Market volatility in Wisconsin’s Dane County, a predominantly Democratic, college-educated part of an all-purple state, pushed the distress score to 78 on the NBC News index. In 2020, this number was 54, which is only 1 point more than in 2019 before the pandemic. final report Dane, by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum, found that housing prices are among six of the state’s 72 counties where housing prices are nearly five times higher than median household income levels.
“These problems are widespread across the state, but are particularly acute in some counties, such as Dane, where both the homebuyer and rental markets are out of reach for the average resident,” the report said.
Even so, the index shows that buying a home in any of these key states is slightly easier than it is across the country as a whole. The average difficulty of buying a home in the US has increased from 54 in 2020 to 84. It was 44 in 2019, before the pandemic disrupted the real estate market.
Steep housing costs are worth watching for both their economic and political consequences. They have even been one of the most persistent drivers of inflation the cooler the price. Although this issue is not as prominent as some such as abortion and immigration, it is reflected in the 2024 presidential race.
At the Republican National Convention earlier this month, giant screens flashed a comparison of average mortgage rates under the Trump and Biden administrations. There is former President Donald Trump proposed to encourage housing construction on the outskirts of cities and suburbs. Vice President Kamala Harris has yet to publicly announce her housing plans, but could inherit the Biden administration proposals for increasing the rent and subsidize the costs of first-time home buyers.
“When interest rates were low, we had a boom and you had home prices at their peak,” said Lisa Scott, a real estate agent in Gwinnett County, the most ethnically diverse of Atlanta’s sprawling metro area, which includes suburbs like Lawrenceville. and Duluth. Now, “business is slow,” said Scott, who left her nursing career in 2017 to focus on real estate.
Gwinnett scored an 81 on the NBC News Homebuyer Index, which is close to the nation’s overall ranking and a jump from 55 just four years ago. Georgia has quickly become a hot spot on the electoral map — turning blue in 2020 for the first time in decades and giving the Democrats two new senators — but housing prices in its capital have soared.
Scott put much of the blame on private investors who stockpiled inventory to convert to rentals, “leaving fewer homes for people to buy,” he said. Moment analysis Data released this spring by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a Wall Street watchdog, ranked Georgia’s housing market No. 1 in the nation for its vulnerability to disruption by private equity firms.
But one Gwinnett County resident said the more lenient requirement doesn’t keep him up at night.
Mannie Marte and his wife bought their four-bedroom, two-bath split-level home in Lilburn in February 2020, just before the pandemic, for about $205,000. Since then, the value has increased to over $350,000, prompting them to put it on the market.
“We just thought: Let’s take advantage of this,” said Marte, 32, who is a pastor and wanted to be closer to his family’s church in Atlanta.
Marte, who is now working with an agent to list her home, isn’t concerned depressed mortgage demandit could mean a sale in “three months, three weeks or three years,” he said.
“What I have to sell the house for is what I will sell the house for,” he said. “I will also buy the house we will buy. There’s no point in confusing yourself over things you can’t control.”
It’s unclear how changes in market conditions between now and November might register with residents in those counties or affect their votes. But even small impacts can make a difference.
For example, in Erie, Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 race with a total of 1417 votes — Margin from 49.8% to 48.8%. Arizona’s larger Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and ranks 64th in difficulty buying a home, also saw a razor-thin 2020 result: Biden is out almost a 2 percent winbecame the first Democratic presidential candidate to switch states since President Harry Truman.
Voters in NBC News’ other four states broke by wider margins for Biden, but in states that are still hotly contested this year. The president dominated Denmark with 75.5% of the vote four years ago, compared to 58% in Gwinnett, for example. Some recent voting It shows Harris closing the gap on the Democratic ticket in several key states that remain a competitive race.
Another wild card that could shape residents’ economic views and decisions at the ballot box: interest rate cuts.
Many homebuyers are sitting on the sidelines for now, reduces mortgage demand increased to 4% by mid-July. But that clause could be dissolved after the Federal Reserve’s next meeting in September, when it is expected to start cutting interest rates. Core inflation rose just 0.2% from May to June The Commerce Department said Fridayanother sign of a cooling that most economists see as strengthening the central bank’s case for tapering by this fall.
For house hunters in Gwinnett County, Scott said, “it’s going to make life better.”