How Zillow could skew housing prices – and push younger homebuyers out of the market
In many parts of the country, we are already heading down the path where a nation of renters rather than homeowners is possible.
Amid the 2008 housing market crash, NPR's "This American Life," in conjunction with NPR News, produced a special episode explaining the housing crisis. Called "The Giant Pool of Money," it has weathered the past 13 years remarkably well, standing as the foremost national artifact about the cause of the crash.
The crash was brought about by banks doing something they never thought they’d do – making loans to many people who had a strong desire to buy a home and none of the qualifications to do so. Everyone wanted mortgages, and banks and other lenders were more than happy to lend the money.
Then, as mortgage rates and payments rose and adjusted, people stopped paying. It made more financial sense for people to simply walk away from the home in which they were “underwater” than to continue to make payments. Defaults were exponential as compared with expectations, and the global economy practically collapsed as a result.