Forty and Still Renting

The median first-time homebuyer is now forty. Not thirty. Not thirty-five. Forty, the oldest on record, in a country that once treated a starter home as a young family's birthright. Forty and Still Renting follows the disappearing starter home from the lot lines where it died to the legislatures now trying to bring it back. You will see how minimum lot sizes, parking mandates and construction costs priced the small house out of existence, why a three percent mortgage handcuffs owners who would otherwise sell, how landlords moved onto the cul-de-sac, and what it costs a household to pay rent for decades while the down payment recedes. Then the book turns to what is working: Texas shrinking its lots, Montana's unlikely coalition, triplexes in Minneapolis and fourplexes in Washington, backyard cottages, factory-built homes and down payment help. If you are renting and wondering whether the math will ever work, or you want to understand why American housing broke, this book gives you the facts and the fixes.