241–250 of 395 posts
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How?
Taxes, relax zoning laws, subsidise building of housing.
Every time it only burdens the working class; the poor just want things gifted to them; the rich get richer. A 2v1 game.
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Personal questions and you don't have to answer at all: Did your family really have the money to pay it? Where did your family get it from? Don't have to answer if you don't want to.
Yes. They sold their last house for $1.4M. They bought it for $400K 12 years ago. They've never had a job that earned them more than $100K. They have just bought something else for $1.5M which needs $200K spent to get it to how they want it (renovating bathrooms, kitchen, etc).
They are putting $200k into an asset which is already 10x+ their income? Ouch. I can't wrap my head around a financial decision like that.
Should housing be a primary vehicle for investment and the de facto way of making money? Or should it serve as a necessity and basic aspect of life?
It is not possible for housing to simultaneously be affordable and a good investment. Given it's a basic human right, I feel we shouldn't allow housing to be an investment.
New Zealand has a similar housing problem. House prices are skyrocketing and pricing out young people. A 25-30% rise in the past year has meant few people are saving fast enough to get a deposit. But two or three years ago the govt. banned overseas buyers. There is no reason to suggest the ban is not effective. It even bans non-permanent residents, so plenty of legitimate residents (work visas) can't purchase propert…
Could it be as simple as money being funneled through NZ nationals to buy up houses? I mean housing prices are up everywhere it seems, one could think there's an evil shadowy cabal of rich investors buying up properties. But, and I'm not an economist or anything here, on the other hand there's a few forces pushing average people to it; we've recovered from the housing crisis from 2008 onwards. Savings account interes…
Yes. OIO appears to have caught some but I suspect a lot gets missed.
I would expect locals can be driving up prices too but more as a reaction to what has been happening for 15 years already.
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Let us assume it is not overseas buyers - what factors are left? Is it just access to cheap credit that drives investment into the housing market all over the globe?
Why not? It seems obvious that cheap credit would drive up prices. For example people could just be bidding up to what they can pay off in about 30 years. If they simply do that, cheaper credit would rise house prices.
Should housing be a primary vehicle for investment and the de facto way of making money? Or should it serve as a necessity and basic aspect of life?
I heard a message the other day that there's 3 main vehicles of investment: stocks in companies, bonds in governments, and property (owned mostly by banks and a few rich people). I've been thinking about it ever since, particularly that money usually flows between these 3. The exponential growth required for compound interest to work is only possible in a shortage. Stocks in companies follow a contract-expand busines…
And you can give it away to someone with a promise that they give it back in the future or give you something that they produce, rather than going through philanthropy and hoping things work out. That’s why investments exist.
The stock market (after IPOs and issuances) is all speculation and detached from reality of day to day operations (except for buy backs, dividends, the stock is only worth what someone will pay for it - and some companies don’t pay dividends…).
London has similar problems. Apartment blocks that have a hundred flats, but only 5 are occupied all year round. The new ones at Battersea being a good example. The others owned by shell companies that are speculating and investing, or just plain hiding ownership and tax dodging. The UK government have made some small steps in trying to associate property with people via proceeds of crime acts, and the financial cond…
I do not think successive UK governments have had enough of a long term strategy to do this consciously (though I would love to find out it was a deliberate), but I think the Battersea / Nine Elms development is a fantastic way to exploit the surging demand into Western real estate. Tens of thousands of flats have been built almost entirely funded by foreign investment. If/once the market collapses on whatever time f…
Also, that development, and others have "poor doors" around the side or back for the non-penthouse owning riff raff to use. Another thing that's completely wrong with these kinds of developments in London.
When the fed suppresses interest rates and back stops the mortgage market, residential realestate starts to look like risk free treasuries with a ~9% yield.