Is this actually a problem? Why would people want more of their net worth tied up in their home? Wouldn't cheaper homes make the properly ladder game more accessible? Are people leveraging their current home value enough to need it to be higher?
People use their homes as part of their retirement plan - this is doubly so for those of us that expect Social Security to be gone by the time we retire.
You have to account for the "I got mine so screw the next guy down on the ladder" mentality. One of the _real_ cross-party political issues is just how selfish and anti-community most Americans have become.
Another real cross-party issue is how quick people are to label other people doing their best to make it in complex systems as selfish and immoral.
If you have a $400k mortgage on a $500k asset, and I'm proposing systemic changes to make it worth $250k, you'll end up owing $150k more than it's worth. If something happens and you lose your job, you're screwed. You can sell and refinance and you'll still owe nearly as much every month as the person who bought your newly cheaper house, but now you don't have a house.
It's not about "I got mine, fuck you" so much as "this is my life's savings you're talking about making dramatically smaller" and "I'm super leveraged on this asset."
It's not that they want it to be such a fraction of their NW, it's that it already is, because they were doing that which is popular and makes them higher-status. Given that it already is, I can see how they might be fine with some kind of grand compromise whereby they lose the potential NW gain from the home, and get something in return without the malicious incentives, but that would probably be too expensive to get majority support.
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