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Priced out of home ownership

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Priced out of home ownership

#161

Post by orwin »

speeder wrote: post #104

I live in Portugal and here the situation is outright ridiculous. 1. There are a ridiculous amount of abandoned properties, when I walk the streets of major cities, sometimes more than half of the buildings even in expensive areas are boarded-up. 2. Meanwhile I am afraid of being homeless soon, I lost my job recently, and the unemployment benefit I can receive is literally half of my rent. Thing is, there is no "wors…

I'm sorry to recommend you that, but i have experience with homelessness. You have two temporary solutions:

- join a group of squatters (hopefully you already know someone) until you get your bearings. The less ideological ones often squat old industrial properties, or long-abandoned houses (its rough in winter, but in Portugal you should be fine). You might meet some Urbex guys, they're nice and always fine with finding squatters.

- Live in a "big enough" car. You absolutely need to rest on a completely flat surface. I knew someone who got the back seats down and put a wooden plank on it. If you're less than 1.80 and don't move on your sleep, you have a lot of choice (the diagonal is nice), else it might be a bit more expensive.

A very short-term solution is squatting with a close friend, but you shouldn't abuse it too much, it strains relationships.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#162

Post by jncfhnb »

fragmede wrote: post #156
jncfhnb wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handouts to the homeowners does not feel like the right call here

unfortunately, since they own the homes, unless you want to take them from them by force, you'll have to give them some sort of incentive to give up their homes so no matter how much you structure it, it will amount to the same thing in order to get them to move.

Build more homes

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#163

Post by speeder »

Zealotux wrote: post #142
speeder wrote: post #104

I live in Portugal and here the situation is outright ridiculous. 1. There are a ridiculous amount of abandoned properties, when I walk the streets of major cities, sometimes more than half of the buildings even in expensive areas are boarded-up. 2. Meanwhile I am afraid of being homeless soon, I lost my job recently, and the unemployment benefit I can receive is literally half of my rent. Thing is, there is no "wors…

I would expect that kind of situation to lead to a lot of squatting, how common is that in Portugal?

Instead of squatting people been sharing rent. In one infamous case a house that was shared between 20+ people burned down and killed 2 and sent 14 to hospital.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#164

Post by oooyay »

speeder wrote: post #104

I live in Portugal and here the situation is outright ridiculous. 1. There are a ridiculous amount of abandoned properties, when I walk the streets of major cities, sometimes more than half of the buildings even in expensive areas are boarded-up. 2. Meanwhile I am afraid of being homeless soon, I lost my job recently, and the unemployment benefit I can receive is literally half of my rent. Thing is, there is no "wors…

I live on a sleepy street that's half dense housing and half single family homes. Density will likely take over more than half of the street some day because the city has been relegating more dense housing to the working class areas of the city, which is where I happen to live. [1]

Of those single family homes there is one that was owner-occupied for a year when we moved in. Since, it's been locked up and has had no renters. The couple that own it own several properties across my city, which I came to know as I got to know one of the owners while they lived here. It perplexes me, and the rest of our neighborhood, how someone can float a mortgage, much less an investment mortgage, without a renter. My owner-occupied mortgage costs me somewhere around $2600/m, I can't fathom paying two with one at a higher interest rate. Apparently this situation is common around my city.

On the other hand, and a bit non-sequitur, is two homes will likely become dense housing. They're foreclosures of properties that were inhabited by meth addicts. The whole property from the building to the soil will need to be removed for various reasons. At auction the properties were purchased for the average sale price of a home of that size that had no pre-existing issues. It won't be the kind of housing people need though, if I'm a betting man; my city has plenty of SROs (single room occupancy) but they're at the wrong price point. They're now called "lofts" and "studios" with a price tag to match. What will be lost is two 50+ year old homes, and likely the ability of our street to tolerate the traffic it was designed for as another issue is the city not investing in road-building and maintenance on our street.

1: https://prp.fm/biz503-portland-building-density/

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#166

Post by pandaman »

throwaway1105q wrote: post #43
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, American houses are massive compared to what we have in Europe and often have large amounts of space around the house too. In England, row housing is quite common and that seems a good compromise between density and comfort. I live in an apartment block in Spain and it's quite a lot worse than even row housing due to noise from neighbours, lack of parking etc. It's okay for young people, but it'll be hard to ra…

I have lived in an apartment my entire life. I'm in a building with 15 floors and 5 flats on each right now. My direct neighbors have a newborn baby. I don't hear a thing, literally - I wouldn't know there are other people if I wasn't 20 meters above the ground. Don't compromise on build quality like the Spanish do, build it like the Germans, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks do - and you won't have any issues.

People living their whole life in apartments do not create nearly as much nuisance as people who moved into apartments from detached houses, where they grew up. They don't wear hard-soled shoes inside, they don't drop stuff on the floor, they don't blast music and don't even own 1500W subwoofers, or weight racks, or treadmills.

For some reason people believe that a little baby is the most noise possible and it's often used in such discussions as an evidence of complete sound-proofing of their dwellings. While people do instinctively get agitated from a child's screams the power of these screams is very low. This is why parents get baby monitors as the screams don't propagate well even between floors in a single-family house. Even adults, unless trained, can't scream nearly as loud as a 200W Bluetooth speaker. Get your neighbor upstairs to drop an empty barbell bar and see how you won't notice it. And in the US your neighbor can be dropping a 300 pounds barbell while having a party with people dancing with accompaniment of 2.5kW sound system, at 2:30 am.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#167

Post by nradov »

Filligree wrote: post #30
yourusername wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Where possible, states should build more tiny house communities, or have land where putting up a tiny house is legal and pain-free. But let's just call them what they are: Trailer parks. I just don't see how trailer parks are going to solve the problem. You may have cheap land but if you put 500 trailers on a plot you're still going to need sewage hookup, power and water for 500 homes.

What’s the issue? Utilities benefit from density; it’s much chapter to run pipes when they’re shorter per house.

Sure, it's cheaper to construct utilities on a per-unit basis in dense areas. The problem is that in medium-density areas the utilities were built out decades ago and are near capacity now. So, in order to add more housing units and residents in a neighborhood they have to rip out and replace many of the utilities. This is extremely expensive, and disruptive for existing residents.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#168

Post by micromacrofoot »

moffkalast wrote: post #78
jeffbee wrote: post #59

None of the measures mentioned in the article — lower interest rates, lower transaction fees, down payment subsidies — will lower costs. Every one of them will raise prices. You can only fix this with supply: build homes.

Doesn't work, China built entire ghost cities and they were all bought up by investment firms and the prices remained sky high. We need laws against corporate ownership of residential housing, simple as.

looking at China and applying that example to the US is absurd, these are entirely different situations

for one the "ghost towns" of China are in places no one wants to live, the complete opposite of what the US (or anyone) needs to do

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#169

Post by micromacrofoot »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #83
jncfhnb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will die though

Boomers are choosing to age in place and the youngest Boomers are in their late 50s. Do you want to wait 20 years?

life expectancy in some cities is closer to 80 now, some millennials will be buying their first houses in their 50s

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#170

Post by micromacrofoot »

jncfhnb wrote: post #137
b112 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you a replying to the correct place? No one talked about handouts, just about building more senior style housing. Seniors can pay for that, especially after selling a house.

No they’re talking about subsidizing senior living facilities

boomers with houses have no incentives to move into them
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