It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Clark Howard Show, where our mission is to serve

and empower you so you make better financial decisions in your life.

House Mania has hit the entire country and there are certain price points, most anywhere

in the United States, at very ease by market, where the second home goes on the market.

It gets multiple offers and a lot of these stories you think are fish stories.

No, somebody really didn't get eight offers within a day of their home going on the market,

but believe it or not, stuff like that is routine.

And buyers of homes right now feel squeezed between a rock and a hard place because you're

having to pay effectively a significantly higher price than what homes were just a couple

of years ago.

And you're nervous and I get that because there are a number of factors that I've discussed

with you on prior podcasts about why home prices have gone up like they have.

One is the very low interest rates, but the biggest factor just to review is that after

the process of the real estate bust, the banking scandals that led to the real estate bust,

led to all those foreclosures and all the rest from 2007 to 2012, a major part of the

home builders in the United States went out of business never to be seen again.

And so the capacity to build homes in the United States is way below the numbers needed

just for household formation in the United States.

We have a classic supply problem.

We also have an issue with land availability in the cost of land.

And in more and more jurisdictions, the junk fees that are added into the permitting process.

One thing with this is that buying used homes has a bigger advantage right now than normal.

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