The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1800 - The Hidden Reasons Why You Can't Afford A House

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00:00:30.000 Here's a headline you probably haven't seen, even though it will have more impact on your life and 0.91

00:00:34.560 your children's lives than anything coming out of the Middle East. By the time millennials hit 0.99

00:00:39.420 retirement age, the typical home in this country will cost $1 million. That will be the median

00:00:46.680 price of a home, not just new homes, but any home by 2050. Now put another way, if you have a child

00:00:53.280 today, then by the time your child is looking for a place to live, they'd better have like $200,000

00:00:59.520 saved up for a down payment. And for the rest of their lives, in all likelihood,

00:01:03.780 they'll be paying off a debt that's completely insurmountable. And this is not a projection

00:01:09.140 from some crackpot looking for attention. It's coming from one of the top housing economists

00:01:13.360 in the nation. Quote, essentially, in about 25 years, the national median home price

00:01:17.900 will be a million dollars. Lawrence Yeun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors,

00:01:23.520 said at a conference in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, it may be hard to envision that,

00:01:28.140 but back in 1990, the national median price was $90,000.

00:01:32.760 Yon noted that even San Francisco,

00:01:35.220 considered an exorbitantly priced real estate market at the time,

00:01:38.160 had a median price of only $250,000 in 1990.

00:01:43.020 Now, for comparison, as of right now,

00:01:44.400 the national median sales price for existing homes is roughly $430,000.

00:01:49.100 So as high as housing prices are right now,

00:01:51.900 you can expect them to be much higher,

00:01:53.880 more than double in just a couple of decades.

00:01:57.320 This economist, quote, used multiple scenarios to project home prices out into the future

00:02:01.920 and says each scenario pointed to roughly the same timeline to hit $1 million about 25 years.

00:02:08.820 Now, to be clear, although the economists determined that we'd hit $1 million as part

00:02:13.100 of ordinary appreciation of home prices, inflation is not the only factor here.

00:02:17.360 Inflation alone won't get us to this figure.

00:02:20.260 And there's reason to believe that typical home prices will actually exceed $1 million

00:02:24.340 by 2050, and probably by a lot. And in a moment, we'll talk about some of those reasons and what

00:02:30.920 we can do about them. But first, I want to talk about the story of 31-year-old Micah Longmire.

00:02:36.320 This is a true story. I found the details in a small online-only paper called The Missoula

00:02:40.900 Current. And according to the paper, Micah earns a salary of $200,000 a year. That's a high salary

00:02:47.520 by any measure, more than double the median household income in this country. The average

00:02:52.340 lawyer in this country doesn't make $200,000. So you might think Micah is doing pretty well,

00:02:56.840 all things considered. But after looking all over the country for more than two years,

00:03:01.820 Micah and his wife determined that they couldn't afford to buy a home on their own,

00:03:05.600 at least not without taking on a mortgage that they weren't sure they could afford.

00:03:09.580 Yes, even though he's making a salary that puts him in the top 10% of American incomes,

00:03:14.180 he was not able to lock down a home despite looking for two years in a variety of markets.

00:03:20.760 In the end, Micah's solution was to pool some money together along with his wife's parents,

00:03:24.960 and together they bought a 3,500-square-foot, $600,000 home in Chattanooga, Tennessee for the

00:03:31.740 entire family. Micah now lives with the in-laws, and as he put it, quote, I make $200,000 and I

00:03:37.600 wouldn't have been able to buy a house by myself. That's ridiculous. And it is ridiculous. Now, 0.90

00:03:44.180 you can take issue with the idea that Micah truly couldn't afford a home. Many of you listening to

00:03:48.640 the show, probably purchased a home with an income lower than $200,000. You might have even done that

00:03:53.960 recently. And you might think that he could have picked a smaller house in a different area and

00:03:58.980 everything would have been fine. But before I address that objection, I need to make the point

00:04:04.000 that Micah's story is not unusual. Just a couple of days ago, Fitch, one of the big three global

00:04:09.060 credit rating agencies, downgraded the U.S. home building sector from neutral to deteriorating

00:04:14.300 because people are not buying homes anymore.

00:04:17.240 30-year mortgage rates are over 6%.

00:04:19.300 Consumer sentiment, meaning how pessimistic people are about their finances,

00:04:22.860 is at a record low.

00:04:24.980 Going back to the 50s, even through the 2008 financial crisis,

00:04:28.340 the surveys of consumer sentiment were not as dire as they are right now.

00:04:33.200 So while it may be the case that people like Micah could theoretically purchase a home somewhere

00:04:37.580 if they're willing to make more compromises,

00:04:40.660 the fact remains that they aren't doing that.

