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Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent

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Re: Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent

#281

Post by hx87 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #253
hx87 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Residential properties usually have short term leases. You have minimal incentive as a tenant to plant flowers, buy shrubs, etc. You have minimal inventive as a landlord to make the house look any more attractive than it needs to be. That's because homeownership is a norm for long-term residents here in the USA. If long term renting were as much (or more) of a norm, an average renter would experience the same incen…

Behavior of commercial tenants suggests otherwise.

Commercial persons are sociopathic (by definition, pretty much) and don't have concepts of consumption, experience, and pleasure the way real persons do.

Re: Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent

#282

Post by coldtea »

hx87 wrote: post #270
coldtea wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your future mobility to pursue jobs in other cities, becoming significantly constrained Perhaps the idea of people who haven't adopted this is that, unless they like doing so, humans should not have to live like nomads moving here and there to pursue this or that financial opportunity, but instead should be allowed to grow roots in some place, help shape it and improve it, connect with their neighbors, etc.

I'd say that 1-year roots are still roots and are every bit worth nurturing as 30-year ones. Even if I live in a place for a single year, I still want to improve it and connect with my neighbors. This idea that an experience is less worthy of cultivation because its duration is short just seems bizarre to me.

>This idea that an experience is less worthy of cultivation because its duration is short just seems bizarre to me.

The stay having an short deadline means the cultivation will be cut short too.

Heck, in 6 months most people haven't even fully unpacked their things or made new friends -- so it's not like they'll have grown roots in a year -- especially since they know that they'll be leaving in a year anyway.

Re: Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent

#283

Post by sosuke »

hx87 wrote: post #245
codemac wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the home improvements is unique to home ownership, the rest happen whether or not you're renting or owning.

Even improvements aren't unique; the last time I moved into an apartment I replaced the wall-to-wall carpet with pine boards, replaced the 50+ year old electric receptacles with GFCI outlets and stripped off the old paint and put on a new coat of primer and paint.

Woah your renting experience sounds like home ownership to me. I've never heard of that in the US that is a lot to put into a place! The max lease allowed by my last complex was 13 months.

Re: Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent

#284

Post by maxerickson »

mtw wrote: post #175
coldtea wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I see, most people use the CB, but: "Euromonitor International, a market research company, estimated that there were just 34 million French credit cards in circulation" (0.5 per person, in contrast the US has ~4 cards per person). Average credit card spending per French annually is $300 -- so quite insignificant compared to Americans (which would be almost half their annual salary if not more).

A credit card in France is not the same as a credit card in the USA or Canada. In France, a purchase paid with a VISA/Mastercard is taken directly from your checkings bank account. Yes it is called "carte de crédit" i.e. credit card but when you think about it, it is not actually credit. In Canada, paying with VISA/Mastercard is considered as credit i.e. debt. You can pay with VISA even if at the present moment, you…

In the US, it is common to use a bank card to pay for a purchase using funds in your account using a credit card network.

So the card says "Visa", the transaction runs through Visa and the money comes directly out of the bank account. It's also common to use a different payment network (debit) and to have a card that pays for the purchase on credit. Annual rates are currently 13%-23%, so the monthly interest is 1%-2%.

Re: Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent

#285

Post by pluma »

ygra wrote: post #88
adrianratnapala wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The home ownership percentage is still 43%, so not that low. Landlords seem to be the usual mix of older, upper-middle proffessionals that you see in other countries. It's just a bit more concentrated. Also there are many houses which have two or three appartments. The owner will live in one appartment, and either have a different generation of their family in the other ones, or else rent it for money.

In my home city (Rostock) a large portion of flats are owned by a single, large-ish company. A stark difference to now (Tübingen) where most flats are owned by individuals. Personally it's much easier to handle contractual stuff (which renting always entails) with a company instead of a person. At least landlords here tend to have trouble distinguishing contractual interactions (reducing rent resulting from unfixed i…

I live in two places in Germany: a city of one million people and a small town of 16,000.

