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Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

economist.com

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Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#291

Post by dionidium »

bena wrote: post #279
neilparikh wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is a massive strawman of the article. The core problem is that once you have a majority of the population owning an asset, they're incentivized to pull the ladder up behind them, and make it difficult for the non-landed to also buy the asset, to make the value of their asset go up. > Owning your own home is, in my view, the first step towards financial freedom. Sure, for those lucky enough to be able to…

Uh, if I buy a property, yeah, I kind of want to make it difficult for someone else to buy it. Seeing as I seek to own it long enough to live on it. There is nothing about the previous "landed" status of my neighbors that will affect the value of my property. Not to mention, if you're seeking to reside, not speculate, the "value" of the property is kinda immaterial.

Uh, if I buy a property, yeah, I kind of want to make it difficult for someone else to buy it. Seeing as I seek to own it long enough to live on it.

You can make the property you own hard to buy or easy to buy; that's obviously up to you. The problem is that landowners pass laws that make it difficult for prospective owners to buy any property or for current owners to build new units on the land they already own. This is fundamentally illegitimate, but unfortunately it's very popular.

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#292

Post by bluGill »

kiba wrote: post #223
yrgulation wrote: post #78

Property ownership is bad. Rent for life, dont leave inheritance to your children so they can rent for life too. All you need in life is clothing, entertainment, a bit of travel to distract you from your tiny living space, maybe a gadget or two and of course onsite work. Oh and praise from you manager to add meaning to your daily grind. Or so “they” say while “they” amass thousands of properties and massive fortunes…

Owning a home as a form of wealth necessarily conflict with affordability. We need to consider one or the other in order to make the best use of land, which are finite. If we choose to make having a home a priority, then we need to choose affordability both so that people are less likely to be homeless and so that people can do other thing with their money.

Not true. A house is a form of wealth because you live there. If you don't own a house you need to rent someplace. If you live in the house long enough you pay it off and live there rent free!

The above assumes that you actually pay the house off of course. Many people don't.

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#293

Post by kwere »

dslkfjg wrote: post #268
dbetteridge wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the article agrees with you? It primarily talks about the unfairness of the current system, the NIMBY problem reducing housing stock and the issue of regulations intended to curb new building reducing the stock of houses so that only the elite and existing homeowners can afford them. The section on renting/alternatives is mainly just a discussion about alternatives to the current unfair approach and some cases…

Population is going down in the developed world. The housing supply is not. If you can't afford housing where you live, then it can only be because more people are demanding housing where you live, having left where they were previously living. The solution to the "problem of home ownership" is to stop making areas undesirable places to live. Portland springs to mind but there's San Fran. NYC, L.A. but it's not just…

dont fool yourself, big capital always preferred "pragmatic" regimes over accountable democracies.

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#294

Post by verbify »

toyg wrote: post #117
verbify wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK there are lots of government policies/incentives by the Conservative Party to encourage people to buy a home. These policies can be revoked.

Let’s be honest, there is a substantial bipartisan agreement on this... possibly because most MPs of all colours are homeowners.

Not only that, but 24% of the ruling Conservative Party members of parliament are also landlords, including the housing minister.

Partly that, but also partly that in a constituency based system, there will be a bias towards those who are in the constituency longer. I have to register to vote every time I move constituencies (a fairly regular event for a renter), while those who buy only register once (and can be considered returning customers for the member of parliament).

Wealth (which is correlated with property ownership) is also correlated with voting.

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#295

Post by coldtea »

bovine3dom wrote: post #195
coldtea wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of those in theory are based on "one man one vote", so if you concentrate ownership of supply you drastically reduce the number of votes it gets. I guess they couldn't state it openly, e.g. like: "Let's bypass democratic majority rule, by taking away something people vote to protect - and not just anything, but their homes -, and consolidating its ownership to fewer rich property moguls and conglomerates" Becau…

> Let's bypass democratic majority rule, The trouble is that it is only a local majority. There are a larger number of people who would like to live in high-demand areas, but they can't vote to make that possible because they don't live there. > by taking away something people vote to protect - and not just anything, but their homes -, No-one is suggesting taking away their homes. Just making it more uneconomical to…

>The trouble is that it is only a local majority. There are a larger number of people who would like to live in high-demand areas, but they can't vote to make that possible because they don't live there.

