Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below.<\/p>\n
Mortgage rates may still be hogging the blame for America’s housing slump<\/a>, but Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan isn’t buying it\u2014not entirely, anyway. While the spotlight’s been stuck on homeowners clinging to their 3% rates like vintage baseball cards, Moynihan says the real drag on the market isn’t who won’t sell. It’s who can’t afford to buy.<\/p>\n “There’s 130 odd million households in America,” he said during a December 28 appearance on Face the Nation<\/a>. “Half of them don’t have a mortgage. This whole lock-in question is not even a relevant question. They rent, and so you got to bring\u2014rental affordability is a question.”<\/p>\n So while the headlines scream “locked in,” <\/a>Moynihan is waving at the other half of the country\u2014millions of renters and mortgage-free homeowners\u2014who aren’t sitting on sub-4% loans at all. For them, there’s no golden handcuff. There’s just a housing market that’s become harder to crack than a crab leg with no butter.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t Miss: <\/strong><\/p>\n “There’s a universal housing shortage,” he added. “For so many years it’s been hard to get housing permitted\u2026 you got to build supply, and you got to get permitting done. That is probably the solution.”<\/p>\n Translation: there aren’t enough homes to go around. And even if rates drop half a percent, it won’t fix the math. “Moving mortgage rates 50 basis points will not be a huge change,” Moynihan said. Especially when, as he points out, those with rock-bottom mortgages aren’t going anywhere fast. “When you have a bunch of people with 3% mortgage rates, that’s not going to be changed.”<\/p>\n But here’s where it gets interesting. Moynihan doesn’t think we should be waiting for the glory days<\/a> of dirt-cheap debt to return. “We do not want to have an economy that has to have that low rate structure again\u2026 that means we’re not growing, we’re not successful, and we’re probably offsetting a recession.”<\/p>\n So, if the housing market isn’t going to be saved by a Fed miracle, and homebuilders are still tangled up in red tape, what does that mean for people trying to build wealth\u2014or just keep up?<\/p>\n That’s where rentals come back into the picture, but not just as places to live. With demand for rental housing still strong and supply lagging behind, some are flipping the script\u2014earning income from the housing squeeze rather than being crushed by it. One way? Buying into the very thing renters are paying for.<\/p>\n Arrived, a real estate platform backed by Jeff Bezos, lets individuals invest in fractional shares of rental homes with as little as $100.<\/a> Instead of owning the whole thing and wrestling with a leaky roof at 2 a.m., you own a stake\u2014and earn passive income from rent, without becoming a landlord.<\/p>\n If Moynihan’s right and the real crisis is a shortage of places to live\u2014not just sticker shock on mortgages\u2014then rental demand isn’t going anywhere. And neither are the checks. Whether you’re priced out or just looking for a smarter way in, it’s possible to tap into the housing market without ever picking up a hammer\u2014or a 6.4% loan.<\/p>\n Real estate is a great way to diversify your portfolio and earn high returns, but it can also be a big hassle. Luckily, there are other ways to tap into the power of real estate without owning property. Arrived Home’s Private Credit Fund\u2019s has historically paid an annualized dividend yield of 8.1%*<\/a>, which provides access to a pool of short-term loans backed by residential real estate. The best part? Unlike other private credit funds, this one has a minimum investment of only $100.<\/a><\/p>\n This article Bank of America CEO Says ‘Lock-In Effect’ Isn’t the Real Housing Crisis \u2014Half of Households Don’t Even Have a Mortgage, So What’s Really Stalling Sales?<\/a> originally appeared on Benzinga.com<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a9 2026 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Mortgage…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":507218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[5229,21866,49061,64,79,8166,6308,14606,4329,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-507217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-bank-of-america","10":"tag-brian-moynihan","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-housing-market","14":"tag-housing-shortage","15":"tag-mortgage-rates","16":"tag-real-estate","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115873394695331741","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}