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Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

nltimes.nl

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

#461

Post by imtringued »

capableweb wrote: post #23
snemvalts wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greed is innate to humans and you can't even take it away with communism, people will still find a way to collect and hoard. The problem is the low interest rates from central banks flooding the economy with money.

Some greed might be innate, but what we're seeing today with billionaires is not normal greed, it's extreme greed, something me (and many others) don't think is innate. And where does "communism" come from? No one mentioned it here on HN nor in the article. People are so quick to label things, even if they are not even related. In this case, Dutch people seems to had enough of expensive prices so now they are on the…

I don't think it is greed. Rather, money and real estate has become a status symbol. It's just as dumb as trucks and SUVs being a status symbol among the middle class.

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

#462

Post by imtringued »

cutler wrote: post #205
bradleyjg wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it gets harder and harder for normal people to own anything ( build up wealth), while building wealth is the best retirement startegy there is. This is the problem in a nutshell! It’s impossible for houses to continue to be great “wealth building” vehicles and for them be affordable. Politicians have prioritized the former and that’s how we got where we are. If we want affordable housing for peopl…

Marx's analysis is as relevant today as ever. The expansion of capital seeking ever-increasing sources of surplus value has left most of us as nothing more than serfs subject to the whims of landlords.

It's not very difficult to criticize capitalism. Figuring out a solution is a much harder problem.

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

#463

Post by imtringued »

iamstupidsimple wrote: post #90
keewee7 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is that it gets harder and harder for normal people to own anything One of the reasons is that people insist on living and working in some of the wealthiest and most expensive cities in the world. I live a cheap town and my commute to work in the 2nd biggest city in my country is just 25 minutes.

Mainly that's because that's where the jobs are. (Remote isn't a 100% solution, either.)

The jobs are where the international investors are and they prefer big cities over small unknown towns.

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

#464

Post by Yaa101 »

kingludite wrote: post #352
Yaa101 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had housing cooperation's for a century until they were forced by consecutive right wing governments to sell their houses, and thus ruining a system that was well working, except for rich friends of the right wing government to speculate with the housing system, which is taking place now.

And before that we had woningbouw verenigingen . Non profits ran by their tenants. Something like: God fearing church goers wouldn't stand for hard working newly wed couples not getting a home.

We are talking about the same... I said cooperation's, not corporations.

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

#466

Post by imtringued »

iamnotwhoiam wrote: post #159
Genego wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that these investors have raised rents nationally to a point where there is no affordable housing outside of social housing (8-15+ year wait lists). And this happened in a very short time period. If I'd want a 60-80m2 apartment in the city I currently live, I'd have to pay 1000-1200+ Euro for that; three to four years ago, that would have been half. Just over the border in Germany the same apartment go…

Is that because Germany had banned property investment or because supply keeps up with demand in Germany?

It sold social housing and stopped building more of it. If you had asked about real estate 10 years ago you'd hear about how Germany solved the housing problem.

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

#467

Post by imtringued »

chrisseaton wrote: post #253
jlokier wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just buy a house the usual ways and live in it. With cash or a mortgage. If you live in it, it's not called "property investing". "Property investing" refers to buying property to benefit from price speculation and use as a store of value, without actually using the property as a home. The property may sit there empty most or all of the time, or it may be rented out, with a combination of rent and price speculati…

Since houses don’t wear out or get used up, like clothes or food, and you can sell them when you’re done with them, they’re inherently an investment.

They do. It's the land that goes up in value.

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

#468

Post by icelandicmoss »

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…

Similar situation for York -- tourist hotspot, a large chunk of the local jobs in tourism/customer service, retail, food service etc. Article in the local press in the last year (which I obviously can't find now) found that something like 95% of the properties on sale were unaffordable on the median wage of a local resident.

And then you get articles like this one: https://yorkmix.com/york-is-the-norths-property-hotspot-as-i... Funny thing is, this article happens to be a total submarine -- I recognise the development they're describing, it's been there for years and has not sold well (totally overpriced) -- this article and others like it are just an attempt to drum up further demand.

Really frustrating that when we have so many people needing housing, homes are built entirely with the objective of selling them to people who already have homes elsewhere!

First houses should have priority over second houses please.

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

#469

Post by refurb »

merrywhether wrote: post #396
refurb wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a nice theory but it would involve tossing people out of their homes because they can’t afford the tax. If you make an exception for them, then the entire system is defunct because it’ll just be a web of exceptions that just create a “housing elite” that is exempt from the rules. The easier thing is just make is easier to build more housing, denser if needed, to fulfill demand.

Who’s getting tossed out of homes? If they own any part of it, they can sell their land at its new higher value and pocket their share of the gains. Then the can either move into a nearby newly redeveloped multi-unit building (increased efficiency as incentivized by LVT) or they can move further out to land with the same low value on which they used to live in a detached home. This same type of thinking drives me cra…

You just described someone forced out of their home.

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

#470

Post by galdosdi »

dragonwriter wrote: post #431
galdosdi wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, makes sense. Low rates, you want fixed. High rates, you want variable. I just don't understand how the bank puts up with it.

Most of the ARMs were sold with very little downward adjustability. With rates at historic highs, the ones I was seeing when mortgage shopping in 2006ish consistently had wide open upward adjustment and one 0.25% step available of downward adjustment to their minimim rate from the initial rate. The bank wasn't taking much risk on the adjustable rate.

I mean the risk the banks take today offering a fixed 30 year note at a very low rate, if there is significant inflation or rate increases anytime soon. It seems like a very good deal for the buyer right now and for the last decade.
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