00:04:44.040 Lots of people aren't doing that. And we need to figure out why.

00:04:48.280 And I'm not cherry picking anecdotes or statistics here. Every possible indicator

00:04:51.920 is sending the same signal. Here's another one. Real estate agents are quitting in droves right

00:04:57.640 now. It's another thing you might not have heard about. This is data from the National Association

00:05:01.780 of Realtors. It shows the number of members in the Realtors Association, the light blue,

00:05:06.000 and the number of existing homes for sale, which is the darker line, from 2012 to 2022,

00:05:12.920 membership in the association grew every year, and now it's steadily declining.

00:05:19.720 The association of realtors now has just 1.4 million members compared to 1.6 in October 2022.

00:05:27.000 And as the chart shows, for most of this century, there have been far more homes for sale than

00:05:32.740 realtors. And that's the kind of ratio you want. That's a healthy ratio. But that hasn't been the

00:05:38.300 case for several years now. Realtors are competing over a very small number of homes,

00:05:42.360 And on top of that, a recent legal settlement means that realtors have to disclose their fee up front, which is leading many homebuyers to handle the process themselves, which also isn't helping things for the industry.

00:05:51.880 So to give you an idea of how quickly the housing market has become unaffordable, take a look at this chart from the Wall Street Journal just the other day.

00:05:59.640 They're getting their data from the Intercontinental Exchange, Angie, and the Labor Department.

00:06:05.760 if you're buying a home now as opposed to 2019, then on average, you're paying 22% more in

00:06:14.320 principle. This is just from 2019. Again, 35% more in interest, 31% more in property tax,

00:06:21.460 72% more in insurance, 85% more in home maintenance, and 175% more in emergency

00:06:29.820 repairs. So your total annual bill is 40% higher than it would have been just six years ago.

00:06:38.700 It's like catastrophic. If you're the average American, your annual expenditure on housing

00:06:43.880 went from $20,600 to $28,500. It's almost $30,000. And it's worth taking a brief detour

00:06:54.260 though. We also mentioned property taxes. It's worth taking a brief tutorial to focus in on the

00:07:00.160 property tax figure. Home prices are going up around the country, and so are property taxes.

00:07:05.460 And the fun thing about a property tax, of course, is that you can never pay it off. It's an expense

00:07:09.580 that the government tax on money that you owe them simply because they say so, money you owe

00:07:15.400 them as a penalty for committing the sin of buying property. And there's no end point. There's no

00:07:21.700 such thing as a final payment. CBS News reported recently, quote, property taxes across the U.S.

00:07:27.600 are rising faster than inflation, with the average homeowner last year paying $4,427, up

00:07:33.740 3.7% from 2024, according to a new analysis from real estate data firm ATTOM. By comparison,

00:07:42.720 the Consumer Price Index, a basket of commonly purchased goods and services, rose 2.7% last

00:07:47.580 Your homeowners in some states have faced considerably larger property tax increases, including an 18 percent hike in Delaware and a nearly 12 percent jump in Maryland.

00:07:57.540 So it seems like if it seems like there's some sort of conspiracy to deliberately make owning a home as expensive as possible.

00:08:04.700 Well, you're not crazy for noticing.

00:08:07.280 Now, back to the journal report, quote.

00:08:09.660 Sales of previously owned homes have held around $4 million a year since 2023, the lowest level in decades, and down from a pre-pandemic norm of between $5 million and $5.5 million a year, according to the National Association of Realtors.

00:08:24.280 That means fewer prospective buyers are accessing homeownership, and many of those who are buying homes are stretching their budgets to do so.

00:08:32.740 Those new homeowners are vulnerable to falling behind on payments if their incomes drop or they face unexpected jumps in homeownership costs.

00:08:41.220 A buyer with a $2,500 monthly budget and a 20% down payment can afford to buy a $517,500 home at a 3% mortgage rate,

00:08:51.140 according to real estate brokerage Redfin. At today's rate, around 6.5%, that same buyer can

00:08:56.240 only afford a $384,000 home. Even though rates have climbed, typical home values remain near

00:09:02.480 record highs, according to Zillow, confusing many buyers who have been waiting for prices to fall.

