Want to make housing more expensive? Let the government give “free” incentives to homebuyers. That’ll cure it right fast.
But don’t tell that to Vice President Kamala Harris. Fresh off her initiative to ban price gouging (or “gauging,” judging by her Biden-esque pronunciation gaffe while attempting to get the word out when she announced the plan), the Democratic nominee now wants to give first-time homeowners $25,000 in federal down payment assistance in order to solve the housing crisis.
Or, as one real estate agent put it, she just increased the cost of a new house by $25,000.
The Harris suite of housing proposals was unveiled in adumbrated form last week in the run-up to the Democratic National Convention; while not finalized, Harris and the Democrats promise to build millions of houses, change zoning laws, and — most critically — give federal money to first-time buyers.
As the New York Post reported, the veep’s “signature housing policy calls for up to $25,000 in federal down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers who have paid their rent on time for at least two years.
Trending:
“That dramatically expands on Biden’s prior proposal for a $10,000 tax credit for first-time buyers, which had limited additional down-payment assistance to first-generation homebuyers.”
How could this possibly go wrong? I mean, unless you possess a basic understanding of economics and/or property value, as one popular social media real estate influencer and writer noted in a viral video.
In a TikTok video that got reposted across various platforms, Leigh Brown, real estate broker and best-selling author, broke down the problems with the three major tenets of the Harris real estate plan.
While Brown’s criticism of Harris’ plan to build new houses and how it federalizes zoning regulations — usually the province of local jurisdictions for a reason — and calls for rent control (if you need to figure out why this is bad, you’re reading the wrong publication) both deserve a listen, her dismantling of the $25,000 for first-time homebuyers is pure gold.
Will Harris’ policy hurt the housing market?
“I love down payment assistance,” Brown said, “especially when it’s done by tax credits, when it’s done by bond money approved by voters.”
Not this, however.
“Y’all, if the federal government wants to hand people money for buying houses, that’s what causes inflation,” Brown emphasized.
“How is it gonna be that we can get y’all educated on this? Every time the government starts printing money, as young people say, it goes brrr.” (For the uninitiated, it’s slang that essentially refers to short-term spending of resources without long-term consideration of consequences. If only “brrr” had been around in Milton Friedman’s time, can you imagine how much shorter “Capitalism and Freedom” might have been?)
“When the Fed prints money, that causes inflation,” Brown continued. “So when you add $25,000 in ‘free money’ to a house, you just drove the cost up by $25,000.”
This woman has been a real estate broker for 24 years and she breaks down Kamala’s plan
You’ll only see this on X…. the media wouldn’t have someone like her on, to tell folks the truth about what to expect if she gets in pic.twitter.com/Bj3D4BGuVr
— @Chicago1Ray 🇺🇸 (@Chicago1Ray) August 22, 2024
Now, of course Kamala-ites will say this is all claptrap and it’s merely a matter of ensuring their generation has a leg up on property ownership. They’ll then pay a hefty percentage of their monthly salary for student loans, which were supposed to be “free” money that made higher education affordable … and yet, somehow, made it exponentially more expensive.
The cognitive dissonance won’t register. Shame, really. Because not only are they prepared to cast their ballot for a president who plans to make houses $25,000 more expensive, but also plans to make them pay for the $25,000 a second time via their tax money. Smart move, millennials.
