Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Greece, Property Is Debt

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 302 posts

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#201

Post by lifty »

akytt wrote: post #192
kkapelon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody would buy the house (apart from foreigners) because it is now linked to the tax that everybody wants to avoid. Also cash flow is a big problem for everybody so it is hard to find somebody that has 90.000 in cash and also willing to buy it. Move to where? Another city? Another country? Unemployment is everywhere in Greece. I am not even mentioning the sentimental factor of being forced to sell your parents hous…

You sell the house. You have invested your money well, your property has increased in value. Congratulations! Now pay a bit of taxes to support the people who have not been as fortunate and stop complaining. Your property taxes are actually lower than in other countries by a margin, how can they be a problem, then? Quite frankly I think the notion of actually having to pay taxes has not been there for decades and it…

Government valuation is probably higher than the actual price that the house would get on the market. Add to that all the red tape involved in selling the house.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#202

Post by cdelsolar »

kkapelon wrote: post #153
nugget wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the solution in either case be to sell the house and move somewhere you can find a job?

Nobody would buy the house (apart from foreigners) because it is now linked to the tax that everybody wants to avoid. Also cash flow is a big problem for everybody so it is hard to find somebody that has 90.000 in cash and also willing to buy it. Move to where? Another city? Another country? Unemployment is everywhere in Greece. I am not even mentioning the sentimental factor of being forced to sell your parents hous…

> I am 75 years old living with my wife who is 70 years old in the house that we bought in 1950. We are both retired farmers. Our pension is 500 euros in total. In 1950 the area we selected for our house turned out to be a popular one (in 1950 it was just an empty field).

You bought the house when you were 9 and 4 years old, respectively?

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#203

Post by [deleted] »

return0 wrote: post #198
kkapelon wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Numbers don't really say anything if you don't explain who decides them. Here are two scenarios for you 1)I live in Greece and get 400 Euros a month and barely break even. I live in a house (inherited by my parents) that would fetch probably 90.000 in the market. Government says that it really costs 300.000 euros. I get taxed for it even though I cannot really afford it. 2)I am unemployed and live with my parents. Th…

Not everyone is lucky to inherit a house. Houses are overpriced and out-of-reach for middle class incomes in Greece. We also pay exorbitant income taxes. Is that fair?

[deleted]

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#204

Post by tormeh »

crdoconnor wrote: post #191
sasvari wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I would vote for revolution - national default, totally new political leadership - and start to rebuild the country from scratch. Anything is better than decades of externally enforced austerity crippling a country's spirit as reflected in everything I read these days about Greece. Looking at the democratically elected politicians/governments in Greece in the last decades I don't know where a totally new p…

>It's not that the electorate didn't consistently vote for the political leaderships which are/were, at least partially, responsible for the situation Greece finds itself in right now. That isn't really true. In both of the previous elections they voted for parties promising to end austerity. In both cases it wasn't even as if the parties didn't want to end austerity but when they tried they were basically threatened…

>shutting off all forms of payment in the entire country indefinitely

Technically the ECB threatens to stop providing emergency credit. That Greece has made itself completely dependent on emergency liquidity from the ECB is the country's own silly fault. Are ordinary Greeks to blame? Yes, they're responsible for the people they elect.

That said I don't think the current situation makes much sense. The odds are high that the debt will never be paid back and that Greece will never have a developed-country government. There have been some promising developments recently, but I'm sure we can all agree that Greece should never have been admitted to the Eurozone and maybe not even the EU.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#205

Post by jtmcmc »

Kalium wrote: post #177
kkapelon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody would buy the house (apart from foreigners) because it is now linked to the tax that everybody wants to avoid. Also cash flow is a big problem for everybody so it is hard to find somebody that has 90.000 in cash and also willing to buy it. Move to where? Another city? Another country? Unemployment is everywhere in Greece. I am not even mentioning the sentimental factor of being forced to sell your parents hous…

> 3) I am 75 years old living with my wife who is 70 years old in the house that we bought in 1950. We are both retired farmers. Our pension is 500 euros in total. In 1950 the area we selected for our house turned out to be a popular one (in 1950 it was just an empty field). This was regarded as a major incipient problem in California at once point. So a policy to address it was put in place - Proposition 13. It caps…

yeah prop 13 was a fucking trainwreck

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#206

Post by return0 »

kkapelon wrote: post #153
nugget wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the solution in either case be to sell the house and move somewhere you can find a job?