00:09:09.660 And the last part is important. Normally, when interest rates go up,

00:09:12.720 you expect home values to go down, and you're paying more for interest over time, so you expect

00:09:17.380 that your upfront costs will be lower. This is normally how things work. And it makes sense that

00:09:23.700 it would work that way. But in practice, that's not happening anymore. In most markets, there's

00:09:28.160 nothing to offset the high interest rates at all. The homes have higher list prices and higher costs

00:09:35.740 over time. It's a lose-lose. One of the reasons that the conventional wisdom doesn't apply anymore

00:09:40.600 is that nobody wants to sell their home. And why would they? In many cases, they locked in an

00:09:46.080 extremely low interest rate during the pandemic. And as we've already discussed, they can expect a

00:09:50.820 very large return on their investment in the coming decades. But even after several decades,

00:09:56.280 they won't want to sell because their children will need to live somewhere. If they will even

00:10:01.740 pass their house down to their children, which we'll get to in a second. If the median home is

00:10:06.060 going for a million dollars, then many more homes are theoretically going to remain in the family.

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00:13:57.680 slash Walsh. That's expressvpn.com slash Walsh. What if I told you this is an incomplete picture

00:14:05.440 of what's going on? And in fact, there was plenty of affordable housing in America, as it turns out.

00:14:12.320 So here's an experiment. Take a look at this $700,000 home in San Francisco, California,

00:14:18.360 one of the most desirable and expensive housing markets in the country.

00:14:22.160 and it underscores just how bad things are out there. It's a 1,200 square foot dump. As you

00:14:30.260 can see, the listing calls it a diamond in the rough with immense potential, which is always a

00:14:36.780 good sign, right? When you're spending $700,000 on a home, that's what you want. Immense potential.

00:14:44.740 And we've all come to accept this kind of price disparity because of the principle of supply and

00:14:48.660 demand. So we don't think about it, but here's what you can get for the same price in Detroit,

00:14:54.940 Michigan, which is a far less desirable or expensive housing market than San Francisco.

00:15:00.540 This is the exact same price. So $700,000 in the Midwest gets you basically a castle. It's

00:15:07.360 5,300 square feet, five bedrooms, a wood paneled library. It's centrally located 15 minutes to

00:15:16.240 downtown, 20 minutes to the airport, a home that would be at least $2 million or more in Nashville

00:15:22.660 or New York or Los Angeles, or even in suburban Detroit. Now, $700,000 certainly isn't cheap,

00:15:30.200 but that's not the point. The reality is that real estate markets are hyper-local and there

00:15:35.220 are pockets of affordability out there. So you could still buy nice livable $250,000 homes in

00:15:42.500 many rural areas or small cities like Toledo. So what's really going on with housing? This is

00:15:49.720 the first big issue, is that everybody wants to live in the same places, which is driving prices

00:15:56.000 in those places up astronomically. San Francisco and New York and Boston and Nashville are boom

00:16:00.920 towns. Detroit, Fort Wayne, and Gary aren't. Though to be fair, this is starting to change,

00:16:06.100 and the Midwest is posting its first net migration gains in decades, driven largely by relatively

00:16:11.240 affordable houses compared to the coast. One factor driving this is jobs. San Francisco is

00:16:18.100 the tech capital of the world. They have a lot more jobs there, but that's still kicking the

00:16:23.180 can down the road. I mean, you're not addressing the fundamental issue, which is that something

00:16:27.260 caused cities like Detroit to become so undesirable in the first place. Something caused

00:16:34.540 cities like Detroit to become undesirable investment opportunities for job creators.

00:16:40.680 Yes, the auto industry took a major hit. That's the default explanation for what's happened here.

00:16:45.300 But plenty of industries in San Francisco have died since the 1960s as well. San Francisco used

00:16:49.920 to be a manufacturing powerhouse. There was a major shipbuilding presence in the city.

00:16:55.880 They also refined a lot of chemicals. None of that applies anymore. It's moved across the bay. So

00:17:01.320 in many historical respects, San Francisco and Detroit are more similar than they appear. But

00:17:05.780 over the past half century, one city managed to attract job seekers and investment while the other

00:17:11.620 basically died out. This brings us to the second reason housing is out of control, which is urban

00:17:18.120 crime has made many cities unlivable, which has led millions of people to rule out what should be

00:17:26.240 some of the prime real estate in the country. So this is not as simple, by the way, as some people

00:17:31.660 will say, is saying, oh, well, you just have to move. There are houses that are affordable. You

00:17:37.140 just have to move there. Well, the problem is that in many cases, you don't want to move there

00:17:41.440 because you don't want to get stabbed and you don't want your children to get stabbed while

00:17:44.780 you walk down the street. I mean, that's the issue. And if you look at the demographics,

00:17:50.280 the distinction between the two cities is hard to miss. San Francisco is around 5% black. Detroit

