141–150 of 161 posts
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The fact that the borrower can renegotiate lower only increases the premium charged for fixed rate loans. It's not free money or free insurance.
Yeah, but I imagine you know that thing about limited upside but potentially boundless downside?
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You don't > a 160sqm house with a 800sqm garden to raise kids :-))) You > that house, notice the difference? I grew up in a very practically designed 2 bed room apartment of about 90sqm. It was more than adequate and to preempt comments, it wasn't "inhumane" or a "slum" or whatever. I'd live there today if Romania as a whole wouldn't have a lot of growing up to do. A 100sqm apartment, made larger to account for moder…
The "need" level is very basic, in principle you need just some water and any food and any shelter and people lived like that for millions of years. Even a Romanian block of flats from the Ceausescu period would seem a luxury to the peasants of Vlad the Impaler. But we are talking about Germany, Munich. This is one of the most advanced economies in the world, and a great power of export. Having a 160sqm house with a…
Especially the 800sqm garden.
A small terraced house with a 200sqm garden, maybe. But 800sqm is extreme for anything above a sleepy town. Maybe in a bad neighborhood or a suburb reasonably far away from the actual city.
But in the city? In ~1000sqm you could build an entire apartment building that could house 60+ people.
> Something is seriously askew if a normal middle class in a rich country can no longer do that.
No, it's a correction the other way. The post war boom that lasted until about 1995 is over for good. Especially with the competition from all over the world, not just from the small Western sphere.
Edit:
Oh, and this is super arrogant:
> Even a Romanian block of flats from the Ceausescu period would seem a luxury to the peasants of Vlad the Impaler.
If you sneer at Communist apartment buildings, a decent Romanian block of flats built in 2022 is basically at Western standards from every aspect you can imagine (example: https://www.skia.ro/en/one-cotroceni-park/). And I stand by my point that you can raise a perfectly happy and functional family with 2 kids in a 100sqm apartment. If anything, that house with a large yard is more of a luxury.
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Germans rent a lot. They have the highest rate of rentals in the EU, I'm not sure how this compares to the US. I'd guess Germans rent more than Americans.
Maybe this is because you're not missing out on a housing market rocket by renting? With a reasonable tenant's rights framework, I think the benefits of home ownership are mostly aesthetic. That's not to diminish the aesthetic value, but I think a lot of people have this hierarchy where renting is below owning, and my guess is that's almost entirely to do with building equity in a home. You can imagine a alternate co…
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You will find that you are wrong about the occupation rates in rural areas, it's still at around 180000 unoccupied dwellings at the last count. Misleading not to make the distinction between Unfinished and Empty just to make a point, leaving out half the story in numbers terms. The article would have been more accurate if the titles of the 'Myths' were about Dublin and not Ireland. I don't have figures for the amount…
> around 180000 unoccupied dwellings at the last count. I spend a lot of time in rural Ireland (ok, in the eastern, wealthier, part). This figure doesn't really reflect what I see on the ground, which is scarcity of supply - you got sources for that figure, preferably with a breakdown by region?
In any case here's the link I was looking for earlier, which should source the breakdown you are looking for.
https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp1hii/cp...
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Maybe this is because you're not missing out on a housing market rocket by renting? With a reasonable tenant's rights framework, I think the benefits of home ownership are mostly aesthetic. That's not to diminish the aesthetic value, but I think a lot of people have this hierarchy where renting is below owning, and my guess is that's almost entirely to do with building equity in a home. You can imagine a alternate co…
It's not just aesthetic, it's practical, too. You can make larger changes that landlords frequently ban.
But like, I don't need them. Almost no one does. It's an aesthetic lifestyle choice. I'm (probably, anyway) willing to purchase a home in order to do this--and other non-apartment-friendly things--but I don't think it should be the goal of national housing policy to ensure that everyone has this option.
I can also imagine a more sophisticated tenant/landlord/housing policy that allowed tenants to do more significant things to land or structure. It's not like these things are unprecedented: leasers of agricultural land and commercial office space do it all the time. But again, I think it probably boils down to "poor, unsophisticated people rent, letting them lease your property is a huge risk, here's a thick contract and some biased tenant/landlord statues to protect landlord interests" thinking, which is definitely inaccurate.
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> around 180000 unoccupied dwellings at the last count. I spend a lot of time in rural Ireland (ok, in the eastern, wealthier, part). This figure doesn't really reflect what I see on the ground, which is scarcity of supply - you got sources for that figure, preferably with a breakdown by region?
