> 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…
What really attracts people to those places? Cuisine? Night life? Tinder opportunities?
If you are able to work remotely, Spain is fantastic at the moment. Relatively low real estate rent/purchase prices. You can still get a nice 3 bedroom house with a pool under 200k by the Mediterranean sea (of course well, not in Marbella). There are some surprisingly high-tech jobs locally as well, the space industry is booming right now. Lots of programming jobs in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia even if you don't s…
The flip-side of this is that all the "expats" (not immigrants :)) and "digital nomads" are outbidding the locals and pushing up prices for them. If you think it's bad renting a house in Munich on a German salary, imagine renting a house in Lisbon (similar or higher prices) on a Portuguese salary.
The solution to this is of course land value tax, distributed to citizens in a dividend. The gains from the land value go to the citizens of the country, not the private speculators who add nothing.
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…
"How the hell are we ever supposed to build up some savings, settle down and have a comfortable life?"
The idea is, you pay so much rent, you never will have enough money to buy something. So you have to spend all your money the whole life just for rent and still own enything when you are old.
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…
I started looking for houses in 2005-2006. The outlook sounded similar, constant prices going up and missing out. House flipping was booming and I was priced out of all the desirable areas. What I did was start near where I work and move down the line farther out getting to less desirable towns. 2008 hit and at that point mortgages dried up. I finally got a house in 2009, in an area where schools were not as good and was not as desirable and prices fell for the next few years where I felt like I over paid. With all the money I put in , being a fixer upper too, I just assumed if I sold I’d simple take a loss and move on with my life. Now, a decade plus later the area has moved from less desirable to decent. In the end it worked out. Once again today though the same areas I couldn’t afford are still the desirable area. People want the cute down time I was priced out of 15 years ago. There are still towns that are more affordable.
Negative equity is going to become a real problem for a lot of people who purchased in booming markets over the last few years. As far as I'm aware, most places are 'non-recourse'. Some people might say "if you can carry on making the payments you'll be fine". This isn't true though. Not being able to move city for a job, being unable to upgrade to a larger place to start a family, or feeling financial pressure to st…
Swedish home loans are in general not nonrecourse: the bank can take everything you have, and basically enslave you for 5 years.
Sorry, my mistake. I meant to say most places are not 'non-recourse' as far as I am aware!
> I'm honestly sick of this whining about rent in top-tier areas. I don't know if this applies to GP, but we certainly get this in Zurich, Switzerland. We have a fantastic public transport system, and you can get fairly affordable apartments that are <30mins away from the city center of Zurich by train. But people somehow feel they have a right to live dead center in one of the most expensive cities in the world righ…
Calling anything within 30 (or even 45min) range from Zurich "affordable" is some heavy pile of BS. Anything commutable is massively out of the budget for most people.
That might be for Zurich. 30 minutes out of london you can get 1 or even 2 bed flats for under 160k
Japan is unique for a few reasons: 1) Very insulated culture with nearly no immigration coupled with low birth rates. 2) They build houses very differently. They aren't generally made to last centuries if taken care of and renovated. The strategy is to build small units cheaply and tare down after 2- years. It's like Ikea for homes. 3) I agree, depopulation is a problem. We really need to incentivize middle and upper…
External incentives to have larger families don't work. Hungary tried giving approx. 30k EUR (a very large sum, locally) to every family who have 3 kids plus other significant tax incentives like 0% income tax rate for life for mums of 3, and afaik these programmes are still on but looking at birth rates it resulted in a 0.8% blip and is still in a sharp downtrend.
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…
Question must be - in a country where population doesn't grow at all and haven't been for a generation+, and housing is not being torn down on a massive scale so supply of it probably still increases a bit, why is there a need for any new housing at all? Basically, why can't people on average just live in their grandparents' apartments once they die? Housing construction standards have been decent for at least 60 years so these apartments are good and are probably better located than their parents' just because of city growth since.
I have to say I really appreciate the Japan model, where the real estate investment is looked at in two parts; the land and the building itself.
Since while I'm no socialist / communist, I think they got a point with housing is a right in that the current system is way too volatile/destructive once the cards fall.
The Japanese sought to make it less speculative, or at least make it have a deadline.