00:17:55.240 is closer to 80%. And as you'd expect, based on the statistics, this is just the reality. Detroit

00:18:02.100 has three times the violent crime rate of San Francisco. Could that be why no one wants to

00:18:08.480 live there? In school, you're taught that the causation works the other way, that these cities

00:18:13.620 are violent because they've been abandoned and forsaken by everybody else. But maybe it's the

00:18:17.920 opposite. Maybe these cities have been abandoned and forsaken precisely because they're violent

00:18:22.740 and dysfunctional. And maybe if we address the violence and dysfunction, then virtually overnight,

00:18:26.980 we can have infinitely more housing stock than we do right now. We can have the houses that are

00:18:32.280 already available, but you could have communities that people want to live in because they're not

00:18:37.200 going to get stabbed while they walk down the street. Now you never hear about cleaning up

00:18:42.080 the streets, maybe going full citizen vigilante on criminals. Although ideally it would not be

00:18:48.720 the citizens doing this, it would be the police. But you rarely hear it expressed as a housing

00:18:54.820 policy, but that's exactly what it is. It's the single most straightforward way to address a

00:18:59.960 problem that we all know exists. Now, Detroit is an interesting case study actually on this,

00:19:05.940 because since the city's bankruptcy in 2013, a consortium of billionaires revitalized the

00:19:11.900 downtown, which is now actually a thriving commercial district. And a lot of people don't

00:19:16.160 realize that. They did this in conjunction with the city and state, which started aggressively

00:19:21.100 policing the area and by encouraging downtown businesses to hire private security. And as the

00:19:26.320 downtown and surrounding areas became safer, people started moving back into the city.

00:19:31.320 And if those trends continue, hundreds of thousands of vacant homes in Detroit could

00:19:36.580 come back online. But despite those successes, no one is supposed to even float the idea

00:19:42.180 of actually fixing the cities, of making them places you want to live.

00:19:47.360 Instead, the universal message is that we just have to accept the way they are.

00:19:52.460 Ed Sheeran just went on Theo Vaughn's podcast to talk about how London is sketchy

00:19:56.860 and dangerous. And instead of suggesting the government fix the problem, which they could

00:20:03.600 pretty easily, he says the solution is to make sure you're not carrying anything around

00:20:08.180 that criminals might want to steal.

00:20:11.000 Watch.

00:20:12.540 What's the most dangerous place to be around here?

00:20:15.820 Here?

00:20:16.940 I'd say every area of London has a-

00:20:21.220 Literally every area is sketchy.

00:20:23.840 Like, I think that you cannot be anywhere-

00:20:28.360 I love that.

00:20:29.420 Yeah, it's not like a segregated city. 0.99

00:20:32.480 There's like, it's very- 1.00

00:20:34.300 Everybody's sketchy.

00:20:35.080 No, I mean, the nice areas are sketchy.

00:20:38.180 the bad areas are sketchy, 1.00

00:20:39.460 but you just have to not do stupid shit. 1.00

00:20:42.460 Like, if you wander around with, I don't know, 1.00

00:20:48.540 like a Louis Vuitton duffel bag and a 200 grand watch,

00:20:52.480 you are going to get robbed.

00:20:54.040 But just don't do that.

00:20:56.500 Yeah, don't do it.

00:21:00.180 Hmm.

00:21:02.160 That's got to be one of the most relatable pieces of advice

00:21:04.540 ever dispensed by a celebrity.

00:21:06.220 When you're walking around London,

00:21:07.560 whatever you do, don't take your $200,000 watch, you know, that we all have, and your $150,000

00:21:13.760 Louis Vuitton duffel bag. And just to be safe, leave your $2 million earrings at home as well.

00:21:20.740 I mean, you got to have some street smarts if you're going to survive in London.

00:21:25.320 Now, of course, when he's spending time in his $27 million mansion in London or driving through

00:21:29.940 the city in an armored SUV or walking around with armed bodyguards, Ed Sheeran probably isn't taking

00:21:34.820 his own advice because he doesn't have to. But for everybody else, for people who can't spend

00:21:40.620 millions of dollars on a home, the message is that you're responsible if you get robbed,

00:21:45.080 assaulted, and murdered. It's not the fault of the criminal. Because by the way, most people

00:21:50.640 getting robbed in London don't have a $200,000 watch. They have like a $50 watch and they're

00:21:57.820 getting that stolen and possibly stabbed in the process. But you can't blame the criminals.

