Scott Galloway has 6-word response to mortgage, rent, home crisis

The New York University professor and podcaster speaks bluntly on home affordability.

Mar 12, 2025 - 02:09

Scott Galloway has 6-word response to mortgage, rent, home crisis

Many Americans are confronting the growing challenge of paying the increasingly high cost of home rents and mortgages.

Scott Galloway, the New York University professor and host of the Prof G Show podcast, has a few serious things to say about the realities people face — and six words that explain the major problem as simply as possible.

Don’t miss the move: SIGN UP for TheStreet’s FREE Daily newsletter

In his No Mercy / No Malice latest published piece, Galloway kicks off his "Project 2028" series with some bold words and facts on home, mortgage and housing costs about which he urges people to comprehend.

Galloway clarifies a number of important facts to consider. Approximately one-third of all Americans are paying for rent, not mortgages, to stay in their homes.

And about exactly half of those renters are considered to be burdened by the cost of those payments, according to a U.S. Census Bureau study. That means they are spending above 30% of their incomes on simply living in their homes.

Galloway breaks this fact down into those six matter-of-fact words.

A man and his son are seen walking up a driveway to their house. Scott Galloway explains one big home affordability current problem for Americans.
Getty Images

Scott Galloway speaks on the growing problem with home and rent costs

Echoing the words of Jimmy McMillan, who ran for governor of New York in 2010, Galloway pointed out the problem with a statement.

"The rent is too damn high," he wrote.

Galloway describes the predicament as an affordability crisis, rather than a housing crisis. One of the ways this is most apparent is when diving into the details around how home mortgage and rent costs have increased over time compared to average American incomes.

More on personal finance:

For instance, rents have risen in cost about one-and-a-half times more than the amount of money people are making — and that's only in the past six years.

Regarding home buying, data concludes that the younger generation is the most profoundly affected. People purchasing homes for the first time and taking on mortgage payments averaged 29 years of age four decades ago.

Today that average age is 35.

Scott Galloway explains a new way to think about homes and real estate

Galloway discusses a person's financial confidence as a key component of the home, housing and rent equation.

"If economic security is the nutrition of a capitalist society, then maybe we need to stop thinking of housing as an investment, but a consumable," he wrote.

That's where he offers a solution that could be helped with some government intervention.

"The construction of millions of low-cost units for young people, coupled with tax-advantaged incentives to invest in the market would result in a better path to wealth," Galloway explained.

"In addition, we need to remove housing from the growing list of sources of anxiety for young people," he continued. "It’s housing, not an investment strategy or the arbiter of whether you’re worthy enough to mate, start a family, or earn status."

Galloway writes that Americans might have more tolerance for some local development near where they live than is commonly understood.

He cites a YouGov poll that found support for the construction of a greater number of single-family homes clocked in at 90% on a nation-wide basis and 81% locally.

"For senior housing, national support polls at 88%, local support is 84%. Nationally, 76% of Americans want more apartments built, while 65% support building more apartments locally," Galloway wrote.

"Low-income housing and homeless shelters are the least favored housing types, but even there local support polls at 2 to 1," he added. "If you’re a politician, you’ve been given a green light to ignore Nimbys (referring to not-in-my-backyard local activists)."