Im +30 in Spain and I thought the demographic winter would land some great opportunities to buy a home. But looking into some deserted municipalities everything keeps being expensive, despite the extremely low demand (and I know this because I scrape the listings and track em). If I want to buy a shitty house that needs restoration I'm investing over 200k. Not to mention that the land registry holds values way above…
> Yeah they know that their property is falling apart but they won't buy under $value because they bought it at that price or similar reasonings. That sounds like part of a chain of dominos to me. I'd imagine given time this would be less common.
1-Euro Houses
141–150 of 196 posts
Re: 1-Euro Houses
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I know about those. Robert Shiller was behind this project, in his mind many mortgages should be bundled with a put option on such an index. I agree. Needles to say his idea didn't catch on. Here I was thinking about shorting specific homes, those for which one of the parent comments implied that their value is substantially lower than the current asking prices. It's a very futuristic idea, though not entirely i…
Interesting idea! Who would take the other (long) side of the trade? Why would someone who thinks housing prices are going up not just buy a house outright?
The only fuzzy part in this scheme is when does the short seller finally get paid. It would probably require some kind of a foreclosure on the property (otherwise the property owner would have to lock up a significant amount of some other collateral), putting a cap on the short sale profits.
This is kind of how reverse mortgages work. There the bank (or some other financial company) plays the role of the short seller, while the retiree is the long. The short side payout happens at death.
Re: 1-Euro Houses
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of free space! Look at how relatively sparsely populated the area around Berlin is: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Pop_dens... Germany has a very low fertility rate & even immigration isn't enough to make the population grow more than very slowly so if a lot of people moved westwards and into the cities it means a lot of people moved out of the east and the country side. Also almost the enti…
Is population stagnation a problem across Europe? Why not relax immigration requirements? I’m not an expert, but every time I’ve looked getting into Europe seems ridiculously hard. You basically have to have a company agree to employ you and sponsor your visa application, which (as I understand) entails proving why the company can’t find an E.U. resident to do the same job. Plus the salaries are quite a lot lower tha…
And Germany actually has among the highest amount of immigration in the world so not sure why you think they don't let people in. In my experience it is actually easier to move here than to the US (I'm an immigrant).
The places where it's a problem are those that people leave, like Bulgaria and Romania. There are basically enough "cheap" immigrants available from poorer European countries that the wealthy ones don't need to also additionally increase the rate of immigration from outside Europe.
Re: 1-Euro Houses
#144Im +30 in Spain and I thought the demographic winter would land some great opportunities to buy a home. But looking into some deserted municipalities everything keeps being expensive, despite the extremely low demand (and I know this because I scrape the listings and track em). If I want to buy a shitty house that needs restoration I'm investing over 200k. Not to mention that the land registry holds values way above…
So property taxes aren't high enough to encourage them to rent or sell out the properties?
Re: 1-Euro Houses
#145building tiny homes surrounded by an edible landscape and reselling it could be my next hobby-career. its the stuff of day dreams.
having said that..it would depend on how it would be taxed. europe? i am going to go with steep.
Re: 1-Euro Houses
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
My feeling is that the pandemic and impending economic collapse will change that. Remember when the 2008 crisis hit, no one was buying but no one was renting either. And a lot of banks with real estate on their books just let it sit there (where it sits today). Once a the credit default domino chain starts to fall, people and organization will need to get liquid. The first stage will see some people jump in on pent-u…
If banks let real estate sit on their books, why did the real estate market crash? I remember seeing whole neighborhoods of new homes in Las Vegas going for $100K just to move them.
Re: 1-Euro Houses
#147Im +30 in Spain and I thought the demographic winter would land some great opportunities to buy a home. But looking into some deserted municipalities everything keeps being expensive, despite the extremely low demand (and I know this because I scrape the listings and track em). If I want to buy a shitty house that needs restoration I'm investing over 200k. Not to mention that the land registry holds values way above…
Re: 1-Euro Houses
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Over the past 30 years buy-to-let has fundamentally changed the housing market to the point where I honestly don't believe there'll ever be a housing market crash again. Rich people will buy up all the available housing stock to rent out (or to AirBnB) if there's a small price drop. That will stop there ever being a big price drop. Barring a sea change in housing policy that enables massive amounts of new houses to b…
"housing policy that enables massive amounts of new houses to be built" I think you mean "new homes". I don't think there's anywhere in the US with a housing crisis is due to new houses not being allowed. It's usually due to the difficulty in tearing down houses (and low-density apartments) and building higher density apartments. This may seem pedantic, but in these discussions the distinction is important. In almost…
Re: 1-Euro Houses
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Add to this the fact that governments (at least in the US, and in many other countries) have made it clear that housing won't be allowed to fall. This combined with money printing means the price is almost guaranteed to rise. The reason is that for most homeowners their home equity is the majority of their savings, and homeowners vote in higher proportion than renters (on average). Any politician that allows home val…
> There is one way out of the housing price trap: telework plus ubiquitous broadband via things like 5G and Starlink. I don’t buy that. People don’t like to live in cities primarily because of jobs, but because living in cities is fun. People like to be close to other people, exchange with others and their community. Living in a small town sounds depressing to me, no matter how fast the internet connection might be.…
Re: 1-Euro Houses
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
"housing policy that enables massive amounts of new houses to be built" I think you mean "new homes". I don't think there's anywhere in the US with a housing crisis is due to new houses not being allowed. It's usually due to the difficulty in tearing down houses (and low-density apartments) and building higher density apartments. This may seem pedantic, but in these discussions the distinction is important. In almost…
I'm not sure what distinction you're getting at? I'm in Somerville Massachusetts, houses are very expensive, and the land is all built out. If you tore down a house, you would not be able to build as large a house in its place, in almost all circumstances. You definitely couldn't build a bigger one. What are you trying to get at with "new houses" versus "new homes"?