Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by iso1210 » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 7:39 AM UTC

lurgburg wrote: post #546

iso1210 wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HTB is a disastrous policy that did nothing but to increase the prices of properties. It let me buy a property which I wouldn't be able to without HTB, therefore your statement is objectively wrong. > And commuting towns aren’t that cheaper either Plenty of 2 bed houses in daily commuting distance for £250k - easily affordable on a London wage.

> It let me buy a property which I wouldn't be able to without HTB Possibly you're taking the wrong counterfactual here? "If I hadn't HTB but everyone else did" vs "If no-one had HTB". It's possible you're quite right about the first, but it tells us little about the second. Possibly in the presence of HTB, prices just rise again until they reach their equilibrium of just-barely-affordable.

House price doesn't matter, it's the deposit. HTB may have pushed up the house price by say 30%, but it meant the deposit was lower (12k rather than 18k) and the repayments were lower for the first 5 years.

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

#552

Post by afiori » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 8:54 AM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #474

Spooky23 wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not making any mistake, cheap money is absolutely the biggest problem that we have today. My former mentor bought a house on Nantucket for $150k in 1990, sold for $3.5M earlier this year. That appreciation isn’t due to inflation or the constrained supply of homes — it’s always been constrained. It’s due to increased demand fueled by excess capital. There’s no money in traditional banking. Even with negligible int…

> My former mentor bought a house on Nantucket for $150k in 1990, sold for $3.5M earlier this year. That is literally a luxury good with a fixed supply. As the # of people who desire that good has sky rocketed generation to generation, of course the price went up. There are limited production run cars from that era that underwent similar price inflation. For someone who wants to live in Nantucket, there is literally…

But the number of people that can pay 3.5 million dollars for an house is much smaller than the number of people that can take have a 3.5 million house financed. If interest rates were sufficiently low (maybe negative) everybody would be in the second category.

Having more people willing to pay contributes to price increases

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

#553

Post by afiori » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 9:00 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #423

im3w1l wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider a community of 10000 households. 5000 rent their housing, 4500 own their own place, and 500 own more than one place. Now outsiders enter the picture and buy property driving up the prices. The 5000 renting households are now in trouble. If rents go up they are squeezed that way. With rent control there are still issues: Their kids are unable to move out, and separations become tricky. For the 4500 it's a mix…

> Now outsiders enter the picture and buy property Buy it from who? Locals. So who gets the money? Locals. But anyway the point was don’t divide people into insiders and ‘outsiders’.

In the scenarion the 5000 were renting houses from the 500, so probably the outsiders would buy those properties first.

The 500 are also the most likely not to be local or own the land (which means a single sale can convert a low cost apartament building in a mansion).

Also the reverse is possible...

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

#554

Post by Jochim » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 9:08 AM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #344

fxtentacle wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was, but now that they're gone it's only become more obvious that locals simply don't want those jobs.

Of course nobody wants these jobs. A lot of positions were filled by tourists and travelers who stayed there for a little while and worked a bit to earn side money. - Staff at a restaurant is £8 an hour, that is minimum wage. - Expect two shifts far apart, around 11am-2pm and 7pm-11pm. - Work on Saturday and Sunday and some of the week. You will never know more than a few days ahead when you are expected to work.

- Have your shifts cut in retaliation because you couldn't/wouldn't come in to cover on your day off.

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

#555

Post by robertony » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 9:09 AM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #219

makomk wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the British press and all the wealthy people with second homes still have Brexit as a scapegoat for why cafes and shops in tourist destinations can't find staff. Never mind the fact that AirBNB and second homes have pushed up house prices and rents to the point that it's impossible to live there on the kind of pay those jobs have, according to the media it's all the fault of Brexit driving away the for…

>it's all the fault of Brexit driving away the foreign workers who had to do the jobs Forgive me since I’m American, but wasn’t getting rid of foreigners taking jobs one of the selling points of Brexit?

> Forgive me since I’m American, but wasn’t getting rid of foreigners taking jobs one of the selling points of Brexit?

That's what the media like to repeat, but I would suggest that you ignore them and take a broader view.

Reality is that both the UK and EU government failed to keep the population happy and continuously messed up. So much so, that the majority of people voted to leave the EU as they were discontent with their current situation. As someone who lives in the UK is that very little really has changed yet pre-brexit and post-brexit. It turns out outside of some temporary instabilities, things aren't doom and gloom. They're still crap like before though.

The only place where housing was really affordable in the UK was in Northern Ireland and sure enough, it's still very affordable in Northern Ireland.

General rule for getting on the housing ladder in the UK is the best time to buy was yesterday, the next best is now. Even if the housing market has a price crisis. It will never return to pricing to match up a decade ago; so don't live a fantasy waiting for it.

