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In Greece, Property Is Debt

nytimes.com

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Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#271

Post by muse900 »

return0 wrote: post #240
muse900 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't agree with you just because you are presenting "some" numbers. I know for a fact that my parents that live in Greece, and do not rent and own 3 flats and 1 house all of them divided equally to a different person within the family including me have to pay an "emergency" taxation on the electrical bill which is a lot of money. (A LOT OF MONEY!) Atm my parents are pensioniers and they don't rent neither have any…

> own 3 flats and 1 house > Seriously Rich people in Greece pay no tax and they don't care as well. Maybe you should realize your parents are the rich people.

No and here is your mistake, sorry I have to call you an idiot because you triggered me.

Someone that inherits property doesn't automatically mean that he/she is rich.

They never rented out or sold any property, and they worked for private companies their whole lives. The money they had were pretty limited on what they could do.

Also property in Greece is not like other countries of EU. Atm you can find flats in central Athens for 20k euros... Go buy 10 flats and then say you are rich because you own property valued at 200k.

So yes your argument is pretty stupid, you just want to blow off steam for some reason I am guessing you are a German.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#272

Post by return0 »

muse900 wrote: post #271
return0 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> own 3 flats and 1 house > Seriously Rich people in Greece pay no tax and they don't care as well. Maybe you should realize your parents are the rich people.

No and here is your mistake, sorry I have to call you an idiot because you triggered me. Someone that inherits property doesn't automatically mean that he/she is rich. They never rented out or sold any property, and they worked for private companies their whole lives. The money they had were pretty limited on what they could do. Also property in Greece is not like other countries of EU. Atm you can find flats in cent…

I m a greek idiot who doesnt own any houses. If i owned 4 i would certainly not consider myself middle-class.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#273

Post by ThrustVectoring »

repsilat wrote: post #196
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One possible fix is a law that states the government must purchase properties at the assessed price (or at something like 85% of the assessed price). Then if the tax office assesses your house at triple its actual value, well, they just handed you a giant pile of cash.

Another fix is to let you set the value yourself, and treat it as a standing offer to sell (at some premium, maybe.)

That runs into the problem of incentivizing various poison-pill type strategies to make it expensive in other ways to accept the standing offer to sell. Like, a high-level mobster could easily list their properties well below market rate while letting it be known to potential buyers that actually trying to purchase the property means saying goodbye to your kneecaps.

There's a similar corruption issue on the government-sets-buy-price side, where unscrupulous officials can transfer wealth to individuals, but at least the corruption there is much more able to be audited.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#274

Post by thght »

hx87 wrote: post #148
thght wrote: post #87

This is not only about Greece, a house is a basic necessity of live, wether you can find a job or not. Governments should cap the price per square meter so a house will always be available for everyone. As it is now you cannot really buy a house, you need a mortgage for live and work your entire life to pay interest. If this continues every house in the entire world will become unending debt and ever more unattainabl…

Price controls are a terrible solution except in special and temporally limited circumstances, e.g. total war. Much better to make construction as easy and cheap as possible, i.e. no quantitative limits on it. > This is also why basic income could never work in practice, as the house prices keep increasing you'd also need to increase the basic income. And where goes the money? Indeed, to the rich property owners.. If…

> Price controls are a terrible solution

I never mentioned price controls in general.

In Auckland, New Zealand, investors are buying property and houses en masse. They blow up the market price for profit. In the news you can read that most people born now in New Zealand will likely never be able to buy a house in their lives, and this is a very hot issue there right now. It has never been this bad and it only gets worse every day.

If the price per square meter never exceeds for example 0.25% of the average minimum income, most people should be able to own a house. Property owners could than make profit on the quality of a house, which is fair enough for now, but not anymore on the square meter property price.

How can it be that you are born on this planet and not being able to ever have your own place? Because it is all owned and inherited by a handful of people that took profit of a flawed system?

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#275

Post by StavrosK »

draugadrotten wrote: post #197
StavrosK wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that 250 euros might sound low until one considers that it's about 8% of the entire income the property would make when rented.