Any majority is a "local majority".

Would it be OK for third parties to come into your community / town etc, and decide for you?

That would be a nice racket for lobbyists, too: various interests could hire majorities to move from place to place and vote to overturn what those already living there want...

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#296

Post by effie »

inglor_cz wrote: post #83
docflabby wrote: post #26

Owner occupation of property vs rent seeking ownership are 2 very different paradigms. The former results in community, and investment and a large number of beneficial economic effects. The later is simply an economic parasite Only have to look to the past to see what happened with farming. Substance farming and feudaliam was inefficient and disincentified investment.(why improve land you don't own and someone else r…

I rented out my small apartment for 6 years when I had no use for it (living elsewhere), and I never felt like an economic parasite. It is a service that comes with plenty of duties and risks, at least if you want to have a reasonable reputation. It probably depends on local market. I can imagine that in Silicon Valley, bad landlords can get away with almost anything, because the demand is so strong. Outside such eco…

It depends on who you are profiting from.

You never felt like an economic parasite. Maybe your tenants were okay financally and you didn't squeeze or kick them out. But some renters do squeeze or kick out poor people. That's where the parasite part comes in.

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#297

Post by [deleted] »

ganafagol wrote: post #153
Traster wrote: post #48

I don't think this article makes a logical argument at all. It says house ownership is bad because it gives people a vested interest in constraining the supply of housing. That's true but that's not a problem. If people didn't own houses then someone would, and that someone is still incentivized to constrain the supply. I'm also not sure that reducing home ownership is a good idea - "let's make everyone poorer" doesn…

What's astonishing is how drastically different cities in different countries look like. Take Paris or Berlin with their 5-8 floor buildings as far as the eye can see. That's a moderate density for a modern city, leaves space for green spaces, infrastructure and is so dense that everybody can sort-of affort it while not so dense that everybody is just anonomous. You can still know all neighbors in your building by na…

[deleted]

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#298

Post by verelo »

dbetteridge wrote: post #280
daemin wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also given that the median house prices are just below a million in Melbourne, and "slightly" above a million in Sydney, it makes saving up 20% for a deposit quite an endeavour. Then you need to account for all the other fees and stamp duty as well adding a few more percentage points of savings required. The big problem in Australia is that nobody really in the government wants to do things to make houses more afford…

Yeah Melbourne and Sydney are just insane, First home owners grant is great on paper but essentially covers none of the expense of buying a first home and like you said encourages the prices to increase even further. I'm on a decent salary by Australian standards and am going to be waiting at least 2 more years before I can afford a 10% deposit (have been saving for several years already at a lower rate). Just have t…

I love, as an Australian, waking up in the morning seeing the Australians all talking. During the day it’s all North Americans, but obviously this is a game of time zones.

Anyway. I just wanted to say that, and also, this issue is seemingly everywhere. I’ve been in Toronto Canada for over a decade now and prices have gone crazy for almost that entire time. When i arrived a house in the city was 350-400k, that same house today might fetch 1.6m, or if renovated I’ve seen them sell for as much as $3.8m

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#299

Post by [deleted] »

yrgulation wrote: post #78

Property ownership is bad. Rent for life, dont leave inheritance to your children so they can rent for life too. All you need in life is clothing, entertainment, a bit of travel to distract you from your tiny living space, maybe a gadget or two and of course onsite work. Oh and praise from you manager to add meaning to your daily grind. Or so “they” say while “they” amass thousands of properties and massive fortunes…

[deleted]

Re: Home ownership is the West’s biggest economic-policy mistake

#300

Post by effie »

Ekaros wrote: post #114
docflabby wrote: post #26

Owner occupation of property vs rent seeking ownership are 2 very different paradigms. The former results in community, and investment and a large number of beneficial economic effects. The later is simply an economic parasite Only have to look to the past to see what happened with farming. Substance farming and feudaliam was inefficient and disincentified investment.(why improve land you don't own and someone else r…

Owner occupation also has negative effects on economies. It limits mobility of labour. For example in many places you can't sell your property or it is exceedingly hard. Thus you are stuck with it. On other hand with renting mobility is simpler.

> in many places you can't sell your property

This is very hard to understand. Why does this happen? Do you really own your property if you can't sell it? Or do you just have a permit to use it?

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