00:22:02.980 No, they didn't do anything wrong. You're the one who should suffer because you made yourself a target by existing, by having the gall to walk down the street. You have two options. Get robbed and shot, or I guess stabbed, this is London, or do what everyone else is doing and move far away to a coastal enclave or a pocket of the south of the Mountain West.

00:22:29.100 And naturally, if you do what everyone else is doing, then you're going to pay a lot more also.

00:22:34.920 And meanwhile, in Chicago, at least 36 people were shot, six fatally, in shootings over the weekend.

00:22:42.680 So that's how Chicago rang in Juneteenth and Father's Day.

00:22:47.320 Here's a news report from one of the first shootings, and we'll play most of it.

00:22:52.720 Tell me if you notice anything here. Watch.

00:22:55.080 We begin with breaking news of a mass shooting on Chicago's south side.

00:23:00.820 We just learned 12 people were hurt.

00:23:03.320 Asal Rezai is live at UChicago Medical Center as officers investigate.

00:23:07.040 And Asal, what do we know about the victims?

00:23:12.620 Well, Megan, we just got an update from Chicago police,

00:23:15.660 and they say an additional man has been hurt, refused medical treatment,

00:23:22.360 unknown injuries at this time.

00:23:24.500 but that brings a total of victims to 13.

00:23:27.800 We know at least 12 of those victims have gunshot wounds.

00:23:32.300 Take a look at the scene, Megan.

00:23:34.200 We saw over 100 evidence markers there.

00:23:37.380 This is near Wentworth and 95th Street.

00:23:39.880 Police say this shooting happened just after 11 o'clock last night.

00:23:43.900 So far, they say a red SUV pulled up alongside a large crowd.

00:23:48.820 Two people inside of that SUV started shooting at the crowd before driving off.

00:23:53.740 We're told multiple victims between the age of 17 and 47 years old were shot at that scene.

00:24:02.440 We know two of those victims, a woman and a man, were first discovered by Chicago police.

00:24:08.020 They had multiple gunshot wounds.

00:24:10.100 The 10 other victims, Megan, self-transported to the hospital.

00:24:14.420 We did hear from Street Pastor Donovan Price at the scene.

00:24:17.660 He said seeing a shooting like this on a holiday like Juneteenth is really a tragedy.

00:24:23.820 In my neighborhood, where my church is, it's between 7 and 11 people possibly shot.

00:24:30.400 It's just, it's tragic. At least one of them is in critical condition.

00:24:34.740 It's just, it should be celebrating. Fireworks should not turn into gunshots.

00:24:39.500 It does a disservice to the community and what Juneteenth is supposed to stand for.

00:24:48.060 well actually what happened this weekend is a very good illustration of what juneteenth

00:24:54.180 represents both parties democrats and republicans forced the fake holiday down our throats because

00:24:59.260 george floyd overdosed that was the reason they signed the law in the first place the whole point 0.97

00:25:03.900 from the moment they made juneteenth the holiday was to honor thugs and queer felons like george 0.87

00:25:08.000 floyd and michael brown and trayvon martin and jacob blake and so on we were supposed to pretend 0.96

00:25:12.740 that all these degenerates were really victims of white supremacy and that as a result of all

00:25:17.100 this oppression. Black people need their own national anthem and their own independence day. 0.99

00:25:21.120 They need their own country, basically. We were told, well, guess what? This is what it looks like.

00:25:27.020 And you'll notice that at no point in that two-minute news clip did anyone provide a

00:25:31.240 description of the suspects. You get no information whatsoever, and we all know why that is.

00:25:35.920 There's no need for any kind of speculation. They're burying the suspect's description because

00:25:39.880 the suspects, of course, are all black. All over the country, Juneteenth celebrations descended 0.94

00:25:44.500 into mayhem. And every single time, the suspects looked exactly as you would expect. This is from

00:25:50.240 South Carolina's Juneteenth festivities. Watch.

00:26:14.500 Well, they're just getting into the Juneteenth spirit, I suppose.

00:26:39.480 And here's how the authorities described what happened.

00:26:43.460 It was a very sanitized press conference, but this was the takeaway.

00:26:48.220 Listen.

00:26:49.800 Tonight around 7 o'clock during the Juneteenth event,

00:26:53.940 the main concert was getting ready to start, and several flights broke out.

00:26:57.680 Our officers immediately responded to a number of locations within the park,

00:27:02.000 but the disruption kind of took on a life of its own,

00:27:05.860 and out of an abundance of caution, we made the decision to evacuate the park.

00:27:09.720 Out of an abundance of caution, we made the decision to evacuate the park.

00:27:15.980 Translation, it wasn't one or two people fighting each other.

