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Priced out of home ownership

bbc.co.uk

21–30 of 1001 posts

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#21

Society in UK, USA, AUS,Canada has been destroyed by housing as a financial instrument instead of……. housing. And politicians love every dollar of price increase. There’s the homeowners and the renters/serfs and nothing in between. Dead society, nothing to aim for or live for.

Housing is naturally a valuable thing. From birds with nests, to dogs and lions marking their territory. it’s something valuable that you self custody.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#22

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.

They don't have to look like traditional trailer parks -- at least not the kind that I've seen. But besides that, they will be cheaper. That's the point.

How much of the cost of housing is construction vs land costs, utility hookups, developer profit and permits? Tiny houses are relatively energy inefficient (a lot of wall surface for the living space), inefficient in land usage and very expensive per square meter. And they are not suited for families with children. I wonder if these trade offs are worth it against building a reasonably sized prefab home.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#23

Society in UK, USA, AUS,Canada has been destroyed by housing as a financial instrument instead of……. housing. And politicians love every dollar of price increase. There’s the homeowners and the renters/serfs and nothing in between. Dead society, nothing to aim for or live for.

Politicians love every dollar?

Regular people own the overwhelming majority of homes, and they love every dollar of increase.

The finger pointing at corporations or politicians is totally misguided. It's the locals who collectively are invested in their homes and collectively (through the votes they cast) create the disastrous situation we are in.

Even the most bleeding heart liberal is all about "protecting the character of our neighborhood". Just look at San Francisco.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#24
post #11

I always assumed when the baby boomers retired there would be a flood of big family houses coming up for sale. I see it in my parents that they're pretty comfortable staying in the family house as long as possible, I'm happy with this. It is made a lot easier by the fact that prices keep going up so staying in a house that is oversized financially is rewarding. I'd like to think it'll all come to and end one day as t…

> I always assumed when the baby boomers retired there would be a flood of big family houses coming up for sale.

Here in Munich, they indeed are... and wherever possible, they and their often beautiful gardens get torn down, and the entire plot gets "densified" by creating as much indoor space as possible. What was one house for one family is now at least 6-8 apartments for DINKs, often built in shoddy quality with corners cut everywhere but priced and sold at record amounts (that still get paid because all the tech and car bros massively distort the wage market).

On one side, it's positive because the lack of housing is absurd.

On the other side, none of the surrounding infrastructure was built with that density in mind. Parking overflows everywhere because you physically (slope angle vs lot size) can't create enough garage spaces, traffic itself is getting more and more dangerous as the small streets have been built as tiny veins but now have to carry 2-3x the traffic load, public transport can't handle it as well, doctors/kindergartens/schools are on the verge of collapse, the grid operator doesn't allow PV or EV installation because all the density increase would first require a complete overhaul of the last mile distribution grid. And on top of that, biodiversity has taken a visible hit as all the trees and bushes getting ripped out and replaced by steel eyesores and yards being replaced by gravel so that the hipsters don't have to bother with mowing a lawn don't support insect life, so the birds vanish as well. No free-roaming cats any more either thanks to traffic.

Seriously, screw urbanization and gentrification. We absolutely need to revitalize rural areas again.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#25
post #11

I always assumed when the baby boomers retired there would be a flood of big family houses coming up for sale. I see it in my parents that they're pretty comfortable staying in the family house as long as possible, I'm happy with this. It is made a lot easier by the fact that prices keep going up so staying in a house that is oversized financially is rewarding. I'd like to think it'll all come to and end one day as t…

[flagged]

The old vote, and the young don’t. The Tories are the natural party of seniors in any case.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to look like traditional trailer parks -- at least not the kind that I've seen. But besides that, they will be cheaper. That's the point.

How much of the cost of housing is construction vs land costs, utility hookups, developer profit and permits? Tiny houses are relatively energy inefficient (a lot of wall surface for the living space), inefficient in land usage and very expensive per square meter. And they are not suited for families with children. I wonder if these trade offs are worth it against building a reasonably sized prefab home.

One must also ask in addition to your pertinent questions, can the market bear putting the same price on a tiny house as it can with a large house? It's about perceived value. It's the same as anything "wedding". The price will go up just because the word "wedding" is there: wedding photography, wedding invitations, wedding catering.

With tiny houses, you're going to get the opposite effect of the price being lower because if of the "tiny" aspect.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#27
post #11

I always assumed when the baby boomers retired there would be a flood of big family houses coming up for sale. I see it in my parents that they're pretty comfortable staying in the family house as long as possible, I'm happy with this. It is made a lot easier by the fact that prices keep going up so staying in a house that is oversized financially is rewarding. I'd like to think it'll all come to and end one day as t…

> I always assumed when the baby boomers retired there would be a flood of big family houses coming up for sale. Here in Munich, they indeed are... and wherever possible, they and their often beautiful gardens get torn down, and the entire plot gets "densified" by creating as much indoor space as possible. What was one house for one family is now at least 6-8 apartments for DINKs, often built in shoddy quality with c…

> “Seriously, screw urbanization and gentrification. We absolutely need to revitalize rural areas again.”

Covid-19 was effectively a massive experiment to test whether people want that, and turns out they didn’t.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#28
post #11

I always assumed when the baby boomers retired there would be a flood of big family houses coming up for sale. I see it in my parents that they're pretty comfortable staying in the family house as long as possible, I'm happy with this. It is made a lot easier by the fact that prices keep going up so staying in a house that is oversized financially is rewarding. I'd like to think it'll all come to and end one day as t…

[flagged]

I think the “latest fad” you’re using as outrage bait here is from ~8 years ago.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to look like traditional trailer parks -- at least not the kind that I've seen. But besides that, they will be cheaper. That's the point.

How much of the cost of housing is construction vs land costs, utility hookups, developer profit and permits? Tiny houses are relatively energy inefficient (a lot of wall surface for the living space), inefficient in land usage and very expensive per square meter. And they are not suited for families with children. I wonder if these trade offs are worth it against building a reasonably sized prefab home.

What the US needs is some expectation adjustment. If you make all your houses and lots 2x smaller suddenly you can fit four times as many people in the same space.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#30

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,…

>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.
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