Janet Yellen Says It’s ‘Almost Impossible’ For First-Time Homebuyers To Enter Housing Market (Blames Rates Being Too Low That Households Locked-in Rates)

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the House Ways and Means Committee that housing is impossible for first-time homebuyers. But doesn’t bother to confess that she is partly responsible because of her “too low for too long” Fed policies under Obama/Biden.

Yellen: Mortgage rates have been so low for so long that it’s created a lock-in effect where people don’t want to sell their homes to buy new ones for fear of losing their attractive rates.

That’s made it “almost impossible” for first-time homebuyers to enter the housing market, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said during her testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee.

Now hold on a minute, Janet. YOU were the one that kept rates too low for too long as Federal Reserve Chair.

Janet L. Yellen took office as chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in February 2014, for a four-year term ending February 3, 2018. She was succeeded by Jerome Powell.

What was her record on mortgage rates? Yellen kept the Fed target rate (upper bound) at 25 basis points under Obama/Biden until December 2015, so only one rate hike under Obama/Biden. Then came the election of Donald Trump in November 2016. Then Yellen raised The Fed target rate 4 times after Trump was elected.

Mortgage rates fell to 3.78% by November 2017, so Yellen helped keep mortgage rates low. But mortgage rates soared after Trump’s election to 4.22% by the end of her term.

There are other reasons why first-time homeownership is so difficult, like local NIMBY (not in my back yard) policies and the absolutely lousy labor market.

She added that Biden’s massive tax increase won’t hit middle class households (other than the massive INFLATION tax that was levied by Biden). That is a plain lie. the Tax Foundation says that someone who’s married, two kids, making $85,000 would pay $1,700 more in taxes. A married couple with two children making $165,000 annually would pay $2,450.50 more than in the previous year, while a family with three kids pulling in $200,000 per year will shell out almost $7,500 more per year.

So much for Biden’s “No one making under $400,000 will pay and additional penny of tax.”