00:27:19.360 It was hundreds of black people, mostly teenagers, young black males, engaging in an all-out riot for no discernible reason,

00:27:28.200 which is something we're all now seeing happen all over the country multiple times a week. 0.61

00:27:31.940 It's not isolated. It's not a one-off. It's the default state of affairs.

00:27:35.840 At this point, if thousands of black teens aren't fighting in the street, that's an abnormal situation that merits investigation. 0.99

00:27:46.540 For good measure, this was the scene in Baltimore over the weekend.

00:27:50.440 AFRAM, which is apparently one of the biggest African-American festivals on the East Coast, was marking its 50th anniversary as part of the Juneteenth celebrations.

00:28:00.120 And here's what that family-friendly event looked like.

00:28:05.840 the black lotus your plaques are bogus so i stripped them off the wall waiting for my 0.89

00:28:10.140 cue to corner pocket eight balls you racking them up on big paper like pancakes stacking 0.90

00:28:14.820 them up in fact i'm slapping them up cadillac is a truck i can't lose with 22s that's what

00:28:19.980 i wonder why nobody wants to live in these uh in those these places why the houses remain vacant

00:28:28.920 two days later appropriately enough it was father's day and um we all know that none of

00:28:34.360 the teens in these videos had a father in the household to celebrate with. I think we can

00:28:41.140 guess that very few of them were, you know, sitting around the living room on Father's Day

00:28:46.460 morning while their dad opened a gift bag with some socks inside. I think that scene probably

00:28:53.260 did not play out very often in Baltimore. And a lot of them are probably already parents themselves,

00:28:58.240 if we're being honest. It's not simply a matter of law and order to bring an end to displays like

00:29:02.780 this, although that's obviously a very important part of it. It's also about restoring sanity

00:29:06.820 to the housing market. Nobody wants to live within 50 miles of this kind of chaos. All of

00:29:14.740 the homes are therefore useless, and as a result, the homes that are in safe areas become simply

00:29:20.120 too expensive. The moment we haul all these criminals to prison and never let them out,

00:29:26.720 we'll see a drastic reduction in housing prices in the entire country. Of course,

00:29:30.980 That's not to say the problem is limited exclusively to black teens and their absent fathers.

00:29:36.560 The second big issue with housing that some of the most desirable areas of the country have been made undesirable because of post-civil rights movement realities is compounding the first issue, that millions of people want to live in the same small number of places.

00:29:52.480 But there's a third factor in all this, which is commonly overlooked, which is that illegal immigration is driving demand for new homes.

00:30:02.040 So if it's true that 20 million illegal immigrants or more lived here during the Biden administration, then they had to live somewhere.

00:30:09.020 And in fact, James Carter, a former deputy assistant treasury secretary, wrote an op-ed a couple of days ago where he spelled out the extent to which illegal aliens have caused housing prices to increase very considerably over just the past few years.

00:30:24.000 For much of the 2010s, pay in lower-skill occupations lagged behind while professional salaries pulled away.

00:30:31.240 As immigration enforcement has increased, that gap has narrowed.

00:30:34.340 Take construction, which relies heavily on immigrant labor.

00:30:37.260 Wages in the sector grew at roughly 2.5% annually between 2010 and 2017.

00:30:42.140 Now BLS data shows construction wages is growing at 3.1% through the first quarter of 2026,

00:30:47.000 above the sector's pre-enforcement baseline, even as broader private sector wage growth cooled to 3.4%.

00:30:54.340 A recent Federal Reserve working paper finds that unauthorized immigration accounted for roughly 30% of house price growth

00:31:02.000 and 20% of rent growth in the average metro area between 2021 and 2024. 1.00

00:31:10.280 So I'll say that last part again because it bears repeating.

00:31:13.960 Illegal aliens caused 30% of the increase in housing prices that we've seen in recent years.

00:31:21.140 So at the same time that illegal aliens were competing for American jobs, they were causing a massive spike in housing costs across the board.

00:31:29.120 Now, I had to double check the statistic because even with the knowledge that Joe Biden's administration imported tens of millions of illegal aliens and broke the country, it still seems really shockingly high.

00:31:41.920 And indeed, this is from a recent paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

00:31:47.640 Quote, we find that during the boom period, an increase in unauthorized immigrant worker flow

00:31:52.040 equals to equal to 1% of a local area's initial employment increased local housing prices by 2.2%

00:32:00.200 and increased local rents by 1.4%. The impact on rents is slightly smaller for single family units

00:32:07.560 and slightly larger for multifamily units,

00:32:10.440 a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests

00:32:12.600 that unauthorized immigrant worker flows

00:32:14.520 can explain about 30% of the total growth in house prices

00:32:18.700 and 20% of total growth in rents

00:32:21.860 over the boom period for the average local market.

