It’s been seven years since the burst of housing bubble in 2008, and the market started showing signs of recovery after 2012. It seems to be a good time to consider buying a house now, with the still-going-down 15-year fixed-rate mortgage fell to 3.08 per cent, slightly above the record low 3 per cent in May 2015, according to a Freddie Mac report.<\/p>\n
As the mortgage rate now running below 4 per cent for nine straight weeks, the cost of getting a loan to purchase a new home has become a lot lower when compared to the data earlier this year. However, many potential first-time home buyers in low-income community, such as East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights, took a wait-and-see stance instead.\u00a0More people in low-income areas have chosen to rent instead of buying houses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen people renting for over 15 to 20 years,\u201d said Alicia Bonilla, a mail carrier who moved to East L.A. in late 1990s.<\/p>\n
Slow wage growth is not the only reason deterring potential homebuyers from owning houses in East L.A. In fact, the median home price has been hovering around $350,000 in the last quarter, which is still affordable comparing to surrounding areas of East L.A. and Boyle Heights.\u00a0The median home value in Los Angeles County is much higher, at the price of $503,700.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n (A house was put for sale in East Los Angeles. Photo: Zihao Yang)<\/p>\n The booming for-sale housing market is on its way to reach record high since the housing market collapse in 2008. The median price for a 3-bedroom house in East L.A. and Boyle Heights was around $200,000 in 2012 and $310,000 last year, according to data released by Zillow.com.<\/p>\n For a neighborhood highly populated with working-class families and new immigrants, living in their own houses has always been a dream for many young residents. However, many potential homebuyers see this area merely as a springboard in their life to a better community.<\/p>\n \u201cThe accessibility to a lot of utilities such as transportation, Metro, freeways, airport \u2013 that\u2019s why [people are renting in this area],\u201d said Luis Negrete, a real estate broker who started his business in 1983 on the E. Third St., \u201cother than that, I don\u2019t see that much incentive to own.\u201d<\/p>\n A housing market with ever-rising prices but sluggish real demand has seen an increasing number of houses for sale, but the number of potential buyers didn\u2019t go up. Investors are less interested in investing in the area because of historical reasons, so most of the buyers are immigrants or families that have been living there for a long time, said Negrete.<\/p>\n