8% doesn't sound like a high tax level to me. Check out northern Europes 50% income tax levels with 25% VAT and come back later.

We're talking about property tax. Income tax here is over 50% from the first euro and VAT was 26% last I checked.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#276

Post by vondur »

Kalium wrote: post #177
kkapelon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody would buy the house (apart from foreigners) because it is now linked to the tax that everybody wants to avoid. Also cash flow is a big problem for everybody so it is hard to find somebody that has 90.000 in cash and also willing to buy it. Move to where? Another city? Another country? Unemployment is everywhere in Greece. I am not even mentioning the sentimental factor of being forced to sell your parents hous…

> 3) I am 75 years old living with my wife who is 70 years old in the house that we bought in 1950. We are both retired farmers. Our pension is 500 euros in total. In 1950 the area we selected for our house turned out to be a popular one (in 1950 it was just an empty field). This was regarded as a major incipient problem in California at once point. So a policy to address it was put in place - Proposition 13. It caps…

I think one big issue with Prop 13 was having it apply to business property, which makes no sense to me. How did they push that proposition to people with that? I can sympathize with the elderly being taxed out of their housing, but businesses? Not so much...

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#277

Post by nugget »

akytt wrote: post #226
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Personally I would vote for revolution - national default, totally new political leadership - and start to rebuild the country from scratch. That was actually the best of Greece's bad choices, but they were strongarmed by the IMF and the ECB into not defaulting and pulling a brick out of the financial pyramid scheme upon which western society is based.

Ok, a revolution. But, praytell, who would finance that new fresh government? There's little capital in the country, people don't evidently like the idea to start paying taxes all of a sudden and you just screwed over a large group of investors. That money is going to be way more expensive than the average market yield. That means your economic growth will likely not cover the interest payments. Which means you'd tak…

No financing is required unless you want to run a budget deficit. Greece is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. They could use that sector as the cornerstone to rebuild. They would be poor (to start) but they would also be free. I think this is their destiny eventually but I don't think the pain is bad enough yet.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#278

Post by muse900 »

return0 wrote: post #272
muse900 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No and here is your mistake, sorry I have to call you an idiot because you triggered me. Someone that inherits property doesn't automatically mean that he/she is rich. They never rented out or sold any property, and they worked for private companies their whole lives. The money they had were pretty limited on what they could do. Also property in Greece is not like other countries of EU. Atm you can find flats in cent…

I m a greek idiot who doesnt own any houses. If i owned 4 i would certainly not consider myself middle-class.

house != flat, but how would you know.

If someone that owns 3 flats and 1 house is considered rich then all good I am rich, why am I even working for? damn, why my parents can't pay their electricity(tax) bills and have to make arrangements with the government to pay in installments, noone knows, we are just rich, I'll go get my private jet and fly off this comment section now.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#279

Post by [deleted] »

nugget wrote: post #159
kkapelon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody would buy the house (apart from foreigners) because it is now linked to the tax that everybody wants to avoid. Also cash flow is a big problem for everybody so it is hard to find somebody that has 90.000 in cash and also willing to buy it. Move to where? Another city? Another country? Unemployment is everywhere in Greece. I am not even mentioning the sentimental factor of being forced to sell your parents hous…

> Nobody would buy the house If you put this hypothetical 90k euro house up for sale at a public auction tomorrow, what would it sell for? 50k? 70k? Real assets are usually sale-able, albeit perhaps for less than the owner thinks the asset is worth. > Move to where? Another city? Another country? Unemployment is everywhere in Greece. Since Greece is still in the EU, you can move to any member country right? UK, Germa…

[deleted]

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#280

Post by charlesdm »

erispoe wrote: post #190
Ntrails wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally I would vote for revolution - national default, totally new political leadership They tried that. Turns out politicians aren't actually very trustworthy...

Turns out when people have to actually govern the thing they're pragmatists. That's what happened to Syriza. They're not "untrustworthy", they're just doing the best with the hand they inherited considering what EU politics are right now.

It's always nice to say you'll demand x, y and z from a third party during elections. But if you have no leverage, and the other party says no, there's little one can do.
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