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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

#641

Post by LegitShady »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #579
LegitShady wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FHSA allows people who have excess money beyond what they can save in a TFSA to save tax money on income put aside for the specific purpose of saving to buy a first house, but on much worse terms than a TFSA. If you've maxed out your TFSA and have room to save in the HFSA, great, but its got a time limit and most people will have room in their TFSA already.

Sure, if the parent had said that the government was ineffective in its attempts to fix the problem I would have agreed. But they said they were doing nothing, and it was just so ironic the comment came on the day one of several attempts the government has made to address the problem.

ah I see, completely ineffectual tax breaks for already wealthy is different from nothing, so you're going to nitpick instead of trying to communicate a position.

I think I've seen where you're coming from, and I'm uninterested in any more of your opinion.

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

#642

Post by LegitShady »

dpbriggs wrote: post #564
LegitShady wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure but the house isn't income, while $200k is income and enough to buy a house in some parts of this country every 3-5 years, if spent judiciously. It's so far out the norm of normal income that anyone earning $200k in canada and complaining about the housing situation isn't in touch with what normal people in canada are experiencing and their complaints are ridiculous. It's like a CEO yelling that you don't know h…

While that income sounds like a lot it doesn't stretch to buying a home every 3-5 years. Are you taking about getting a mortgage? I make more than that but it's unrealistic I'll be owning a fully paid off house in 3-5 years. I could get a mortgage and purchase a house in that timeframe. After taxes, high COL, sky-high rent, and retirement savings there's maybe a deposit in there.

the average household income in canada is ~$75k. $200k is a lot more "then maybe there's a deposit there". That's paying off a mortgage in record time if thats the priority money. Everyone in canada who is struggling is paying taxes, col, rent, and retirement savings, or they don't even get retirement savings.

You're out to lunch and out of touch.

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

#643

Post by jonp888 »

ricardobayes wrote: post #422
tannhaeuser wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it's not just Munich. Every city in Germany has this problem. That's nonsense. Larger Munich is the most expensive place to live in Germany (except for the island of Sylt), and has been for many years, but is still nowhere near London, NYC, or SF. In contrast, you can purchase entire houses in abandoned (but well connected) places in east Germany for as little as 10k EUR.

Why is the area around Dresden so affordable compared to others? I've seen ready to move in single family houses for 70k.

The openly racist, climate change denying, far right Alternative for Deutschland party won almost all districts in the last federal elections. It was the launching pad of the anti- Islam PEGIDA movement, and had the lowest covid vaccination levels and consequently the districts with the highest number of cases.

The economy isn't great either. Geographically it's kind of a dead end, and transport links are fairly poor, so few companies want to locate there.

Would you want to live there?

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

#644

Post by b112 »

tptacek wrote: post #158
b112 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More Hondurans end up in Texas than in California As a Canuck, immediately I thought "But Texans will shoot criminals". True or not, the belief is there for many. That does have some power. maybe.

No, it doesn't.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/04/01/truck-theft-ends-...

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

#645

Post by slaw »

jjav wrote: post #624
slaw wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point me to these plenty cheap areas? I work remotely and may consider moving there.

> Could you point me to these plenty cheap areas? I work remotely and may consider moving there. They are all over. Head over to zillow/redfin (or the corresponding real estate site for your region) to see them. They won't be in the hip city center everyone wants, but choices are plentiful if one is willing to sacrifice a few wishlist items. "Cheap" is of course relative the the region/country so actual numbers will…

200k is not cheap.

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

#646

Post by brailsafe »

sunsunsunsun wrote: post #337
brailsafe wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Vancouver working remotely for an EU/US company because I couldn't get anything here. At $100k CAD, my partner and I wouldn't be able to afford a modest upgrade to a 1 bedroom condo... anywhere in the city (from a tiny basement studio) without significantly increasing our take home. The place I just visited would require $4000/m after a 20% down payment (which I don't have). If I double my savings in the next…

I felt your pain. I live in Victoria and also make $100k but can't afford much more than a 1 bed without destroying our savings goals. Unfortunately my current job is hybrid and they won't let me go full remote. We plan to leave as soon as I find a new opportunity - despite loving living here by every other metric.

Victoria has an even more scarce rental market from what I understand too. It's one of those things that I hope will make it harder to keep people around if salaries don't go higher at an average company. $100k is great for a huge portion of everyday niceties and even some larger things—I didn't need to worry to much that a decent coffee grinder would damage me too much, or a trip—but not that one thing.

I'd also not necessarily describe it as pain, as much as like some hypothetical existential crisis. I'm not looking to buy a place at this moment, but when I consider the prospect of what happens if our landlords sell (giant house in east van), there aren't too mamy viable options.