00:32:26.060 This is one of the reasons why it's getting harder and harder

00:32:28.560 to live in a country that resembles the one 0.75

00:32:30.520 that Gen X or millennials grew up in. 1.00

00:32:34.440 Never mind baby boomers. 1.00

00:32:35.720 the degree to which foreigners have reshaped this country and all of the West is truly staggering 1.00

00:32:41.800 to comprehend. Take a moment now to look at all three factors leading to the rise in housing 1.00

00:32:48.980 costs that we've addressed. First, that people only want to live in a few places. Second,

00:32:55.480 urban crime makes many prime locations unlivable. Third, immigration has the dual issue of causing 1.00

00:33:03.180 more pressure on our strapped housing market while also reducing the number of desirable areas to 0.98

00:33:08.360 live. Now, what you have between these three factors is a perfect storm, basically, but they're

00:33:16.540 not all. A fourth reason for skyrocketing housing costs is terrible public policy, which obviously

00:33:24.460 dovetails with the other three we've talked about. Government regulations and codes are making it

00:33:28.780 more expensive to build new housing supply, particularly in places like coastal California,

00:33:34.000 places that have developed huge amounts of housing in the past decade, like Austin, Texas,

00:33:38.780 have seen rent stabilize or even decline. Anti-growth places like Boston and San Francisco,

00:33:44.800 where it's basically impossible to build anything, have seen prices skyrocket.

00:33:50.220 The U.S. population in 1990 was about 250 million people. Today, it's about 350 million people. It's

00:33:55.780 a 40% increase. In 1990, San Francisco had 328,000 housing units. Today, it has only

00:34:02.800 415,000, which is a 25% increase. The rise of NIMBYs in places like San Francisco and

00:34:10.680 the counties around it are making it impossible to deal with the demand surge from a constantly

00:34:15.020 growing population. At this point, you're probably thinking, what about places where

00:34:21.020 you can build, places where there isn't urban crime and places without a lot of immigration?

00:34:25.780 You know, why are places like northern Michigan or Stowe, Vermont or coastal Maine also getting so expensive?

00:34:34.580 Well, this is related to the previous points. People want to live in places that resemble 1950s America.

00:34:40.380 You know, go to Vermont or coastal Maine or northern Michigan and you can find that.

00:34:45.240 And there's a huge trend to people fleeing diversity, the wonders of diversity to those areas.

00:34:50.900 but there's also a fifth and very important overlooked reason for rising homeownership costs,

00:34:57.020 and that is inflation. The government has doubled the amount of money that was in circulation during

00:35:01.620 COVID, meaning the value of the dollar is declining, which in turn inflates the dollar

00:35:05.900 cost of homes. This is one of the consequences of being $40 trillion in debt. Our leaders will

00:35:11.620 seek to inflate away the currency as a roundabout way of reducing the country's financial obligations.

00:35:17.560 Inflation is a hidden tax that's behind so many of the price increases we've detailed at the beginning of the episode.

00:35:23.640 A dollar in decline means home prices rising, even if the inherent value isn't rising with it.

00:35:28.460 It makes repair and replacement costs higher, which drives increases in insurance costs.

00:35:34.260 It also makes it more expensive to provide city services, which makes your tax dollars go up.

00:35:39.280 a lot of the rise in housing prices is really just a decline in the dollar, which is why it's

00:35:44.380 a bigger and bigger issue that young people can't afford homes. One of the best defenses 0.97

00:35:50.040 against inflation is long-term debt backed up by an asset that rises with inflation.

00:35:56.080 And these five explanations for rising housing costs go a long way in explaining why we're in

00:36:01.840 this situation that we're in. And unless they change, predictions that the average house will

00:36:07.200 be a million dollars by 2050 are likely underestimating the situation, probably by a lot.

