It would take 33% of the average person’s wage to begin homeownership — resulting in the highest debt to income ratio since 2007. (Kent Rebman / Unsplash)
Originally published July 19, 2023, by Marissa Meador, Indiana Capital Chronicle
The American dream of homeownership is getting further out of reach for many Hoosiers.
As pandemic-era supply shortages began to return to normal, home prices fell, giving prospective homebuyers hope they could find something affordable. But those hopes were dashed for some who found they could not pay the high mortgage rates, which are currently more than double pandemic lows.
According to Paul Schwinghammer, former president of the Indiana Builders Association, markets will bounce back eventually. But when prices return to “normal,” many will still be unable to afford the investment that sustained previous generations.
“The days of a brand new home at $200,000 are probably very much in our rearview mirror,” Schwinghammer said.
As potential homeowners are pushed into becoming renters due to high mortgage rates, Schwinghammer said the thriving rental market is not the silver bullet to the housing market some think it is.
“That’s not the American dream,” he said.
Homeownership is increasingly expensive
Housing has become more expensive overall in the past several decades.
In 1950, Hoosiers made less — the median household income was $2,827, or about $30,000 in today’s dollars — now the median household income is $61,944. But housing prices have zoomed past that growth.
In 1950, the inflation-adjusted cost of the median home value was around $70,000. Today, the median listing price is $218,000, according to the state housing dashboard. In other words, the cost of housing has tripled, clearly outpacing wage growth in Indiana.
The cause of this gap is hotly debated. Some argue it is due to a decreased supply of housing — in Indiana, 16.8 percent of existing housing was built prior to 1940, and the percentage of homes built in the 2010s makes up the smallest slice of the housing pie at just 5.3 percent.
Experts point to the 2008 housing crash as a major factor in the building slowdown. After the crash, the membership of the Indiana Builders Association fell from 7,200 to 3,000, and the industry has been cautious ever since.
While building picked up pace in response to pandemic-driven demand, Indiana still has a 1.04 percent shortage of housing stock according to FreddieMac — the largest of all surrounding states.
Density, zoning and community opposition
At the most basic level, a housing unit cannot be cheaper than the raw cost to build it. During the pandemic, supply and demand saw timber, copper and other building materials spike in price, which was exacerbated by high labor costs. Schwinghammer argues this raw cost can be further increased by municipal regulations surrounding lot size, materials and aesthetics.
“That’s all well and good, except you’re ruling out homebuyers,” Schwinghammer said.
For affordability advocates, a relatively simple solution is increasing the amount of homes that can be built in an area by reducing lot size. This allows more homes to be built, increasing supply, all at a lower cost to builders, which are hopefully passed onto consumers.
But in practice, housing density is fiercely contested. Examples of density can range from apartment complexes to duplexes, which can be impossible if an area is zoned for single-family use. Other times, things like parking space requirements can thwart density attempts.
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But overwhelmingly, the biggest opposition to denser housing can come from neighbors and community members, whether it’s an apartment complex in Broad Ripple or a controversial zoning change to allow for multifamily housing in certain Bloomington neighborhoods. In fact, a survey of New York developers found that the majority of opposition to developments came from residents.
Ultimately, Indiana joins most of the country in having high rates of single-family detached housing, with the housing type making up 73.1 percent of all housing in Indiana, according to the state housing dashboard.
A shortage of affordable housing
While housing supply remains low in general, low-income Hoosiers are facing an even bigger gap when it comes to affordable housing supply. According to a Prosperity Indiana report, the state is 120,796 homes short of affordable and available rental homes, which means there are only 39 affordable units available for every 100 low-income renter households. The numbers show Indiana is performing worse than the regional average.
“Indiana is increasingly out of step with its Midwest peers when it comes to affordability and stability,” Andrew Bradley, policy director at Prosperity Indiana, said.
One method of helping low-income renters is Section 8 housing, a federal program that allows income-qualifying individuals to pay subsidized rents. But the program often fails to meet the demand — in Indiana, people are often on waitlists for three to five years before they can get housing, and sometimes the waitlists themselves are closed. There are currently seven waitlists open on the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority website, spanning only about a third of counties.
With state and federal assistance so hard to find, some municipalities have attempted to fill the gap in affordable housing through local regulations.
In Bloomington, where housing is the most expensive in the state, local officials attempted to implement inclusionary zoning in 2017. Inclusionary zoning is a type of policy that requires developers to include a certain percentage of affordable units in their projects instead of trying to individually negotiate more affordable units through incentives.
That same year, the Indiana General Assembly banned municipalities from doing so, putting a direct halt to the city’s plans. Today, Indiana preempts municipalities from enacting four different types of equitable housing policies. In addition to inclusionary zoning, these include short term rentals, source of income nondiscrimination policies and rent regulation. Indiana is the only state in the country to prohibit all four policies.
Bradley said Indiana’s Housing Task Force is focusing too much on building new homes instead of sharing a focus on strengthening protections for tenants and improving current housing stock. He said this is partly due to a lack of representation of everyday Hoosiers on the task force.
He referenced Senate Bill 202, bipartisan legislation focused on tenant protections that was later stripped down to a study bill, as an example of the priorities of the legislature. The bill did not end up passing the House, and was not selected as a summer study topic.
“Suppliers of new housing have dominated the conversation at the Statehouse,” Bradley said.
Homebuyers suffer from high rates
Although commodity prices have decreased 10 percent across the board, Schwinghammer said, homebuyers are not seeing true relief due to high mortgage rates, which currently hover around 7 percent. Although mortgage rates have spiked as high as 16 percent in previous decades, the current rate is higher than pre-pandemic rates of around 4 percent and pandemic lows of 3 percent.
Part of this is due to the Federal Reserve’s sharp hikes in interest rates in order to combat inflation.
Ultimately, Schwinghammer said it would take 33 percent of the average person’s wage to begin homeownership — resulting in the highest debt to income ratio since 2007. Housing is effectively the least affordable it’s been in nearly two decades, he said.
As potential homebuyers are shut out of the market, builders have turned to the build-for-rent phenomenon sweeping the country in order to keep busy. BFR involves communities of single family rental homes that people can live in without making a purchase, allowing people to avoid interest rates.
Schwinghammer said BFR, which once took up 3 percent of the market, is now 15 percent.
As people struggle to afford new homes, pre-existing — and often cheaper — homes are selling less because homeowners don’t want to trade in their lower rates for the current 7 percent interest rate.
But the market is cyclical by nature, Schwinghammer said, and interest rates will likely be declining in a year.
“The natural ebbs and flows of the market will allow that to happen,” he said.
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