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

#647

Post by brailsafe »

reducesuffering wrote: post #272
remote_phone wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong. Vancouver was never “affordable”. My family moved to Vancouver in the mid-80s and it was by far the most expensive place in Canada. Prices had already climbed rapidly by the time we got there and prices never crashed for 40 years. At worst, it was flat for a few years. Our 1000 sqft house in the West End was almost 300k in the mid-80s and our family was struggling financially but we were in the best sc…

Vancouver is not a mystery. Geographically constrained in 3 directions. Only decent-weather locale for Canadians (US has hundreds of release valves for people that get sick of prices in SF / NYC / etc.) Large rich Chinese immigration.

For Vancouver's geography to be a legitimate concern, we would have needed to maximize what we could do with the existing land, and it's very, very far from that.

I would argue the latter 2 arguments have some bearing, but imo it's more about cheap capital coming in from many directions including locally for so long in combination with artificially choked and inflated development processes for decades. For example, there's a parking lot with an old grocery store sitting there at the busiest transit hub in the U.S and Canada. The proposal to redevelop the site has been repeatedly stalled every year for what is now 6-7 years, meanwhile only the most meager development projects have gone forward in the same neighborhood. That said, because of the other reasons, as soon as it hypothetically went up, all of the units would be purchased by speculators because they'd be wildly out of reach for any regular person anyway, due to decades of the other crap.

I went to an open house yesterday for a modest one bedroom with no interesting view or extravagant features, listed at $750k. When I remarked that the cost of the mortgage alone would be a multiple of 2.5 - 3x our current all-in expenses, he simply suggested that in 5 years I can just move out and hang on to it, renting it out to someone and keeping another unit off the market.

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

#648

Post by brailsafe »

remote_phone wrote: post #168
jmspring wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the mid/late 90s Vancouver was affordable and a lot of flats being built. It was still more expensive that the suburbs, etc. but still cheaper than metros across the border. Sometime in the 2000s money started flowing in and those flats I was seeing in place like Kits for $150-$200k were suddenly going up a lot. Rents were also escalating. A lot seemed to be fueled by foreign money. I was looking at relocatin…

This is wrong. Vancouver was never “affordable”. My family moved to Vancouver in the mid-80s and it was by far the most expensive place in Canada. Prices had already climbed rapidly by the time we got there and prices never crashed for 40 years. At worst, it was flat for a few years. Our 1000 sqft house in the West End was almost 300k in the mid-80s and our family was struggling financially but we were in the best sc…

That's more or less true, it just wasn't so severe I think at a point. It was out of reach for my poor prairie single parent family, but that was for a giant single family house. If the circumstances prevailed in 2015 when I moved here, I definitely could have afforded even a pretty nice 1 bedroom condo outside of downtown.

Regarding east van where I live now, I went to an open house yesterday on commercial drive that was 1 bedroom for $750k facing west and looking at buildings that have been there at 1 story since maybe the 50s.

The gap is just so enormous, considering we rent a studio basement down the street for $1500 total.

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

#649

Post by belorn »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #494
rullelito wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think you get the same type of immigrant to New Zealand as Sweden? Please..

Immigrants are the same all over: less cultured, less educated and poorer than the host country. Otherwise they wouldn't immigrate.

For a very long time the majority of immigration to Sweden was from nearby Scandinavian countries. There is a lot of people moving between the borders simply because they got family on both sides, or get a job opportunity that happens to be on one side of a line on a map and well within driving distance.

People in Sweden however don't generally think of those people as immigrants, and their social economic status is average or maybe even a bit higher than average. Sweden also has about equal amount of swedes doing the same so the end result on the haves and the have-nots is basically static for that form of immigration.

Naturally, when people discuss immigration and immigration politics, immigration and emigration between Scandinavian countries are not part of the discussion and are generally exempted through specific treaties between the countries.

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

#650

Post by jmspring »

remote_phone wrote: post #168
jmspring wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the mid/late 90s Vancouver was affordable and a lot of flats being built. It was still more expensive that the suburbs, etc. but still cheaper than metros across the border. Sometime in the 2000s money started flowing in and those flats I was seeing in place like Kits for $150-$200k were suddenly going up a lot. Rents were also escalating. A lot seemed to be fueled by foreign money. I was looking at relocatin…

This is wrong. Vancouver was never “affordable”. My family moved to Vancouver in the mid-80s and it was by far the most expensive place in Canada. Prices had already climbed rapidly by the time we got there and prices never crashed for 40 years. At worst, it was flat for a few years. Our 1000 sqft house in the West End was almost 300k in the mid-80s and our family was struggling financially but we were in the best sc…

Affordable from a west coast US salary. Vancouver has always made me shake my head re: tech salaries. It has capable engineers but pays a fraction from across the border. Back in the 90s/early 2000s, there was a lot of tech but it seemed more like a media center.
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