Rory O’Neill, WOR national correspondent Interview

Rory O’Neill talks to Mendte in the Morning about the true American dream and how affordable it actually is.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Before we talk about achieving the American dream, let's define

(00:03):
the American dream. I think for most people it starts
with owning a house. That's how the American dream is built.
That may be the American dream for a lot of people,
just owning that first house. That's what makes a lot
of things possible. That is the American dream to own
your own house, and for some people that may be

(00:27):
a little bit more out of reach these days. Let's
talk to Rory O'Neil, wr National correspondent about this. So
how is home ownership going these days?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Well, Larry, let me first start by saying, eighty two
percent of Americans agree with you that owning a home
is the American dream. That number is actually up a
little bit in this latest or the annual home Affordability
survey that just came out from the folks over at bankreave.
Three different points in the survey. One that a percentage
of people who say that owning that home is the

(01:00):
American dream, but two buyers are struggling to come up
with down payments. You know, we talk about the rising
prices of homes and the rising mortgage rates as well.
But then when you think that the home these days
is five six seven, eight hundred thousand dollars. That means
you're going to need one hundred, one hundred and twenty
one hundred and sixty thousand dollars in order to get

(01:22):
a down payment and closing costs upfront. So that really
is one of the biggest obstacles of the growing cost
of those down payments.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
So how is the housing market doing based on these
costs if people can't.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Afford homescation location, the old root, location, location location. We
are seeing big parts of Florida where home prices and
values are actually falling right now. Same in big parts
of Texas Arizona as well, home prices are actually on
the decline. The Washington Post is out with a map

(01:58):
this week that show how home values have changed. I'm
not seeing any red in the Tri state area. All
of it is green, showing that home values are up
some more quite significantly in the past year. But Florida
is drenched in red again, same with Texas, a lot
of Arkansas, Colorado as well. But still overall, there's a

(02:20):
housing shortage in the US. We need about five million
more units to come online in order to ease the crunch.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
There was what was described as a housing crisis for
a while. Are we out of that now?

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Not yet? You know, really things went off the rails
in two thousand and eight with the Great Recession, when
all those mortgage backed securities and all that stuff that
really put a stop to individual home construction, especially of
those entry level homes. Add to that record low mortgage rates,
and now you've got people who are in those starter

(02:54):
homes that aren't getting out because they don't want to
give up that two point eight percent rate, and that
sort of frozen the market. So people are not as
upwardly mobile in the housing sector as they had historically been.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Will things change if interest rates come down.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
That could really help loosen things quite a bit here
and start to grease the skids, And maybe some people
would start to say, all right, I've made a lot
of equity out of the home I purchased fifteen years
ago with that great rate, you know, we can take
the equity, buy something new, put a lot of that
money down into it, and hopefully you sort of have
a flat cost monthly payment. But the real issue, too,

(03:34):
is that people have seen their own home values go
up so much, and maybe your home value has doubled,
but everything else around you is tripled. So you can't
go me where it seems to find a new place
to live without some significant moves.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
I've talked to a whole lot of people who are
selling homes and they looked at the market and they said, oh,
look at the market. We can sell for this, we
can sell for this, and then it doesn't move, then
they can't sell it. So something somewhere to give eventually, doesn't.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
It you'd think so, just with the population boom that
we have in this country or the growing population, So yeah,
eventually something has to give somewhere. The question though, is
that you know, we are seeing some big variances in
some of these markets. You know, Ohio was really booming
right now because some of the price the entry level
homes really are coming in less than two hundred thousand dollars,

(04:24):
and if people can work remotely, they're seeing that as
a great alternative. Then you've got places with high homeowners insurance.
The premiums are skyrocketing to more than one thousand dollars
a month just for your homeowners insurance. And that's got
people in Gulf coast areas putting their houses on the
market because of affordability issues. That, by the way, is
the third topic. That having maintaining and ensuring that home

(04:48):
has just gotten too expensive for too many people.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
You imagined Florida, It's gotten ridiculous in Florida. I think
the reason that some people are moving out of Florida
and trying to sell their homes, it's because of the
insurance rates. They are out of this world at this point.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah. I've got friends that just moved. They were paying
eleven hundred dollars a month for their homeowners insurance thirteen
thousand dollars a year, and I get nothing for it. Yeah,
and they're making those kinds of decisions to say it's
just too much. Then condo owners are getting these massive
assessments now after that terrible building collapse in Florida a
couple of years ago, So now they're getting individual unit

(05:23):
owners are getting slapped with forty fifty, one hundred and
ten thousand dollars assessments for building repairs and upgrades that
they're suddenly responsible for out of their pockets.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
I feel so bad for young couples these days. I
hope that you're correct and that in our conversation that
something will give eventually, maybe those interest rates will come down.
That'll make it a little bit more affordable. Rory O'Neil,
WR National correspondent, Thanks Rory, thanks for your time.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Thanks Erry.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
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