00:36:13.720 Now, the problem is that solving these problems is not politically practical, and for that, 0.99

00:36:20.160 we can thank the most selfish generation in American history, which is the baby boomers. 0.97

00:36:25.300 Now, boomers today control over 40% of the national real estate wealth, and about a quarter 0.99

00:36:30.700 of them own a second home or a vacation property. One Northwestern Mutual survey found that less

00:36:37.040 than a quarter planned to leave an inheritance to future generations. A Charles Schwab survey of

00:36:42.160 high net worth Americans found that for nearly half of baby boomers, their priority, their top

00:36:47.720 priority is to, quote, enjoy my money for myself while I'm still alive. Now, it's impossible to

00:36:55.320 overstate just how historically bizarre, not to mention evil, that attitude is. Because for all

00:37:02.180 of human history, the thing that animated older generations was a desire to pass down a legacy

00:37:07.740 to their children and their grandchildren. And that's still the norm, by the way, outside of

00:37:13.060 boomers. The same survey, interestingly enough, found that wealthy millennials were less likely

00:37:19.380 to list enjoying my money for myself as their priority. They had a greater desire to see their

00:37:25.240 own kids inherit their wealth. They wanted to see it. They wanted to be there to see their kids

00:37:30.080 benefit from the wealth and legacy. So the boomers are, in this way, kind of an aberration. 0.98

00:37:38.440 Their general disinterest, which of course this does not apply to all of them, but 0.91

00:37:42.340 the general statistical disinterest in passing wealth and legacy to their children is unique.

00:37:50.340 And it's therefore helping to cause unique problems that their children and grandchildren

00:37:54.800 have to deal with. Now, it's not useful or helpful to sit around stewing in resentment

00:38:00.720 against other generations. There's no real benefit in that, because even if it's true that

00:38:06.120 you're getting kind of screwed by previous generations, okay, well, once that's been

00:38:10.960 established, you got to go live your life. But the fact is, economically, the boomers did have 0.85

00:38:17.740 it considerably easier than their children have it. When they started entering the housing market

00:38:22.200 in the late 1960s, the dollar was still pegged to the gold standard. The immigration laws that

00:38:27.520 transformed the country had only just passed and so had not yet transformed the country. 0.84

00:38:33.200 The cities were mostly still livable, but in steep, swift decline because of laws supported 1.00

00:38:38.380 by boomers. And it was easy to build new housing in suburbs, which were hardly regulated. Boomer 0.99

00:38:44.520 NIMBYs hadn't made it impossible to build in coastal California yet. Owning a home was the 0.99

00:38:51.280 American dream, and it was an attainable one. Now that they've secured their dominant position in

00:38:55.920 the American real estate market, boomers generally have done everything possible to make sure housing 0.97

00:39:00.300 stays unaffordable. Doing anything that might reduce the value of their housing is politically 0.76

00:39:06.380 untenable, something Donald Trump has said out loud. Watch. Existing housing, people that own

00:39:13.880 their homes, we're going to keep them wealthy. We're going to keep those prices up.

00:39:21.280 So if you're a young person who wants a home, just know that there's a reason it's so bad out there.

00:39:26.640 It's because the number of desirable places is rapidly declining.

00:39:31.140 Lots of primary real estate is taken up by the worst and most violent people in the country.

00:39:35.340 The government is deliberately destroying the value of the dollar while also importing millions of people and making it impossible to build anything new.

00:39:44.120 So that's what's going on.

00:39:47.140 And now, as a result, the choice is binary and unavoidable.

00:39:53.560 We can either doom future generations to a market that consists entirely of $1 million homes they can't afford.

00:40:02.400 Or we can make the decision, as unthinkable as it may be to somebody like Ed Sheeran, to become a lot less tolerant.

00:40:11.240 That'll do it for the show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. Have a great day. Godspeed.

00:40:16.460 Last month, we judged Martin Luther King Jr. not by the color of his skin, but by the content

00:40:26.660 of his character.

00:40:30.080 American school kids spend a lot of time hearing about MLK and Rosa Parks.

00:40:34.220 Have you noticed no one ever asks what Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery are like today?

00:40:38.960 The legacy of the Civil Rights Movement wasn't a racially harmonious utopia, it's hollowed

00:40:47.620 out urban cores, hundreds of thousands of dead Americans, raped grandmothers, ethnic 0.64

00:40:52.680 cleansing of entire neighborhoods.

00:40:54.800 This month we survey first-hand accounts of the historic wave of non-violent crime, riots

00:40:59.340 unleashed on this country by the Civil Rights Movement, which caused more enduring damage

00:41:03.380 on America's greatest cities than the atomic bombs

00:41:06.040 dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

00:41:08.940 Who were the winners and who were the losers? 0.99

00:41:11.420 What's the truth about redlining, white flight, 0.65

00:41:13.840 affirmative action? 0.90

00:41:17.340 Don't want to miss the second part of our special

00:41:19.440 on the civil rights movement,

00:41:20.720 The Looting of America, on Daily Wire Plus.

The Matt Walsh Show - June 23, 2026

Ep. 1800 - The Hidden Reasons Why You Can't Afford A House

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