It is rare for people in Ireland to consider the eastern part, Leinster, rural, even while parts of it might be. Connaught is where the unoccupied dwellings are most common. In any case here's the link I was looking for earlier, which should source the breakdown you are looking for. https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp1hii/cp...
To get back to your point...
> there were also completed and empty housing estates.... Rural areas had huge ghost estates
That's not accurate - an ambitious housing estate in a rural area would be usually a few tens of houses. Ten to fifteen would be much more usual. "Huge" is not the word.
> You will find that you are wrong about the occupation rates in rural areas, it's still at around 180000 unoccupied dwellings at the last count. Misleading not to make the distinction between Unfinished and Empty just to make a point, leaving out half the story in numbers terms.
The CSO figures don't allow us to see what proportion of the unoccupied buildings are ghost estates. Table 4.3 gives a breakdown but it's not particularly helpful. From my own experience I really don't think that they are a particularly large proportion any more.
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You can get a new mortgage at a lower rate if interest rates go down... You're allowed to repay.
Not "can" but "might be able to". For example, new builds might get you a lower interest rate, but if you go to refinance, then it's not a new build anymore. (Though in one way this is usually true - a lower principal will give you a lower interest rate usually ) A lot of banks do charge you a penalty for repaying before the (fixed interest) term in case of fixed rate mortgages.
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Not "can" but "might be able to". For example, new builds might get you a lower interest rate, but if you go to refinance, then it's not a new build anymore. (Though in one way this is usually true - a lower principal will give you a lower interest rate usually ) A lot of banks do charge you a penalty for repaying before the (fixed interest) term in case of fixed rate mortgages.
Not in the USA. Any mortgage allows repayment without penalty. Banks actually want it that way as their business is underwriting loans and the fees associated with them.
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The "need" level is very basic, in principle you need just some water and any food and any shelter and people lived like that for millions of years. Even a Romanian block of flats from the Ceausescu period would seem a luxury to the peasants of Vlad the Impaler. But we are talking about Germany, Munich. This is one of the most advanced economies in the world, and a great power of export. Having a 160sqm house with a…
There's almost no popular city in the world where this is feasible. Especially the 800sqm garden. A small terraced house with a 200sqm garden, maybe. But 800sqm is extreme for anything above a sleepy town. Maybe in a bad neighborhood or a suburb reasonably far away from the actual city. But in the city? In ~1000sqm you could build an entire apartment building that could house 60+ people. > Something is seriously aske…
Meanwhile buildings built around 1900 are in better order, because the quality of work was a bit higher back then.
You can raise a decent family in a flat, but things like a constantly leaking roof, gaps between windows and windowsills big enough for snow to get through or flimsy electricity installations made in alluminium (one of my friends back in the basic school got half-electrocuted by a faulty socket, result of a shoddy work of a drunken state-employed electrician) are pretty miserable, and that was the building standard for blocks of flats east of the Iron Curtain prior to 1989. I still remember my mom stuffing rags into said gaps around the windows to stave off the draft. This wasn't a Western standard.
Now, after a lot of improvements and investments, it is, yes.
As for the 800 sqm garden, yeah, not in the city center, but if you consider 30 minutes by public transport far enough, it used to be well possible. Parents of a friend of mine are a cook and an accountant, now both retired. They built such a house in Prague-Ďáblice in the 1970s, in a walking distance from a tram terminal. A well paid Google engineer might probably be able to buy this property now on a mortgage. This is just one anecdote of many in my surroundings.
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It is rare for people in Ireland to consider the eastern part, Leinster, rural, even while parts of it might be. Connaught is where the unoccupied dwellings are most common. In any case here's the link I was looking for earlier, which should source the breakdown you are looking for. https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp1hii/cp...
Trying to tell a resident of rural Leinster what I should and shouldn't consider rural isn't going to get you very far. To get back to your point... > there were also completed and empty housing estates.... Rural areas had huge ghost estates That's not accurate - an ambitious housing estate in a rural area would be usually a few tens of houses. Ten to fifteen would be much more usual. "Huge" is not the word. > You wi…
compare and contrast
https://www.meathchronicle.ie/2021/05/15/meaths-last-ghost-e...
https://www.con-telegraph.ie/2021/07/20/urgent-call-to-tackl...
we are now into an argument of semantics over huge.
Also I would like to point out the title of the myth was about 'Ireland built too many houses', not just ghost estates and so the distinction between unfinished and empty remains important and ignored by the author.
In addition the author refers initially to them as 'ghost towns' which is not common parlance, and then links to an article about 'ghost estates', and continues then to talk about 'ghost estates'.
Linked from the original article. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35112926.amp