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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

#151

Post by HDThoreaun »

serial_dev wrote: post #48
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’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…

Nordic countries have the lowest birth rates outside east asia and they rank among the top on surveys of happiness, optimism and the like. I think you need to revisit your thesis. Some cultures just dont prioritize having kids.

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

#152

Post by HDThoreaun »

logicchains wrote: post #23
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…

Governments caused this problem by fighting tooth and nail to keep immigration levels high. Without that, house prices in most developed countries would be falling now, like they are in Japan, because a decreasing population means less demand for housing.

Housing prices are falling in Japan because they have the most YIMBY zoning laws in the developed world so they actually expand their housing stock. Also because their economy is shit since they dont allow any immigration.

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

#153

Post by BlueTemplar »

ReptileMan wrote: post #122
logicchains wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments caused this problem by fighting tooth and nail to keep immigration levels high. Without that, house prices in most developed countries would be falling now, like they are in Japan, because a decreasing population means less demand for housing.

Immigration is not to blame. Gulf states have massive immigration and expat populations - multiple times that of the locals and yet they manage to manage and house them just fine.

This is a bit like saying that high nobility can afford to house its extended family : what about everyone else that did not inherit vast sums of money (hydrocarbons) ?

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

#154

Post by HDThoreaun »

thrance wrote: post #39
oytis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High density is supposed to be good isn't it? And density of European cities is still nowhere near what people have in East Asia

Paris, where I live, is three times as dense as Tokyo... The entire city is mixed-used 6 storey buildings.

tokyo has 20x as much land as tokyo. If you just counted tokyos densest 40 sq miles it would be denser than paris

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

#155

Post by antisthenes »

vidarh wrote: post #72
westmeal wrote: post #8

Earlier 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…

> 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 housing need, survived not just Khrushchev, but the Soviet Union...

The alternative was people living in sheds and 19th-century timber huts that were falling apart.

The Khrushchev apartment blocks, despite their many disadvantages, were a godsend to the ballooning (at the time) population and necessary to support the rapid urbanization without homelessness.

The HN bubble will never understand that you can't solve the housing problem with only high-quality desirable housing while still making it cheap enough for the bottom quartile to afford it.

That's not even getting into the regulation side of it and local council/town NIMBYs

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

#156

Post by oezi »

lores wrote: post #145
oezi wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I misspoke - you would not be able to remortgage and would need to repay the loan when the term expires, or be repossessed. In the UK, most people are on a 2 or 5 years fixed-rate mortgage, after which you don't need to remortgage but really want to, because the variable rate is typically a lot more expensive - so you're throwing even more money into the hole.

Ah, you are right. That would be hard if you couldn't remortgage.

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

#157

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

AstralStorm wrote: post #144
Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A case where it isn't fake savings is where people who work and live an a very expensive urban area, like london, may use the home as a retirement investment. So when they retire they move to a less expensive area and can use the difference in housing costs in the two areas as a retirement nest egg.

It's an interesting way to try to save, and assumes anyone will want and be able to buy it. And that you will be able to keep the expensive property with expensive costs. Plus compare if living in the expensive vs cheap place gets you more savings... No, it does not make sense. I can see holding a property for a child, but not as retirement.

You misunderstand I think. When you retire you sell the expensive property and then buy a less expensive property in a cheaper area. If retired, then potentially have fewer restrictions on where you live because you don't have to commute to work any more. The difference in property costs between the old and new areas is your nest egg.

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

#158

Post by ReptileMan »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #153
ReptileMan wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immigration is not to blame. Gulf states have massive immigration and expat populations - multiple times that of the locals and yet they manage to manage and house them just fine.

This is a bit like saying that high nobility can afford to house its extended family : what about everyone else that did not inherit vast sums of money (hydrocarbons) ?

It is not about having money or not. It is about how the question of immigration is treated. If poor people without UK citizenship were not allowed to live or own property in the big cities, the rents there would have been substantially lower.

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

#159

Post by margalabargala »

jodrellblank wrote: post #60
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?

If they put 1M into a house, then sell it and buy a 500k bungalow at retirement age, that unlocks 500k living/care money. If they put 1M into a house, prices fall, they sell it for 100k and buy a bungalow for 50k, that unlocks only 50k to live on. They lose decades of saving/investment money even though they can still sidestep one house to another.

I fully take your point, but I would point out, if housing prices drop 90% across the board, that would cause such an immense deflationary shock to the entire economy that $50k would go further than one would think.

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

#160

Post by harambae »

petesergeant wrote: post #68
whatever1 wrote: post #5

We had a chance to defuse the housing crisis with remote work and we blew it. Opportunities are concentrated and building in concentrated areas is inherently hard. We still don’t know how to scale mega cities fast while still operating them at capacity. So the problem will not go away anytime soon.

> We still don’t know how to scale mega cities fast while still operating them at capacity. I think Dubai is a counter-example to that.

Near-slave labor from Bangladesh has downsides too (moral ones, at the very least)
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