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What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

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Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#581

Post by helge9210 »

ricardobayes wrote: post #427
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> still gets rejected either for her financial situation or because the rental contract is already set to increase 8% each year - which we simply cannot afford. And it's not just Munich. Every city in Germany has this problem. The logical step, when individuals cannot afford their own rent, companies that need workers will be providing housing to their workers. And they will be able to evict them whenever they feel l…

This case is different though, 75k is a very, very good salary in Germany so if they can't find rent with that then they are looking at the wrong properties. 75k is great but it won't buy luxury penthouses (same as everywhere else in the world.) If OP is telling me they can't find a normal 2 bed apartment in Munich on a 100k (assuming) income something is wrong in their search or their expectations.

> 75k is a very, very good salary in Germany

I'm sorry, but it is not. Salary, that is only 3x of minimal wage can't be considered good.

This kind of sentiment is one of the reasons the German companies don't have access to engineering talent.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#582

Post by dkqmduems »

throwawaybbq1 wrote: post #123
andsoitis wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more than just one issue. A voter doesn’t necessarily agree on everything with the person they voted for.

I'm an immigrant and got really burned during the Harper admin (Kenny's handling of immigration destroyed my life). That basically meant my options are Liberal or NDP. NDP policies seem to think if I make more than 200K, I am a rich fat cat (ignore that I have a freakin PhD at the cost of a delay in buying a house - effectively making me far poorer in wealth terms than someone with a mediocre undergrad who bought a p…

With that kind of income, I suggest you talk to a wealth manager. There options for low effective interest rate loans. The effective rate on our mortgage is about 1% fixed.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#583

Post by neerd »

icelancer wrote: post #296
csomar wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Young people will prefer to live in these 20-sqm things (and have shared amenities/no car) than lose a significant percentage of their income to housing. Of course, some of the powers are holding on this because it'll affect their artificially made limited supply of houses. The people most vocally opposed to these buildings (which I support) in the United States are liberals/progressives who say those types of livi…

[Citation needed]

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#584

Post by jdietrich »

jjav wrote: post #340
csomar wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 never the most fun solution, but it is a solution.

Jobs. Most people don't have the luxury of working fully remotely. Areas with cheap housing are overwhelmingly geographically isolated and economically depressed, which is why the housing is cheap - local residents simply can't afford to bid up the price of housing.

A lot of people would rather struggle to make rent than raise their kids in a community with high crime, bad schools, poor healthcare, limited prospects and a general atmosphere of despair.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#585

Post by badpun »

hutzlibu wrote: post #540
beebeepka wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, why not. It's a hard, unpleasant work that is absolutely vital. It's a travesty how underpaid and underappreciated these people are

Because of demand and supply. But there are many more "shitty" sectors, that are absolutely vital and underpaid. That showed quite nice at the pandemic, where vital workers got excemptions from the lockdown. Those vital workers were mostly all the low paying jobs. I think that got some people thinking, at least for some minutes about the absurdity of the status quo. So I am all for paying them all more and for exampl…

> Suggestions on how to actually change it?

In US cities with highest costs of living, the laws of supply and demand are already fixing the issue. The lowest paid professions in there pay $20 per hour or more, so basically twice than in areas with low CoL.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#586

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

badpun wrote: post #565
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I grew up in a village in the mountains where the closest neighbors were 500m away. At age 14, just before moving, I counted half a dozen attractive females of the same age You are completely moving the goalposts. Read my comment again please. I was talking about the dating market of twenty and thirty year olds, not that of school teenagers. How's the dating scene of single twenty to thirty year olds in your village…

If the costs of living in large cities keep rising, maybe the young will learn that the "educated, big city living" will just be a trap and wasted years for a lot of them, and will decide to for a life in their local areas instead? There's plenty of Univerisities in small, local cities as well, so it doesn't mean being condemned to becoming a chimney sweep as well.

That's very true but there are two problems:

1. Most young aren't so lucky to be born in a small developed city with good universities, jobs and high quality of life, so they can stick around their families, which is why they leave. Look at most of Southern and Eastern Europe.

2. For your idea to work we need to have companies also creating jobs in smaller cities, but the reverse is happening: most companies now exclusively move to the biggest cities where the larges worker pools already are (Berlin, London, Amsterdam, etc) creating a snowball effect. Small cities also have jobs, but they tend to be terrible, body-shop style that suck to work for.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#587

Post by nlitened »

parker_mountain wrote: post #405
watrami wrote: post #103

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…

American here, in silicon valley. I'm actually a bay area native, and the only reason I'm able to stay close to my parents is that I make a "tech salary". I bought a moderately sized condo, and it was a huge stretch at the time when I bought it - now that I've advanced my career, it's not such a huge load. But, the fact that, at $110k a year, a two bedroom (yet small) place was a huge stress. And that was not even in…

> Something is broken when it's a financial pressure for someone in the top 10% of income to live within an hour drive of where they want to be

That’s a place where probably billion other people would love to be.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#588

Post by lalaland1125 »

Bellend wrote: post #155
watrami wrote: post #103

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…

I believe we are in a time where everyone is milking the 90s-20s real estate bubble and no one wants to be first to fold. Internationally, not just on a per country basis. As soon as say, French real estate collapses (or UK or USA or Germany etc), the whole rotten castle of cards will fold as well. If it doesn't you can enjoy the expensive property, but you won't be eating farmed foods, won't be in a clean environmen…

> everyone is milking the 90s-20s real estate bubble

Look at the market statistics. It's not a bubble at all. Demand is legitimately very high and supply is very low (just look at the very low vacancy statistics).

We have banned the construction of most new housing and this is the natural result.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#589

Post by ClumsyPilot »

badpun wrote: post #542
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we added up all of the wages of everyone on the planet and redistributed them equally, the first worlder would be much much poorer than where they started off This point of 'most people only want what benefits them' is very shallow. You've set up the question for failure. You limited comparison to income, and to income just among labour class. If you actually setup the question correctly, you might find the resu…

> The leading countries to rise in the last 30 years, China and Singapore, have active, competent and interventionist governments. Can't wait for the China do collapse under its own mismanagement and the memes like the above can finally die off.

I've been hearing this about both China and EU for the past 20 years. It seens you'll be waiting a while.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#590

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

dogma1138 wrote: post #244
jjoonathan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We agree that suppressed supply is the problem. You think the suppression is caused by clueless and misguided poor people. I think the suppression is caused by clued-in rich people pursuing enormous financial malincentives. Do you disagree that the malincentives exist? Or do you think that clueless poor people are a more effective political bloc than clued-in rich people pursuing enormous financial malincentives?

You are still missing the point, rent controls restrict supply and even worse mobility they make the market far less efficient and more expensive for the majority of players under pretty much any rent control system.

>rent controls restrict supply and even worse mobility

Exactly this. People love having rent control until they want to change apartment to upsize, downsize or move, and then realize they can't because the market is FUBAR.

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