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Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

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221–230 of 598 posts

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

#221
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The median price for a property in London is £600K, the average is over £1M today. That means that normal people cannot afford to buy anything in London even with HTB which is a terrible policy the people who can afford to use it are already in the top percentiles. A £600K property as a first time buyer requires you to have about £100K to get on a property ladder. 10% deposit for a 90% LTV mortgage is £60K, stamp dut…

Why is it reasonable to assume that people earning an average wage should be able to afford a home in the most desirable city in the UK, and one of the most desirable cities in Europe if not the world? I mean, nobody complains in the US if the average family can’t buy a home in Manhattan. That’s just unreasonable.

> earning an average wage

Average wage in London, not average overall.

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

#222
post #4

This is the only right way to deal with greed. Enough is enough.

Greedy? Not me. Always the other guy that is greedy. The irony is there is such high probability with posting on this board you are part of the top 1% of the globe when it comes to wealth.

> you are part of the top 1% of the globe when it comes to wealth.

So what, what do you want the person to do, go live in a hut?

How is that person greedy compared to people with multiple houses?

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

#223
post #155
post #42

In the long term, the ethically right answer seems pretty clearly to me to be a land value tax [0]. But due to encouragement of home ownership [1], that's not going to democratically tenable in a lot of countries for 20+ years. Unfortunate situation. [0] In 1879, a man asked "How come all this new economic development and industrialized technology hasn't eliminated poverty and oppression?" That man was Henry George,…

Homeownership is a great ideal. Letting people work towards having a place to live without paying rent is great for independence. What is stupid is promoting Homeownership as a personal investment for the individual home-owner. A home is already a great thing to own financially, because it 'produces' not having to pay rent. There is no need to also have it pay 5% a year for people who have 100% leverage (which is ver…

In a perfect market where there was always enough housing and rental units to supply the demand, rent would just end up settling at the same price as owning. See price vs rent index.

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

#224
post #65
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's an issue of inflation. Inflation has been super low for the past decade or more. Everything else is cheap, it's just housing that's expensive. It's a combination of scarcity and speculation leading to more artificial scarcity. Make it less attractive for speculators and build more houses.

Inflation is extremely high: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century/

How do you take "inflation is extremely high" from that chart?

56% over 20 years is 2.25%ish per year.

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

#225
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…

Your first point is a misleading anecdote given there's actually data on this. The amount of empty homes in London is at a historical low [1]. Broadly, cities with the highest amount of empty homes tend to have the most affordable housing, because obviously that indicates there's more than enough housing to go round. [1] https://i.imgur.com/jX1OpmS.png

It also depends what we call "empty house". Your link doesn't provide a definition. Is a house occupied a few weeks a year considered empty?

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

#226

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 th…

I live in social housing (in the UK), and could easily afford to buy or rent non-social... and I was already in that situation when my current tenancy started.

You could say I abuse it, and I agree in principal. However, I'm only abusing it because social housing is scarce. The solution is to build more, and I do my bit by voting for a government that would probably do that.

If they ever decided to make it means tested, and my tenancy was at risk, I would just buy the house.

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

#227
post #176
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a reasonable trade off which doesn’t hVe the risk of uprooting people from their primary residence.

I like it too, but it seems to incentivize sprawl. If people attempt to lease land the LVT will be passed to their tenants. To avoid paying the LVT, tenants will look for new construction.

Isn't this a good thing? The more constructions, the more housing.

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is how much the bank earns off the interest it charges you throughout your life while it had to do what?... create new money from nothing into the money supply with special permissions given to it by the government. This is why housing is so expensive to begin with. This bullshit needs to stop.

Banks don’t get to create money. Quantitive Easing isn’t something banks can call up on demand and it isn’t banks getting loads of free money. Instead they sell certain slightly risky assets to the government at a slightly higher price than they would be worth without QE. This small price difference is the free money but the bigger difference is that the banks have more liquid cash to use for e.g. making loans. I thi…

Commercial banks create money when lending money.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-...

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

#229
post #67
post #42

In the long term, the ethically right answer seems pretty clearly to me to be a land value tax [0]. But due to encouragement of home ownership [1], that's not going to democratically tenable in a lot of countries for 20+ years. Unfortunate situation. [0] In 1879, a man asked "How come all this new economic development and industrialized technology hasn't eliminated poverty and oppression?" That man was Henry George,…

How about a land value tax with an exemption for primary residence?

We have straight property tax in Cambridge(ma United States). If you live if your unit they’ll reduce the value that is taxed (by about 400000$ Or about $2500)

I’m not sure it’s helped, but it might be worse without it.

https://www.cambridgema.gov/departments/finance/propertytaxi...

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

#230
post #150

So investors buy the homes then rent them out? What’s the problem? In some asian markets investors buy homes then sit on them unused for years. That’s a problem.

From my experience, the size and type of investor seem to be a factor. I have rented my entire adult life since it has some advantages (notably mobility), yet have always rented from homeowners or small-time investors. They tend to place more emphasis upon keeping their units rented and keeping good renters. Except for moving, I have only seen my rent increase once. It was a small increase and I lived in that place f…

Market investment, ie. where little new value is added, is gambling dressed up to look respectable. It's all about getting something for nothing which is the root cause of all our economic ills.
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