Homes are no longer a good investment, economists say. Is renting the new American Dream?
Once upon a time, buying a house was the most American of ambitions. They settled into a split-level, a Victorian, or a ranch with room enough for the kids. When the brood went to college, the parents could sell their by-then paid-off house for much more than they bought it for, and in their golden years, there was plenty of money to take trips to faraway places, or play golf, or take naps in hammocks. They all lived happily ever after. The end. It’s the end of this era, anyway. Or so say economists who believe that today’s housing values will just barely keep up with inflation, and that homes will return money that owners put in every month but that the days of outsized investment returns are behind us, reports The New York Times. The economists say the real estate boom we experienced from the 1970s to the late 1990s was abnormal, and we shouldn’t hold our breath for a repeat. Some of the folks who have recognized this are breathing just fine. Take Mark and Joanne Cleaver for example,
