31–40 of 153 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where the hell are people "moving across the continent every few years"?
USA. Eg: Seattle has lots of out-of-state migrants, as does SFBay, Boston and NY.
Seems a bit general. Sweden is very much in debt because of the housing market. 15 years ago there were little regulation. You could get a 100 year mortgage with a variable rate and no money down. At the same time the government sold large amounts of public housing at below public market rate. Interest rates went from ~4% to ~1.5%. With no wealth or property taxes, but with tax deductions for renovations and interest…
Last time I looked at statistics Swedens debt to GDP was 35%, one of the lowest I saw, which doesn’t really make sense to me when I consider the weakness of the currency, but then again I am just a humble engineer and I have no clue about these things. UK is close to 100% debt to GDP at the moment, the highest in recorded history.
When you live in a stable society and have gotten a free education and a nice job, it makes sense to get a loan to buy a place to live and start paying a mortgage instead of debt. Contrast with a society where the average education might be lower, less people having a stable job in a slow labor market, and if you lose your job there is no safety net. Hard to get a loan, so end up renting for longer, and in turn have…
> When you live in a stable society and have gotten a free education and a nice job The education isn't free. It's covered by taxes so you, and everyone else, pays for it for a long time. There's quite an expense to have the instructors, buildings, etc. I'm glad you think the people who haul away garbage, are plumbers, are electricians, etc have nice jobs. Those jobs exist and people do them in those stable societies…
That's just directly vs indirectly, isn't it?
Seems a bit general. Sweden is very much in debt because of the housing market. 15 years ago there were little regulation. You could get a 100 year mortgage with a variable rate and no money down. At the same time the government sold large amounts of public housing at below public market rate. Interest rates went from ~4% to ~1.5%. With no wealth or property taxes, but with tax deductions for renovations and interest…
Last time I looked at statistics Swedens debt to GDP was 35%, one of the lowest I saw, which doesn’t really make sense to me when I consider the weakness of the currency, but then again I am just a humble engineer and I have no clue about these things. UK is close to 100% debt to GDP at the moment, the highest in recorded history.
I follow some stuff about public transit, and Sweden has lower construction costs than the UK by an order of magnitude.
Seems a bit general. Sweden is very much in debt because of the housing market. 15 years ago there were little regulation. You could get a 100 year mortgage with a variable rate and no money down. At the same time the government sold large amounts of public housing at below public market rate. Interest rates went from ~4% to ~1.5%. With no wealth or property taxes, but with tax deductions for renovations and interest…
Not Northern Europe, but Czech Resident here. There has been an explosion in house prices here, a truly wild one. I bought my place for 3.6m CZK about 7 years back and according to a recent valuation practices is "worth" nearly double this now. It is fucking wild, and tbh I kind of hate it.
I'm from slovenia, former yugoslavia, and the situation here is the same, making it practically impossible for an average couple to buy anything here (and we're worrying about the demographics, lol).
Back in yugoslav times, government built large apartment building complexes, by basically finding an empty field at the end of the city, saying "this is a city, farms should be outside the city, not within it", and building a complex of apartment buildings, and then another, and then a school/kindergarden, and then two or three more. And by complex I mean literally tens of 5+ story apartment buildings. Since it was socialism, those apartments would be rented out to workers by the government.
On the other hand, people who wanted a house (instead of an apartment) could buy a plot of land, and build houses themselves... and i mean literally themselves... some of them would even dig the basement level by themselves, ask friends for help, every friday after work go to a buildng materials store, fill up their car with a few bags of cement and bricks, lay a layer of two down, and then wait for the next weekend. Fascade, insulation, sometimes even the upper floor could wait for better times, while people moved into the ground floor. Dealing with permits and papers was a thing "to deal with later".
Then came independence, the government didn't want to deal with so many apartments and sold them to renters for a price of a mid-range car.
And the current generations? Fucked. Like totally.
A field right next to the roundway around the city? Sure [1]. Next to highrises? Sure [2]. New large apartment complexes? Nope. want to buy a few houses and build a larger apartment building? You better literally be friends with the mayor, since zoning doesn't allow more than two-floor two-apartment buildings. Want to build on an empty field? Nope, zoning doesn't allow it.
People complain we literally need tens of thousands of new apartments, and all that's being built is ~4 "luxury" apartment buildings in relatively shitty locations (but still better than nothing) and every now and then someone gets a blessing from the mayor to build a 6-8 apartment building in a place where an old house once was. ...and then those apartments are bought up for way above what they're worth by people who then rent them out via airbnb.
What if you're magically somehow able to aquire some land where it's allowed to build stuff? Permits and other papers take years. Want to build yourself? Nope, no way. Want friends to help? If they're not licenced contractors and giving out receipts, they're considered as working illegaly and inspections check those things a lot.
Add to this some NIMBYism, where the neigbor complains if you're building a house there, and the situation is even worse.
And public housing? The government built one complex of those, and the build-price was higher than retail price a few years before it was built (like 2800eur/m^2)... because well, government and corruption.
So yeah...
In the end, this is how you get revolutions and terrorism... You're a good worker, save money, save 10k eur in a year (a lot for most), and the apartments you were looking at are 30k more than last year. Why bother? People have nothing left to lose, because the average rent is above average pensions, so without something huge changing soon, a lot of people will be homeless and literally without anything to lose anymore.
[1] https://goo.gl/maps/iL7962VtEzThwgAb8 [2] https://goo.gl/maps/6Do3W3KWXWKpxw1DA
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, most europeans tend to settle down, and not move across the continent every few years, so buying instead of renting makes even more sense, since you'll be staying in that house probably for the rest of your life.
Where the hell are people "moving across the continent every few years"?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, most europeans tend to settle down, and not move across the continent every few years, so buying instead of renting makes even more sense, since you'll be staying in that house probably for the rest of your life.
Where the hell are people "moving across the continent every few years"?
This is geoblocked in slovenia, but the google summary says:
> Using 2007 ACS data, it is estimated that a person in the United States can expect to move 11.7 times in their lifetime
If we neglect the student ages for those without student housing or living nearby, most people here move from their parents to their own place, maybe again if they're renting, and then to a "better place" if they can afford one later on. 11.7 times is way above what most people here do.
80 years of life, 11.7 movings, 6.8 years between moving. Realistically more often than that during younger years, since I'd guess retired people move less often.
When you live in a stable society and have gotten a free education and a nice job, it makes sense to get a loan to buy a place to live and start paying a mortgage instead of debt. Contrast with a society where the average education might be lower, less people having a stable job in a slow labor market, and if you lose your job there is no safety net. Hard to get a loan, so end up renting for longer, and in turn have…
> and start paying a mortgage instead of debt. But a mortgage is debt … ? I’m not sure this accounts for it. Paying a mortgage “instead” implies it’s merely a replacement. But in reality the debt is 2-4x higher than other OECD countries. This stat makes it sound rather unsustainable: >Four in 10 mortgage borrowers in Sweden are not paying off their debt, and those that are repaying the principal do so at a rate that…
I believe this is no longer true. Since 2016 there is an amorteringskrav (amortization requirement) on housing loans. All new housing loans with a loan-to-value ratio of 70% or higher must pay off at least 2% of the loan per year, and if you're below 70% then you must pay off at least 1% per year until you're below 50%. You must also pay an additional 1% per year if you've borrowed more than 4.5 times your yearly salary (excluding taxes).
When you buy a house/apartment it's most common to have an initial loan-to-value ratio of 85% (since you're only allowed to get a housing loan for up to 85% of the property's value).