On the housing crisis and job mobility

“If you need a job and you need to improve your life chances, you know, why not? I mean, it’s not that it’s free and it’s not that it doesn’t cost you, but it may be worth paying that price.”

That’s Joe Gyourko, a real estate professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He was quoted in an NPR piece Devalued Homes Anchor Prospective Job Seekers. A less-discussed side effect of this housing crisis: decreased mobility and an inability to land perfect-match job candidates because they can’t sell their homes.

When your options are “stay put, hope you don’t get fired, and hope for the best” or “lose your down payment money plus whatever improvements you’ve made,” you can see why many job candidates are turning down plum opportunities to stay put.