Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
111–120 of 202 posts
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#112Earlier 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.
It's fake savings unless you are speculating on properties.
Most people only own the place they actually live in and only resell to buy another place. A general property market crash doesn't affect the value of your house compared to other house so it's mostly neutral in this regard.
Of course people who borrowed before the crash will be in debt for longer than people who bought after but that doesn't actually change their debt situation. You might say it's unfair but well, not wanting other to be better of doesn't seem like a good reason to not solve the housing crisis.
In the end the only people who trully stand to lose are multi-owners but they are a significant part of the problem in the first place so that doesn't make me sad.
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#113Earlier 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.
100%, and it’s not clear there’s any solution to that, because voters will punish anyone who tries to fix it.
The biggest reason for nigh house prices (particularly relative to incomes) is the affordability of mortgage payments as a result of low interest rates. Interest rates may have to be raised to control inflation.
It is a mistake to think of supply vs demand as "how many people want a house" vs "how many houses are there". Both supply and demand are curves against price. Interest rates shift the demand curve. As the supply curve is inelastic it has an even greater impact in the short term
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#114Over 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…
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the renters will reward any government that pushes down house prices i.e. builds more houses. And I assume there are more renters than home owners.
Renters do not want justice or fairness. They want to one day become landlords and themselves suck the blood of the young and healthy. "A slave dreams not of freedom, but of his own slaves."
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#116IMO... 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…
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its kinda funny you mention this because a lot of communist countries did pretty much this with high rise apartments. They're still there too.
Par of Khrushchev's legacy was switching away from the earlier focus on higher quality housing that largely favoured the elite in favour of throwing up cheap housing fast to alleviate the severe housing crisis. But as a result, a more enduring part of his legacy became that due to economic stagnation, a large proportion of this really poor quality housing that was indeded as a stopgap to meet desperate short-term hou…
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#118Earlier 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.
The consequences of having more kids is very different for a subsistence farmer vs an affluent urban person.
Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse
#119Earlier 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?
Germany here, I have a fixed rate for 30 years.