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Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

architectsjournal.co.uk

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Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#101

Post by kowabungalow »

thrance wrote: post #49
graemep wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If houses ever return to good affordability I'm screwed. Which creates a huge pool of people who are opposed to making houses more affordable.

This is the thing I never see addressed. Wouldn't fixing the housing crisis necessarily involve slashing down property values? Which are for a lot of people their only form of savings? Genuine question by the way, I would like an answer.

Yes and no.. Slashing the problem completely is no worse than not fixing it since a climb into the stratosphere also has to burst.. I.e. with a new generation rejecting traditional lifestyles.

I think the solution is to artificially build new cities with ideal logistics. Distant cities inevitably draw away housing consumers but by least influential first and are outside each others influence for NIMBYs.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#102

Post by graemep »

DrQian wrote: post #83
thrance wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the thing I never see addressed. Wouldn't fixing the housing crisis necessarily involve slashing down property values? Which are for a lot of people their only form of savings? Genuine question by the way, I would like an answer.

A sharp fall in house prices might hurt some people, although the number who would be in negative equity is probably smaller than you'd think. A quick Google says only 28% of homes are owner occupied with a mortgage, and the vast majority of those will have paid off substantial capital. I think the premise is worth questioning though: It's true that many people have most of their wealth tied up in their house. But un…

Yes, but people feel secure and better off if their house is worth more, even if they never access those savings.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#103

Post by [deleted] »

jstanley wrote: post #51
serial_dev wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d add fertility rate as another powerful metric: when people feel safe, supported, and optimistic, they have kids. So if housing, income stability, healthcare, and trust in the future are in place, you’ll usually see that reflected in birth rates. All this only makes sense in the context of large groups; at the individual level, many factors determine whether someone has children. What the puppet masters will tell…

> when people feel safe, supported, and optimistic, they have kids. I actually thought that wasn't the case. Across the entire world, people in more precarious circumstances have more kids. I don't know why.

[deleted]

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#104

Post by pakitan »

globular-toast wrote: post #27
nly wrote: post #6

Over the last 50-70 years the UK made the choice to stop building social housing and to sell off the existing stock with aggressive government subsidies. Complaining now is a bit like complaining there's no milk after you sold the dairy farm to build a casino. I read TFA but I'm not seeing anything but useless outrage that would have been better placed 20-30 years ago I became a first time property owner at 36 and it…

> If houses ever return to good affordability I'm screwed. Uhh, why? Unless you were planning on selling up and spending it all on a cruise or something house prices are immaterial to home owners. > I have to refinance every 5 years, because that's the game in the UK, so if rates spike I'm also screwed. This is the real problem. It's partly our fault, of course, for agreeing to a mortgage which we couldn't afford if…

> Uhh, why? Unless you were planning on selling up and spending it all on a cruise or something house prices are immaterial to home owners.

No, it's not immaterial. If you paid $1M for something and next year that something is worth $500K, it's a problem, regardless of whether you own it or it's mortgaged, regardless of whether you plan to sell it or live in it. You lost $500K, it's as simple as that.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#105

Post by morellt »

jstanley wrote: post #51
serial_dev wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d add fertility rate as another powerful metric: when people feel safe, supported, and optimistic, they have kids. So if housing, income stability, healthcare, and trust in the future are in place, you’ll usually see that reflected in birth rates. All this only makes sense in the context of large groups; at the individual level, many factors determine whether someone has children. What the puppet masters will tell…

> when people feel safe, supported, and optimistic, they have kids. I actually thought that wasn't the case. Across the entire world, people in more precarious circumstances have more kids. I don't know why.

less educated -> less money -> less to lose + welfare benefits don't look too bad

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#106

Post by oezi »

lores wrote: post #84
red369 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I much prefer the system the US, where you know your rate for longer. Some other countries, I think the Netherlands is one, also let you fix for longer than 5 years. But why are you, and other people in your position, screwed if the prices return to affordability? High Loan-To-Value ratio so if the prices fall, the bank would force a sale?

Let's say you buy a house at 500K with a 400K mortgage. House prices fall 50%, you owe 400K on a 250K house. Banks would repossess as the loan value can't be guaranteed by the asset. Separately, you could default on the loan if laws allow it, losing much of your wealth and making it impossible for you to get a loan for the 150K to move to another house. You could keep paying the loan, spending many years of income fo…

In which country can Banks reposess if market value falls? In Germany that risk is 100% on the bank. No reprocessing without you failing to pay anyway.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#107

Post by rwmj »

scotty79 wrote: post #54
nly wrote: post #6

Over the last 50-70 years the UK made the choice to stop building social housing and to sell off the existing stock with aggressive government subsidies. Complaining now is a bit like complaining there's no milk after you sold the dairy farm to build a casino. I read TFA but I'm not seeing anything but useless outrage that would have been better placed 20-30 years ago I became a first time property owner at 36 and it…

> I have to refinance every 5 years, because that's the game in the UK, so if rates spike I'm also screwed. Could anyone explain why is that the case? If the mortgage is till 70 then why are you forced to remake the agreement every 5 years? Can't you stick to original one?

You can keep the loan without refinancing it, but you move to what's known as the "standard variable rate" which is generally unfavourable. Most people therefore remortgage to a new "introductory" offer which will be fixed for 2, 3 or 5 years. This is expensive, time-consuming and inconvenient, like much of the UK housing system. A few years ago interest rates shot up, and some people had to stay on the SVR as fewer banks were offering new fixes.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#108

Post by graemep »

logicchains wrote: post #29
graemep wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cure worse than the disease. A aging population is economically ruinous.

Compare the growth in GDP per capita in Japan Vs the UK, the UK isn't doing particularly better in spite of all that immigration.

It looks to me that the Uk has done a lot better:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#109

Post by tryauuum »

jsk2600 wrote: post #26
bwb wrote: post #2

IMO... one of the most important benchmarks for judging the effectiveness of a government is the cost of housing. Cheap and basic housing is so key for economic well-being. I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level to try to overcome the current situation. Like persistently have a department of government just building to meet needed demands in economic centers. What oth…

>I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level As someone living in a country where it can take five or more years to get approval to build a new house and 10+ for commercial buildings due to the government bureaucracy, I'm scared by the idea of getting the government more involved. The key issue is that the government makes it very hard to build -> less housing -> expensive…

what country is that?

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#110

Post by vidarh »

brap wrote: post #4

It always comes down to we don’t build houses fast enough. Why?

Near my old house there were large areas of land that have sat empty for 20 years through successive rounds of planning permission. The reason is very simple:

You can buy land for X. You can spend Y to construct housing on it, and sell it now for Z, or you can sit on the land, safe in the knowledge that housing policy means prices will keep rising, and then you can spend Y+inflation, and sell it for Z times a factor far higher than than inflation.

If you finance X via investors or loans, this is effectively leverage. You finance Y the same way, but short term during construction, so you get a leveraged return on the growth of house prices in return for investing to buy only the land.

Couple this with constraining supply by sitting on underutilized land.

Another of the developers in the same area has still only built about one third or half of the buildings they're meant to build on another set of parcels that were first also available 20 years ago. They have no incentive to rush until investors want to exit.

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