Boy, talk about unintended consequences. Cheap, efficient transit, historical preservation, strong economy: bye-bye middle class. What I wanna know is why I'm being priced out of my shitty Seattle suburb. Like you already said, no viable public transit in sight. And it's getting worse with the latest round of budget cuts. Half an hour to wrestle with 12 mi. of I-5 by car, and that's during non-peak hours. And still, people across the street are asking half a mil for their 3-bedroom with a scenic view of Aurora Ave.'s asscrack.
Because everyone is being priced out of their shitty suburbs. 1) Glass-Steagall repealed; trusts can now be investment banks 2) Home lenders now capable of packaging investment products full of mortgages 3) Investors sold financial instruments based on the derivative value of investment products 4) Risky loans become attractive investment vehicles 5) People who shouldn't have gotten loans stop paying them 6) Crash of 2008 7) Lots of houses foreclosed, real estate prices crash So there's what you know. Here's where things get really dumb: 8) Foreign blocs and investment banks decide that there's lots of money to be had in renting to formerly foreclosed homeowners 9) Stupid prices are paid for houses, this time by investors rather than homeowners 10) Anyone who doesn't currently have a house is priced out of the market because they're dealing with multimillionaires with cash who have no intent of moving into the neighborhood. We get 2-3 unsolicited offers a week on our house. We've been renting it happily for six years now. And they're all folksy, downy-homey, "gee my family sure would like to live in your house" mash notes, and they're all from large institutional investors looking to slumlord my neighborhood.