Nobody would buy the house (apart from foreigners) because it is now linked to the tax that everybody wants to avoid. Also cash flow is a big problem for everybody so it is hard to find somebody that has 90.000 in cash and also willing to buy it. Move to where? Another city? Another country? Unemployment is everywhere in Greece. I am not even mentioning the sentimental factor of being forced to sell your parents hous…

So your house price went from EUR10000 (optimistic) to EUR 500000 (actual price 8 years ago , nowadays ~40% cheaper). You're still property-rich. why are you complaining?

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#207

Post by sasvari »

crdoconnor wrote: post #191
sasvari wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I would vote for revolution - national default, totally new political leadership - and start to rebuild the country from scratch. Anything is better than decades of externally enforced austerity crippling a country's spirit as reflected in everything I read these days about Greece. Looking at the democratically elected politicians/governments in Greece in the last decades I don't know where a totally new p…

>It's not that the electorate didn't consistently vote for the political leaderships which are/were, at least partially, responsible for the situation Greece finds itself in right now. That isn't really true. In both of the previous elections they voted for parties promising to end austerity. In both cases it wasn't even as if the parties didn't want to end austerity but when they tried they were basically threatened…

That isn't really true. In both of the previous elections they voted for parties promising to end austerity.

The Greek electorate consistently voted for PASOK or ND, before the whole thing blew up. And only after that, when no political party could promise any unsustainable presents anymore, did a shift in the political spectrum take place.

(Anecdotally: I have a lot of Greek friends, and although I/they don't agree on a lot of things about the current situation in Greece, there's one thing they agree on: that the root of the problem was the rotten political system in Greece, and that the people (meaning in that case: the generation of their parents) consistently voted for PASOK/ND besides knowing how rotten that system was.)

(As a note: I am not arguing about whether Greece is a puppet state, the situation now is only the fault of (the) EU/EC/Germany/[place devil here], or if austerity is the way out or the real problem. I leave that to people who know more about it or at least think they do.)

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#208

Post by StanislavPetrov »

nugget wrote: post #159
kkapelon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody would buy the house (apart from foreigners) because it is now linked to the tax that everybody wants to avoid. Also cash flow is a big problem for everybody so it is hard to find somebody that has 90.000 in cash and also willing to buy it. Move to where? Another city? Another country? Unemployment is everywhere in Greece. I am not even mentioning the sentimental factor of being forced to sell your parents hous…

> Nobody would buy the house If you put this hypothetical 90k euro house up for sale at a public auction tomorrow, what would it sell for? 50k? 70k? Real assets are usually sale-able, albeit perhaps for less than the owner thinks the asset is worth. > Move to where? Another city? Another country? Unemployment is everywhere in Greece. Since Greece is still in the EU, you can move to any member country right? UK, Germa…

>Personally I would vote for revolution - national default, totally new political leadership - and start to rebuild the country from scratch.

That was actually the best of Greece's bad choices, but they were strongarmed by the IMF and the ECB into not defaulting and pulling a brick out of the financial pyramid scheme upon which western society is based.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#209

Post by return0 »

charlesdm wrote: post #114
cgio wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's get facts straight. The state property tax in Greece is calculated on a nominal value far removed from market value. This means that a 300K nominal value property cannot sell today for 150K (I know, I have tried.) In practice, as the article mentions property value approaches zero as the market is incredibly shallow. Recalculate on the basis of that and then make the comparison.

Sounds like a bargain. Why shouldn't I pick up a property in Athens, right now? Are you talking about prime property locations in Athens?

Property is a bad investment in greece. Rental yields too low. Rent instead, it's dirt-cheap at the moment.

Re: In Greece, Property Is Debt

#210

Post by cududa »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #184
sliverstorm wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corrupt tax valuations are a problem, but it's practically one of the tenants of property tax that it is supposed to elbow you out if you can't afford the tax. It's not "nice" to say, but one of the purposes of property tax is to serve as a market force to encourage better usage of valuable land.

One possible fix is a law that states the government must purchase properties at the assessed price (or at something like 85% of the assessed price). Then if the tax office assesses your house at triple its actual value, well, they just handed you a giant pile of cash.

I'm sure the troica will accept this and make it a plank of the next payment traunch...
Post reply on HN