Affordable housing
1. Don't sell a house to someone making less than $75,000
2. No mortgage for first house if income <$50,000 and the downpayment is more than 20% of income.
For instance, if you make $40,000 a year, you can only buy a house for $20,000 (i.e. with a downpayment of 20% of your income). Then when you move up in income you can sell it and buy one with a mortgage. This keeps people from moving every few years just to get rid of their "cheap" houses because they are making less money than before.
Also, I think it would keep people from buying too much house. It's hard to know how much is too much but this rule would make people think about it more carefully and not over-extend themselves.
I'm not sure if this would work but I'd like to try it out and see what happens. It seems like there are always stories about people who bought cheap houses during the boom and are now losing them because they lost their jobs or whatever and can't afford the mortgages anymore so they move away and the neighborhood deteriorates even further as new buyers come in who can afford higher prices on the same properties. This seems like an obvious cycle that we need to break somehow. Even though home ownership is good for families (and society), I don't want people moving all over the place just to avoid owning cheap houses that they bought ten years ago when they were making less money than they are now .
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