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Priced out of home ownership

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Priced out of home ownership

#191

Post by cedws »

DataDaoDe wrote: post #7

For those interested, Gary Stevenson has an interesting take on what is causing this, even though his view is focused on the UK market: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNUNR2NZvFM

Something about Gary Stevenson doesn't feel right. Although what he says generally sounds good, all of his videos contain the exact same rhetoric about blaming problems on wealthy people. And yes, he says he's an inequality economist so it makes sense that he would say this, so why not show the numbers and data to back up his claims? He talks for 10-20 mins seemingly pulling his theories out of thin air. In that very video you linked he claims he saw house prices rising as a result of COVID while all the other economists were blind to it... uh no? He doesn't use the kind of vocabulary I would expect from somebody who has deep knowledge of the subject either.

What is he getting out of making these videos other than playing the populist game? Has he actually been verified to ever have been "Citi's top trader"?

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#192

Post by FireBeyond »

lucidguppy wrote: post #12
vouaobrasil wrote: post #2

Where possible, states should build more tiny house communities, or have land where putting up a tiny house is legal and pain-free. There should also be a law prohibiting a person from owning more than one of them, except for temporary periods of moving out of one and into another. (The same should hold for regular houses, too.) Effectively, land is a different sort of commodity than most others: it is truly finite,…

How about developing the "missing middle" in urban development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing Efficient and healthy land use for housing was solved in the 1900s - we don't need tiny homes.

In my city they looked at that. My city is not one of the most expensive in the country (upper middle?), but it has been generally near the top of the "biggest YoY increases in home values" over the last decade of so.

All sorts of feasibility studies. Options.

And then out came the NIMBYs. "My grandkids play in the street and I'm scared they won't be able to anymore", "there's going to be cars parked everywhere on the street and we won't be able to find parking" (uh, you have driveways and garages, no?)

"What's this going to do to our property values?" This was the kicker. "Well the most conservative of our studies showed that it looks like we'd go from 11% YoY value increases to 8-9%."

Wow. You would have thought the city was pouring water in everyone's gas tanks, or assaulting their grandmothers.

"HELL NO. I have a right to double digit property value increases!" Even when the lower increases would still be in the top 20% of property markets in the country (and being clear, still an 8%+ ROI), no way in hell were any of those proposals going to pass.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#193

Post by 2four2 »

RickJWagner wrote: post #179

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.

I think you mean business loans like PPP, not student loans.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#195

Post by rahimnathwani »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #15

The UK made renting property a lot less lucrative a few years ago. Something about the tax position of letting mortgaged property. That meant landlords sold their houses - which I believe was broadly the point - and thus there are fewer places to rent and the cost of renting has increased to the new point of stability. I think this probably has decreased house prices to some extent, but people are really insanely rel…

  Something about the tax position of letting mortgaged property.
EDIT: I had misremembered. Landlords can still get a tax deduction for mortgage interest, but only at the 20% rate, not at their marginal tax rate. For most landlords with mortgages, this probably halves the tax credit.

In the UK, if a private landlord receives £1000 in rent, and pays £800 in mortgage interest, they pay tax on the whole £1000, not just on the money they made.

There are reasonable arguments on both sides:

A) Why should a landlord be able to deduct mortgage interest from their income, for tax purposes, when owner-occupiers cannot?

B) Why should a landlord be unable to deduct business expenses from revenue before calculating taxable profit, when all other businesses can?

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#198

Post by jarsin »

AlexandrB wrote: post #187
omgJustTest wrote: post #46

2008 was low of the low for home values. In my view a few things have happened since: 1.hyperconsolidation in lenders 2. Real estate orgs have worked together to eliminate downward price pressures. 3. NIMBYs and generally “home ownership associations “ have created so many barriers to building & reaped the profits in their own home values. Some good news is that most populations are slowing or declining on the globe,…

Now imagine all this, but 2008 was barely a blip and not a low for home values - that's Canada.

Every time I hear someone predict the next housing crash I always ask them if they have looked at Canada and Australia. Seems to get more and more absurd but it keeps on trucking along.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#199

Post by pydry »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #15

The UK made renting property a lot less lucrative a few years ago. Something about the tax position of letting mortgaged property. That meant landlords sold their houses - which I believe was broadly the point - and thus there are fewer places to rent and the cost of renting has increased to the new point of stability. I think this probably has decreased house prices to some extent, but people are really insanely rel…

Rents have been climbing for the same steady rate they have for years now. Shrinking supply meets increasing demand.

Nothing about that has changed recently.

The recent reforms did swap out some landlords for homeowners. It didnt undo the war on affordable housing it just prevented landlords from profiting as much from it.

Which is a good thing, even if some media outlets owned by landlords do like to pretend that euthanizing the buy to let landlord is bad renters.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#200

Post by jandrewrogers »

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…

The individual States have the power to do this, you don't need to get the Federal government involved (nor would you want to). It is also much simpler at the State level, since the solutions can be tailored to local conditions and you don't need to get nearly as many people living far away to agree with you to get anything done.

Without demonstrating success at the much more achievable State level, there is no way it will work at the Federal level, even ignoring the obvious Constitutional issue.

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