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

#556

Post by fennecfoxy » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 9:11 AM UTC

iso1210 wrote: post #521

dogma1138 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTB is a disastrous policy that did nothing but to increase the prices of properties. People could borrow much more than they could because the government covered 40% in London and 20% outside of it. Look at the new developments in London, the price is well just under the HTB limit for the handful of HTB flats, then there is the shared ownership racket too. And commuting towns aren’t that cheaper either, and that is…

> HTB is a disastrous policy that did nothing but to increase the prices of properties. It let me buy a property which I wouldn't be able to without HTB, therefore your statement is objectively wrong. > And commuting towns aren’t that cheaper either Plenty of 2 bed houses in daily commuting distance for £250k - easily affordable on a London wage.

HTB has definitely increased the prices of HTB eligible properties because they realised that buyers could afford a bit more w/ Gov assistance and so sellers are squeezing people for it.

Really, HTB should not have had a restriction on new builds. It's laughable because the restriction would make sense if the Gov was allowing anyone to actually build new properties.

I think you're FYIGM'ing. Idk where you're finding these decent 2 bed "houses" (I think you mean flats) in London for "250k". Hell even a 2 bed flat is mostly around the 350-400k mark in most of London, unless you want to raise your family in Croydon or something lol

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

#557

Post by fennecfoxy » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 9:12 AM UTC

iso1210 wrote: post #551

lurgburg wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It let me buy a property which I wouldn't be able to without HTB Possibly you're taking the wrong counterfactual here? "If I hadn't HTB but everyone else did" vs "If no-one had HTB". It's possible you're quite right about the first, but it tells us little about the second. Possibly in the presence of HTB, prices just rise again until they reach their equilibrium of just-barely-affordable.

House price doesn't matter, it's the deposit. HTB may have pushed up the house price by say 30%, but it meant the deposit was lower (12k rather than 18k) and the repayments were lower for the first 5 years.

House price does matter. End of the day with the bump-ed up H2B house prices...sure you can afford it w/ lower deposit thanks to gov assistance...but it's not free money. You still have to pay it back, so the seller is making an extra 30% of our backs bc they bumped the prices thanks to this scheme that was meant to "help" people.

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

#558

Post by fennecfoxy » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 9:19 AM UTC

iso1210 wrote: post #246

yodsanklai wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'd be crazy to live in London when there are far more reasonable places to live just half an hour out of a one 1 station and far far less cost How much cheaper would it be? I've just moved to London (living in zone 2, going a bit further didn't strike me as much cheaper).

Depends how often you need to be in London, 2 bed terrace, £270k https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/111488087 40 minutes to Fenchurch Street (little less for Docklands), £65 per week//£2600 per year. 2 bed 230k https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/112846073 22 minutes to St Pancras, £127 per week//5k per year If you can get a 2 bed house that close to central London at those prices that's great.

Only issue with those is the c2c and great western thameslink etc for a season ticket (to get into London for work) you're paying (for that first property in Grays): £3,872.00 per year (includes tube travel) since domestic rail prices here are just ridiculous (lowest subsidies per passenger mile in all of Europe)

Also, presuming you don't work at Fenchurch Street, the commute would be anywhere from an hour (to Fenchurch street) to an hour fifteen minutes (nearbyish tube stations).

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

#559

Post by makomk » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 9:21 AM UTC

mmarq wrote: post #526

makomk wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was, especially getting rid of the kind of immigration that turned blue-collar working-class jobs into something that no-one local could possibly live on. Perhaps more importantly, all the educated influential opponents of Brexit insisted that this wasn't happening, that the idea EU immigration was driving down wages was a cynical lie. I'm pretty sure that it is not lost on most of the supporters of Brexit that th…

> that the idea EU immigration was driving down wages was a cynical lie It was a lie, EU citizens in the UK earn significantly more than the locals. If I wanted to be a member of the underclass, say a cleaner, I’d be in Germany, where I wouldn't have to pay 6K£ for pregnancy and 12K£pa to send a child to a half-decent primary school.

The thing is, from what I can tell the migrant workers doing these kinds of poorly-paid jobs didn't have to worry about the cost of pregnancy or sending kids to a half-decent primary school because their families weren't actually living here - they came over, worked, and sent money back home to their families in their home countries with lower cost of living. It's that which made it possible for them to work for less. You're right that if they and their families had to live in the UK permanently they'd need to be paid a lot more.

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

#560

Post by fennecfoxy » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 9:21 AM UTC

bushbaba wrote: post #317

heresie-dabord wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wages have been stagnant for decades while the cost of living has increased... and now housing has become a privilege . Yes, there are "rich foreigners" and some corporations are strategically acquiring the places and spaces where high rent can be extracted. But what has driven housing cost in the market of individual homes is simply that some citizens can afford to borrow at low rates, and other citizens are seizing…

The governments are to blame. If conventional mortgages were capped to 1 per person. And a minimum of 80% ltv was required. Then houses would be cheaper. Instead the government is letting people put low money down, low interest rates, and buy up many houses at once. That of course inflated housing costs.

Yup, things like buy 2 let should've been banned in London & areas around London a long time ago. Hell, ban b2l in all of the UK until everyone that wants their first home has one.