median incomes are stagnant. Who the hell do you think is buying the median house? As long as incomes are not rising, then there's no way to increase the amount that most people can spend on housing, at least not without resorting to more government subsidies or financial fraud. Not that that's a deterrent for the mortgage banksters.

2. Buildings don't appreciate, they DEpreciate. This is the damn lie that the mortgage brokers, home builders, realtors, and other assorted pigfuckers have been selling the American people for generations. Corporations know otherwise, that's why they write the value of commercial buildings off their taxes over time. You don't expect your car to go up in value, or your clothes, or your electronic devices, so why should your house be any different? It too, is subject to the ravages of time. Every building has an "economic lifespan", which is the amount of time until the amount of money put into repairs and maintenance exceeds the initial cost of construction. Many brand new houses have an economic lifespan of 20 years or less, and a mortgage of 30 years or more. Notice a problem there?

3. Land does appreciate, but only if demand for it increases faster than supply. This is good news if you own land in Manhattan or Singapore where the supply is restricted and lots of people want to live there. For the vast majority of home owners, you are competing against the vacant lot down the street in a world where population growth is projected to slow over the course of the century. Sorry, but there are only so many schmucks vying to live in your shitty Shakopee subdivision, especially when there's a brand new cluster of crapshacks under construction in a hayfield right up the road. And if you own a condo, townhouse or mobile home, but not the land under it? Well, you're just fucked.

4. Your house is obsolete already. The cost of owning a home is just going to get higher as the supply of fossil fuels required to heat, cool, and power it increases. The low hanging fruit has already been picked. Even if oil companies were allowed to rape and pillage the land with complete impunity, they still have to search farther and deeper for sources of hydrocarbons as they use up each deposit. Do you really think that you'll get cheap oil from ANWR? Do you know what labor rates and transportation costs are on the North Slope or on deep sea platforms? Those increased costs will eat into every family's funds available for purchasing a house. And what is so ironic about this situation is that the alternative forms of housing currently available, from earthships to geodesic domes, which are far more durable, comfortable, and cheaper to build than the house that you probably live in right now, and yet bankers will punish you for building them.

All this is not to say that it is a bad idea to buy a house. After all, you need to live somewhere, and if you plan to stick around for five or more years, then it might make good financial sense over renting. However, we need to get away from this notion that buying houses will make us rich. That's not what they are for. They are supposed to shelter us from life's storms, not cause them.