In the city the apartment I live in as well as most buildings nearby are owned by a stock company that owns 42,000 apartments and is mostly (88%) owned by the city.

In the town the apartment is part of a building owned by an elderly couple living a few blocks away.

Compared with the company, dealing with the private landlord is a hassle. He's not very mobile, so every interaction basically takes place in his living room. He's also of course not doing this full-time, so he's not always up to date on all legal aspects or all of the necessary paperwork.

It's nice to see private individuals owning land and houses in principle, but from a pragmatic point of view the company is far easier to deal with. Their scale allows them to have offices with actual business hours and problems can be handled as routine whereas with an individual every little thing is of course special.

Because the company is mostly owned by the city, they also invest in long-term projects and community building -- which a private individual naturally can't do as easily.

So far I haven't had any problems with either of the two, but I'm fairly certain that having an actual conflict with the private couple would be a far greater issue than taking the company to court -- not in the least because in a small town everybody would hear about it and because they're private individuals it would be seen as personal.

Re: Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent

#286

Post by linkregister »

Spooky23 wrote: post #253
hx87 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Residential properties usually have short term leases. You have minimal incentive as a tenant to plant flowers, buy shrubs, etc. You have minimal inventive as a landlord to make the house look any more attractive than it needs to be. That's because homeownership is a norm for long-term residents here in the USA. If long term renting were as much (or more) of a norm, an average renter would experience the same incen…

Behavior of commercial tenants suggests otherwise.

Can you elaborate on this?

Every office I've ever worked in the continental U.S. was on a long term lease. The organizations I worked for spent large amounts of money to customize work spaces. It is very possible that software firms don't represent commercial tenants, so please give me more information so I can update my viewpoint.

Re: Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent

#287

Post by wott »

coldtea wrote: post #48
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never seen credit cards outside of the US/UK/Canada...

They are used all over the world, including in France. Not sure what are you talking about... Except if you live in some rural area...

We never use them as credit card in France. It took me a loooong while to understand, when I lived abroad, why the cashier would always ask me a question when I used my card to pay. In fact I understood later that they were asking if I wanted to use debit or credit. And that felt really odd to me.

And it still does. I still don't know what would have been the point to make a loan to buy a bag of potatoes, but well... Cultural differences.

Re: Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent

#288

Post by adrianlmm »

yolesaber wrote: post #241
adrianlmm wrote: post #183

The culture is so much different in México, the first thing you do when you start working is to buy a house even if rents are cheap.

What's the average house price tho

They can be as cheap as 70k or as expensive as 500k.

Re: Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent

#289

Post by zip1234 »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #230
josefresco wrote: post #31

How does Germany handle retirement? In the US, your home is seen as an investment, one that can partially fun retirement or depending on the market, pre-retirement income.

>In the US, your home is seen as an investment Historically a very poor one. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/05/... >"Capital gains have not even been positive. From 1890 to 1990, real inflation-corrected home prices were virtually unchanged." >From 1890 -- just three decades after the Civil War -- through 2012, home prices adjusted for inflation literally went nowhere. Not a single dime of r…

I mostly agree with you but the 2012 point is a very bad end point to choose for house prices. 2011-12 were the trough on housing prices after the crash.

Re: Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent

#290

Post by blibble »

camiller wrote: post #65
cm2187 wrote: post #5

So in Germany, the interest on a mortgage is non tax deductible. The article doesn't mention it but I understand that property owners are also liable for capital gain tax if they hold the property less than 10 years. I think that makes sense. There is no reason to favor individuals investing into an unproductive investment (property) over productive investments (stocks and bonds, which enable companies to raise money…

Buying stock on the open market also doesn't create any job for anyone, it just transfers wealth to the hands of the seller. Basically, unless you are investing in an IPO, the company doesn't see a dime from the ongoing trading of it's stock. So the vast majority of investors are not creating jobs by buying stock. Similarly, most bond investors are not buying new issue bonds, they are buying bonds from the current ow…

if there was no secondary market people likely wouldn't buy into the IPO, as there would be no way to get rid of the stock later

so it clearly adds value to the original seller

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