491–500 of 687 posts
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The only way to win is to stop playing the game by avoiding the "best" (more expensive) neighborhoods and towns. If you work remotely, as software developers can, you don't have to give up salary either.
Bingo. I moved to a lower tax country and my income almost doubled (no more 50% Swedish tax). Sweden is a bad deal high earners.
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Why would it collapse? There’s insatiable demand for extreme limited property. Interest rate hikes may lower the price of property but the interest will rise proportionately. Do people really think at sone point no one will want premium property and I’ll finally get it cheap? Of course that will never happen.
Why would it collapse? Nobody is able to afford to buy/live in your property anymore. If you don‘t find buyers/renters how will you manage to pay off your investment credit you took out at 95%credit rate while only covering contract signing fees at ~1% interest with 10year stable interest. Once interest is adjusted after 10years to 4-5% you (property owner that can’t find any high paying renters) are fucked
I think you have a good point though regarding places that reset interest every n-years. People will struggle to make payments. It will be interesting to see what happens in places like Canada. I’m guessing millions more people on the governments teet. I assume the current admin wound love that.
Nothing in this world is for free. Unaffordable housing is just one of the unavoidable costs of living in a democratic country.
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I usually find that “obvious” reasoning is very often wrong, especially when politically contentious. You could look at countries with higher rates of immigration (say my own country New Zealand at 30% immigrants, compared against Sweden with 20%, although NZ immigrants are often middle-class from culturally compatible English countries). Switzerland has 30% immigrants. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_st…
You think you get the same type of immigrant to New Zealand as Sweden? Please..
It seems like it's the same story everywhere I look. Housing is the main driver of inequality and there is little change happening. We have the same problem here in Germany. I am currently living in Munich to finish my CS Master's at TUM and build a startup, and it is absolutely impossible to find anything remotely affordable. I am supported by two startup scholarships and make enough to get by, but no landlord even…
It seems like it's the same story everywhere I look. Housing is the main driver of inequality and there is little change happening. We have the same problem here in Germany. I am currently living in Munich to finish my CS Master's at TUM and build a startup, and it is absolutely impossible to find anything remotely affordable. I am supported by two startup scholarships and make enough to get by, but no landlord even…
Remote work was a huge boon, because our family income is independent on our location and housing costs in Ostrava are literally half the costs in Prague. We have a nice newly built house not far from public transport (6 tram lines stop on a major intersection in a 15-minute walking distance), with a garden, pretty calm and several minutes of walking from two huge supermarkets that are open till 9 and 10 pm, respectively. Even a small apartment at the outskirts Prague (two rooms) would be about as expensive.
But it came at a cost, yes. The restaurant scene is a shadow of Prague's, and a lot of personal connections had to be weakened, if not severed.
People seem to be forgetting that everything is a tradeoff. If a city like Munich or Prague is highly attractive for students, workers and connosieurs of urban life, there will be a huge demand for housing there, and few regions in the developed world have escaped the enormous NIMBYfication of construction regulations, so the supply will be lacking.
Or you can have a really nice place for living, but not in a major and growing urban area.
What about Dresden or Meissen? Nowhere near as expensive as Munich, but still urban enough to have some doctors and other opportunities.
Yes, you will have a lot more AfD voters around, but everything is a trade-off. Living in a mostly B90/Grüne-voting neighbourhood may be the most costly privilege in entire Germany, and is it really worth the added cost? I surely wouldn't like to be held hostage to my neighbour's political preferences.
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Why would it collapse? There’s insatiable demand for extreme limited property. Interest rate hikes may lower the price of property but the interest will rise proportionately. Do people really think at sone point no one will want premium property and I’ll finally get it cheap? Of course that will never happen.
I don’t know about your country. But in mine prices of property has not followed population growth, increased income or really anything that would make this growth sustainable. It has been a product of central banks setting way too low interest rates (and to a part lacking regulations).
Rising interest rates are good for cash buyers and banks.
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> It seems like it's the same story everywhere I look. Housing is the main driver of inequality and there is little change happening. It's a way of transferring money from younger adults to older adults, and older adults vote. It's basically an intergenerational pyramid scheme where each generation pays to the previous one, and each time they pay more. Of course, like any pyramid scheme, you can only keep it up so lo…
> It's a way of transferring money from younger adults to older adults, and older adults vote. Always makes me wonder where these younger adults come from? Don't they have parents who invested their saving in a few apartments for rent? Can't they get some financial help from their parents?
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If it doesn't collapse, then society may collapse? Like the sibling comment mentioned, you can only push this too far, and I think it's pushed too far to be very alarming. And housing is expensive by design and not by constraint. I'm staying in KL, a comparatively cheap place by Western standards. The housing market is crap here from a seller perspective as you have an over-supply of condos. That, despite the large a…
> If it doesn't collapse, then society may collapse? But there are plenty very cheap areas to buy houses or rent. Sure, many people don't want to live there, that's why it's cheap today. But it is a possibility nonetheless, one that is better than collapsing society. I'm always honestly confused why today it is seen as impossible to move to a cheap area? People have been doing this for generations (centuries?). It's…
Your solution is someone else's nightmare.
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I don’t know about your country. But in mine prices of property has not followed population growth, increased income or really anything that would make this growth sustainable. It has been a product of central banks setting way too low interest rates (and to a part lacking regulations).
Interest rates don’t really matter as much as you might think. Yes as rates go down the price a house sells for goes up. But the monthly payment stats the same as that’s how people buy houses. They figure out what they can spend easy month in principal, interest, and taxes and then shop and bid in the places they want to live, which almost always aligns with how much they can spend. Rising interest rates are good for…