per economics reporter John Carney<\/a> \u2014 can\u2019t make the leap to home-ownership.<\/p>\nIn the mayoral election, strong support for Democratic Socialist Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani came from Brooklyn neighborhoods inhabited by \u201cdownwardly mobile professionals\u201d who are settling for cramped rental apartments and roommates.<\/p>\n
They have \u201cno hope of buying a home,\u201d reports Carney.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Scalded by the election results across the nation last week, Trump floated the idea of a 50-year mortgage on Truth Social, with side-by-side pictures of himself and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who devised the 30-year mortgage after the Depression to relieve homeowners.<\/p>\n
Though the five-decade mortgage is a nonstarter, there are realistic steps to help first-time buyers get into the market.<\/p>\n
Lowering mortgage rates will help. <\/p>\n
Many current homeowners, especially the elderly, \u00a0who would like to downsize, are locked into their current homes because they financed at low rates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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If they sell and buy a new property, they\u2019ll be stuck with higher interest rates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So they\u2019re waiting, keeping urgently needed inventory off the market.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump has been all over Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to lower interest rates.<\/p>\n
Powell\u2019s already done so twice, in September and October, and some predict another cut in December.<\/p>\n
But long term, this is a problem of supply and demand. <\/p>\n
To increase the supply of new homes for sale, builders need to feel confident buyers will be able to pay the price.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the end of October, builder confidence was rated 37 out of 100, according to the National Association of Home Builders.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What will boost their confidence? <\/p>\n
Job growth and consumer confidence.<\/p>\n
With the government shutdown ending, job-market data will soon be available again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Builders will be watching.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, politicians will have their eyes on the polls. Behind the poll numbers is widespread discontent that the American dream of homeownership is far out of reach.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Republicans hoping to make gains in next year\u2019s midterm elections better pay attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Democrats know where their votes are: renters.\u00a0In many states Democrats are pushing towns with mostly single-family housing to build apartment buildings, including units to be rented to low-income families.<\/p>\n
Trump identifies this as the Democrats\u2019 \u201cwar on the suburbs.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Connecticut, leftists aligned with Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont are ramming through a bill this week that mandates how much affordable rental housing every region of the state will build.<\/p>\n
Forcing small towns like Easton or Wilton to build apartment buildings and accommodate a large influx of renters will push up property taxes in these towns, as they have to build sewer lines, bus lines and more schools.<\/p>\n
The higher property taxes go, the farther out of reach buying a single-family home is, especially to first-time home buyers.<\/p>\n
But Democrats are turning a deaf ear to these objections. <\/p>\n
They know the fundamental truth. <\/p>\n
The more renters move into town, the more likely it is that a red town will flip to blue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of\u00a0SAVENYC.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Homeowners vote red.\u00a0 Renters vote blue. Will a 50-year mortgage make a red voter out of you? That\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[433,2132,153,5013,2907,20601,22120,9,24,63,299,122,124,123,9825,2134,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-37848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-affordable-housing","9":"tag-democrats","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-homeowners","12":"tag-housing","13":"tag-interest-rates","14":"tag-jerome-powell","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-city","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-opinion","19":"tag-queens","20":"tag-queens-headlines","21":"tag-queens-news","22":"tag-realty","23":"tag-republicans","24":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}