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Priced out of home ownership

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Priced out of home ownership

#171

Post by lwansbrough »

In my opinion, there can only be one solution to this that will come sooner or later. A great correction following simplified zoning & building legislation. Federal governments across the west need to take control of building and zoning. Planning can remain a city/state/provincial affair, but it must be done under standardized and simplified building and zoning legislation. We are wasting unfathomable economic potential on rising housing costs, rent seeking, and artificially limiting economic development in urban centres.

It is probably exceptionally challenging to manage the economic fallout from such a correction, but I believe it has to happen. I would also support draconian measures which would forcibly and retroactively destroy accrued home value to ensure we haven't extracted wealth from the younger generations. I realize this is unprecedented and probably unconstitutional, but that's my emotional response to the problem. It is plain as day: Boomers extracted the wealth out of the country and now they're extracting the wealth out of their kids. It has to be stopped.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#172

Post by contingencies »

fl0ki wrote: post #34

I'm an expat now but I'm hearing it's even worse back in Australia. [Disclaimer: Some of this may be off because I'm hearing it second-hand, not actively investigating myself, so corrections are welcome] I hear people who are already in the top 1-2% in income are told their borrowing power is only A$1M (~U$660K) while houses at all worth raising a family in cost A$3-6M. Banks don't seem to want to lend to them becaus…

Aussie with expat career, back temporarily but heading to the US shortly here. Beware - Aussie banks don't lend money to people without local income due to federal "loan serviceability criteria". Like zero dollars available.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#173

Post by khuey »

aaomidi wrote: post #159
caeril wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. My home "value" has roughly doubled in the last five years. Sounds nice, but land/home values in the area I'd like to move to has nearly tripled in the same timespan. I feel bad for renters priced out of the market, but many of us who have "enjoyed" the upside are actually deeply underwater relative to our preferences, to say nothing of the doubling of insurance premiums, and ~25% property tax hikes in the la…

Property tax shouldn’t be going up with this tbh. If everyone’s housing and land is becoming more expensive, then you need to tax smaller %s to get the same budget. To me this sounds like your city/state is just ballooning their budgets.

You don't need the same budget. You have to pay employees more to keep up with the rising cost of housing and land (or they all quit), so the budget has to go up too.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#174

Post by jeffbee »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #168
moffkalast wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The other reason this is absurd is because after the American press lost interest in making fun of Chinese "ghost cities" Chinese people moved into those cities. It's a case of Americans making fun of another country for planning ahead.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#175

Post by khuey »

esel2k wrote: post #149

I am not an economist but if we would treat house ownership something that is beneficial for the whole society (less traffic from commuters, less homeless etc) and remove the speculations/foreign investments around housing? Why not apply the following: - every house not used for primary living place is highly taxed (removing all speculative ownership) - charge foreign investors heavily (australia will do this soon) -…

None of that addresses the fundamental problem which is that there's just not enough housing. Greater Dallas builds more housing than the entire state of California.[1] Until that changes California's housing costs cannot be fixed.

[1] https://x.com/JosephPolitano/status/1794495929266983191

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#176

Post by bryanlarsen »

lwansbrough wrote: post #171

In my opinion, there can only be one solution to this that will come sooner or later. A great correction following simplified zoning & building legislation. Federal governments across the west need to take control of building and zoning. Planning can remain a city/state/provincial affair, but it must be done under standardized and simplified building and zoning legislation. We are wasting unfathomable economic potent…

Federal would require constitutional change, so it'll never happen.

But it's the right idea -- move it up the chain so that it's not a hyper-local issue. IOW, at the state level rather than city/county. This has seen some success in California: https://cayimby.org/legislation/

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#177

Post by kylehotchkiss »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #123

Why doesn't the government build and sell housing at a small profit? Here in Dubai, the largest housing construction companies are or were government owned. It's one of the ways the government can have zero income tax despite oil being less than 1% of its economy. My only thought is that it's political, and some voters don't want their houses to lose value.

The land under UAE doesn’t have dozens or even hundreds of years of plot splitting and ownership claims too, there is just an enormous advantage to how new much of the county is and a government incentivized to grow. It does help that citizens form a smaller part of the population and that it seems like they get advantageous jobs and housing to keep them happy. Hard to compare to western counties.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#178

Post by lwansbrough »

nomilk wrote: post #112

Given how abundant land is, does it imply that supply shortages are purely man-made? (e.g. policies not allowing large swaths of land to be built on). Otherwise it doesn't make sense that prices are high for a good (housing) whose primary input (land) is in great supply.

That's not really how it works as far as I understand. Their are economic epicentres, and building near them means greater productivity and economic growth. The further out you get, the lower the ROI. The problem is, many cities in the west, controlled by an aging population of "haves" who bought when houses were the price of a sack of beans, feel that they are entitled to live in the same neighbourhood they purchased in. Incumbent homeowners are blocking new development, which stifles economic growth and creates a supply shortage, driving prices up.

You got one part of it right: building more solves the housing crisis. But if you built outside cities, you're asking new homeowners (read: young people who contribute the most to economic growth) to live increasingly far away from where the economic growth happens.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#179

Post by RickJWagner »

The US government printed a bazillion dollars during covid, continues to spend wildly, and engages in practices like transfer of college debt from debtors to tax payers.

It's a complete mystery why inflation has run amuck.

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