The American Dream and Declining Home Values

November 26th, 2008 | by admin |

As the economy and real estate continue to decline into a deep recession, the American dream is fast fading away. People dream to one day be a homeowner in a financially stable situation. The percentage of single family homes sold in the United States continues to decrease dramatically and more multi-family homes are being built each day. Housing with shared amenities, properties, and less of the freedom that a homeowner dreams of one day having.

The housing market will continue to fall as credit conditions get worse. With the credit crunch and many people unable to make enough to support themselves and pay their bills, financial companies are finding it harder and harder to get people into homes. As each day goes by, homeowners lose their value on their house due to an economy that keeps plummeting, jobs that become unavailable or cut back on wages. This leads to financial hardship and American are unable to afford house payments on top of other important bills.

President-elect Barak Obama says that he will address the rising foreclosure crisis and hopes to come up with a plan to turn the economy around. The number of homes that will appear on the foreclosure market are predicted to increase over the next several months. Construction companies that realize a crashing market when they see one are deciding to buy smaller lots that will contain more condos and townhouses for families to share with one another. Many American across the U.S. have found the American Dream far out of reach or quickly fading away.

Owning a home was once a crucial and fundamental building block of the American dream. It led to a sense of independence, confidence, pride and has had positive results on the children of homeowners. Studies had concluded that children that lived in a home that their parents owned had a tendency to do better in school as they had more pride in themselves. Employees worked harder to keep their dream alive. Marriages even seem to improve with home ownership. It is the worry of the nation that as the real estate market crashes, these statistics will fail along with it.

As foreclosures continue to pour into the market with a fury like no other, the demand for construction comes to a halt. Buyers have tried to take advantage of a plummeting market which has led to a strict law which will decline assistance for a down payment. As the value of these homes continue to go down, mortgages become unavailable to the home owner which then pushes them into foreclosure as an only option. It is one of the most frustrating, heart-breaking, and pride demeaning issues to the American dream.

Another increasingly alarming fact about the economy and the failing real estate market is the fact that most men who are in their 30’s seem to be making less on average than their fathers did when they were in their 30’s. There has been an increase among American families, the number of women that go out of the home to work. While this has proven to raise the income status, the rising cost of living and spending has put many individuals into debt. Debt leads to a poor credit report and a poor credit report leads to being declined on a loan application for a new home.

Many people are losing faith in the American dream and in the economy as the demands and stress of financial hardship presses down. The number of people who believe that surviving by today’s standards means more than hard work increases each day. People are more likely to believe that you have to be born into a wealthy family in order to maintain structure. Perhaps it is the fact that the American dream of home ownership was so stressed upon us that we now consider ourselves failures for not being able to obtain that dream anymore. Hopefully, the President-elect Obama will be able to give us a small ounce of hope for the future.

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