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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

#181

Post by tmnvix »

brap wrote: post #4

It always comes down to we don’t build houses fast enough. Why?

It's not so simple in my opinion.

Where I live the ratio of dwellings to households has increased during the three decade long property price boom.

The most significant cause in my opinion is the financialisation of housing, fueled by three decades of ever decreasing interest rates allowing those with capital to use leverage to accumulate more (often removing them from the stock of permanent housing).

Higher interest rates are the catalyst that solves this problem.

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

#182

Post by tmnvix »

mrkeen wrote: post #9
brap wrote: post #4

It always comes down to we don’t build houses fast enough. Why?

Because it's the explanation that doesn't require the rich and powerful to change their behaviour.

Yep. The shortage is overblown. Just look at past crashes (e.g. Ireland, Spain, etc). The crashes weren't caused by oversupply of housing, but a credit shortage. After the crash the so-called 'shortage' magically disappeared and people stopped talking about it (until the next boom).

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

#183

Post by const_cast »

graemep wrote: post #31
nly wrote: post #6

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…

> 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.

This is the problem with housing in general. Everywhere housing becomes an investment we see rampant NIMBY-ism and self-destructive local legislation.

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

#184

Post by const_cast »

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…

My understanding of human geography and population pyramids is that it's the opposite - when a nation is developing but not developed, birth rates are the highest. Developed nations have lower birth rate.

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

#185

Post by milesrout »

bendigedig wrote: post #137
milesrout wrote: post #57

You don't have to wait 100 years for a home, though. You might need to wait 100 years for a free home. You can buy one straight away or rent one.

Free home? What are you on about? You still have to pay rent in social housing.

Heavily subsidised rent

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

#186

Post by Jensson »

tarkin2 wrote: post #138
floydnoel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but which group is more active in voting and politics?

I would assume home owners are more likely to vote. But even with a lower voter turn out, there could still be more voting renters. A sibling post has stats from 15 years ago but a lot has changed since then. My gut feeling is that more people are struggling to buy than to pay back mortgages but I have no stats to back that up.

> But even with a lower voter turn out, there could still be more voting renters.

Almost every country has more home owners than renters, so no. In USA its 65%.

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

#187

Post by Jensson »

adammarples wrote: post #132
tareqak wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Mainstream media made fun of China for building “ghost cities” in the middle of nowhere. Now, those cities are full of people. “Chinese ghost cities are finally stirring to life” https://norcalapa.org/2021/09/chinese-ghost-cities-are-final... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/chinese-g... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underoccupied_developments_in_... First Edit: remov…

"Now", it is 2025, not 2021, and there are one billion empty apartments in China, and the local government selling land to developers magic money tree ponzi scheme is running out of road.

> there are one billion empty apartments in China

I don't believe that, a billion is a lot.

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

#188

Post by globular-toast »

thisisnotauser wrote: post #62
globular-toast wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If houses ever return to good affordability I'm screwed. Uhh, why? Unless you were planning on selling up and spending it all on a cruise or something house prices are immaterial to home owners. > I have to refinance every 5 years, because that's the game in the UK, so if rates spike I'm also screwed. This is the real problem. It's partly our fault, of course, for agreeing to a mortgage which we couldn't afford if…

Housing is a huge cut of your salary. If housing were affordable, that money could be saved for retirement. Instead, it's paid toward a mortgage by necessity. So there is little room for savings other than hoping the house sells when you retire.

It doesn't have to be. You could live in a small place in a shit area miles from anything. But most people choose to allocate a large amount of their income to housing. This is what sets the pricing for housing in the good areas.

In other words, housing will always be a huge chunk of your income because it's hugely important. The only way it could be less is if it stopped mattering where you live. Then housing would be essentially a commodity and priced accordingly.

It's important to realise that money is an abstraction that we use to do trade, but it's not trade itself. Pricing is a reflection of market forces. You can't just magically change the price of housing and suddenly have more of everything else with no compromises. You have to change the market.

People always say "more housing*, but that's incredibly naive. More housing in the UK means tiny plots of land crammed in next to a dual carriageway in the middle of nowhere. People don't want to live there, but there's no choice. As long as there's inequality there will be high house prices. Turning housing into a commodity such that you can allocate only a small part of your income to it would take a lot more fundamental changes towards equality like vastly improved public transport, decentralisation of business, turning the most beautiful areas into national parks instead of estates owned by the rich etc.

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

#189

Post by bendigedig »

milesrout wrote: post #185
bendigedig wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free home? What are you on about? You still have to pay rent in social housing.

Heavily subsidised rent

Not necessarily, it depends where you live.

Remember that market rents are higher than they need to be due to the artificial scarcity imposed by a NIMBY-friendly planning system and the inaction of successive Governments who have chosen to look the other way.

And who would do the cleaning and serve you coffee if social housing didn't exist? It might cost you a lot more.

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

#190

Post by fc417fc802 »

nly wrote: post #162
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which are for a lot of people their only form of savings? It's fake savings unless you are speculating on properties. Most people only own the place they actually live in and only resell to buy another place. A general property market crash doesn't affect the value of your house compared to other house so it's mostly neutral in this regard. Of course people who borrowed before the crash will be in debt for longer t…

It's not neutral if you've borrowed to buy the home... If you're in negative or reduced equity your mortgage costs can increase dramatically when you refinance. This alone can easily cripple a large % of the population and tank the consumer economy

Why would you refinance if you're underwater? Wouldn't you walk away from the property in most cases?

Of course that doesn't eliminate the economic impact. It just shifts it elsewhere.

An decent case can probably be made for the government to take on such loans and offer some scheme to forgive the difference if certain criteria are met.

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