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Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

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Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#161

Post by mercy_dude »

pydry wrote: post #127
mercy_dude wrote: post #39

There is a better way - raise the real rate. Cheap loans along with endless printing has basically made fiat useless as a medium to store value, the only reason fiat exists now is as a medium to exchange goods/services. Here the Fed has been buying over 100B of mortgage based securities a month. This got to stop. For all the talks about Wealth inequality, I don’t understand how politicians fail to understand this bas…

This would lead to a steep collapse of property prices and force new homeowners who have just scraped together enough for a deposit into negative equity. This would drive a lot of anger against it (all amplified by the media/ultrawealthy who would be furious too) even if it were the right thing to do long term. The only time I could see this happening would be in the case the value of the dollar fell off a cliff due…

Yeah this is the narrative that is always played every time there is a talk about even slightest increase in interest rate. When politicians and news media alike play this narrative this gives people signal that house prices can never go down. I know a couple who is one layoff away from defaulting their mortgage, but they bought a house with mortgage 60% of their income since they think housing prices can never go down.

Assuming you are able to afford your mortgage in the first place and want to live in the house for distant future, why is repricing in due to rate change a problem anyway?

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#162

Post by morpheos137 »

The spirit of the idea makes sense but maybe not the implementation. Homes should be occupied. I don't think a ban is necessarily the right approach. Have a high vacancy tax.

The way houses have been turned into a speculatively appreciating asset in much the world is absurd.

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#163

Post by Pet_Ant »

jhgb wrote: post #36
amelius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstood. The only way to rent a place is to rent it from an investor. If investors are banned from the city, then students need to buy the house/room they live in. This is of course not feasible for the majority of students.

> The only way to rent a place is to rent it from an investor. You mean in the Netherlands? Because I never had to do that in my country. I'm not aware of places where the only landlords are investors.

I think you are missing the point.

All landowners are investors. They bought the property to make money. That makes them an investor. Maybe not a coporation but an investor.

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#164

Post by sega_sai »

I think I mostly agree with this idea, but while removing pure investors from the market may offer some (or significant) help, however it still does not solve the mismatch between supply and demand. I think the removal of investors will lower the demand, but I think the mismatch will still exist in many places. And proposing solutions for that is essential, i.e. either building more or making it easier to work remotely etc.

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#165

Post by rusteh1 »

I don't understand how this would work. How do people rent? Obviously many people can't or do not wish to own their house for any number of reasons. Who will own houses that are rented? I used to live in Amsterdam as an expat, and rented from a landlord who owned several homes in Amsterdam. Would she not be able to own and rent these homes under this scheme?

The social housing system seemed to be abused when I was there. I had a number of Dutch friends still living in social housing places they'd rented as students on very low incomes, and were still renting 10 years later. For the same 300 euro per month, when they were now earning 6-7000 euro/month. I could never understand why this wasn't means tested continually.

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#166

Post by jlokier »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #8
WouterZ wrote: post #3

I've been looking at buying a bigger home than the current one I own. It's near impossible as prices keep on going up. Very disapppinted that cities have to arrange this - it means that some cities won't yet introduce anything. I can already see investors swooping into those markets without the ban... i.e. Haarlem where I live will be among them.

We'd need to look at demand versus supply, including new builds before we can point the finger at "investors", which may be convenient but not necessarily useful. Ultimately, market forces are what they are. If demand exceeds supply then some people will always miss out. There is also the problem of the amount of liquidity available. Since 2008 and even more since Covid mountains of cash have been created at zero int…

Rents have already skyrocketed while the private residential letting sector is thriving.

It's not clear at all that changing the market forces to increase access to ownership by occupiers would lead to increasing rents, even with reduced supply of rentable properties.

At the moment, a lot of tenants would rather buy if they could, and are paying the same or more in rent than they would pay on an equivalent mortgage, plus rents are rising faster than a mortgage would if they had one. Rents are also rising faster than their salaries. So they would gain location stability and financial stability by owning, but they can't get a mortgage. Mortgages, like anything in a competitive market, are preferentially offered to the best-looking customers, and property speculators are better-looking than ordinary working folks struggling to make ends meet on their current and rising rent.

If those people could buy properties like the ones they are currently renting, rentable supply would go down. But demand would also go down by the same amount, and mostly from those competing to pay the higher end of rents currently. I think this would reduce average asking rents for the remaining tenants.

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#167

Post by athrowaway3z »

988747 wrote: post #103
jhgb wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need for every family to sublet. Usually a small minority of residences house subletters. I'm not quite sure how worsening the situation for everyone by property investors hoarding houses would make it better for students, either.

Property investors are not "hoarding" houses. They buy them and then rent them out, thus increasing the supply. It is actually better for students this way: an investor that does not live in their property can rent out it whole. If a house can fit 5 people that means a living space for 5 students. If the house gets bought by a family, that family moves in, so 3 out of 5 spots are now occupied, leaving only 2 availabl…

I know a girl who bought a house with a mortgage backed by her government-student-grant somewhere around 2006 iirc.

Additionally, If prices weren't so high there would be more students buying houses with their parents money.

None of that is to say I understand the market, it's history or future. But your take seems to be based on dogma and an oversimplified supply and demand model.

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#168

Post by neutronicus »

zeepthee wrote: post #125
thepangolino wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't a land value tax encourage urban sprawling ? Current ubran policies in the western world, coupled with the normalization of remote working already do this to some extent.

How would it encourage urban sprawling?

Aspiring single-family home dwellers will go farther afield in search of less-taxed land

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#169

Post by te_chris »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #105
dmje wrote: post #25

Amen to this. Two case studies from the UK I've been thinking about recently: 1) Visiting London and spending time in South Kensington - walking back to hotel at night, only about 30% of houses had any lights on. Suggestion is the others are effectively uninhabited, and a search on RightMove shows properties sell for £20-£30m for a 4/5 bed. This isn't normal Londoners, it's outside investment. 2) Cornwall, where I li…

Has it ever been possible to buy a house on minimum wage?

UK’s also only had a min wage since Blair

Re: Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

#170

Post by jhgb »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #163
jhgb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way to rent a place is to rent it from an investor. You mean in the Netherlands? Because I never had to do that in my country. I'm not aware of places where the only landlords are investors.

I think you are missing the point. All landowners are investors. They bought the property to make money. That makes them an investor. Maybe not a coporation but an investor.

Surely the Dutch are not using your proposed definition, because that would make zero sense unless they wanted to turn the Netherlands into another Chernobyl exclusion zone. That seems unreasonable, so they must be using a different one.
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