A new housing law targets affordability. Experts say the benefits will take time to show up in the market. Time is the key word here. Not months. Not a year. Time in the way geologists use it.
The legislation aims to help homebuyers. Those homebuyers are currently twenty-three years old and checking Zillow during lunch breaks. They will benefit from this law around the time their original hips give out.
Sellers get mentioned in the headline too. Nobody explains what this law means for them because nobody writing about housing policy has ever actually sold a house. They rent a studio in Baltimore and summarize press releases.
Affordability is the goal. Affordability is always the goal. Every housing law for the past forty years has targeted affordability. Prices have gone up four hundred percent. But this one will be different because experts said the word "time" with a straight face.
Here's what the law means for you specifically. You cannot afford a house now. You will not be able to afford a house after this law passes. The gap between those two states of not affording a house will be filled with articles about legislation aimed at affordability.
The measure takes time to show benefits. The measure is like a fine wine. Or a 401k. Or chemotherapy. You suffer now and maybe somewhere down the line there's a payoff but probably you just suffer.
Homebuyers should remain patient. Sellers should remain patient. Experts should remain employed. That last one is the only certainty here.
The funniest part is not the law itself. It's that someone felt compelled to explain what it means before anyone can possibly know what it means. The benefits have not shown up yet. They take time. But here's seven hundred words about their meaning anyway.
Check back in fifteen years when your landlord raises rent for the ninth consecutive time and experts are still using the word "time" like it's a f*cking strategy.
Photo by Artful Homes on Unsplash
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