171–180 of 202 posts
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Its not even that, the restrictions on new homes in the UK make it impossible to build any significant amount of housing, social or not.
Not fully, but a sizeable part of this problem is due to NIMBY-ism and power that local councillors have
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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.
Money is made up numbers. Food is real, energy is real, houses are real. The numbers are literally just numbers.
In the UK we never really got medium rise apartment blocks right. Instead we have terraces, which don't give the same housing density. The neighborhood I now live in in Portugal is mostly 7-10 storey apartment buildings, which is enough density for plenty of shops, cafes, restaurants, schools, playgrounds, public transit etc. It houses an astonishing amount of people in reasonably generous conditions (e.g. balconies…
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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.
but which group is more active in voting and politics?
Over 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…
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…
It always comes down to we don’t build houses fast enough. Why?
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> 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.
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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.
Real estate as savings or an investment only works if prices only go up forever. This is the core issue with all modern capitalist economies. They rely on infinite unbounded growth. Obviously real estate prices cannot trend to infinity or the system collapses. You are here.
It's unfortunate, and at an individual level you can't blame people that felt compelled to purchase a home (only one!). However, if people are honest with themselves, they would admit that the only reason they were willing to pay such a high price is because they expected the price to increase. In other words they were speculating. After a certain point, nobody was buying for the actual ROI (i.e. income potential or substituted rental value). Not only was this mistake made, but it was made using massive leverage in most cases.
TLDR; Nobody was willing to admit that they were making a risky investment. A risk that it may turn out that they couldn't afford to make.
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…