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Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#371

Post by blitzar »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #297
conductr wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to believe flipping is a major problem, at least in my locale. A $300K house gets $50K of "improvements", then the investors needs $100K profit after commissions are covered and so we're in the $500K range for the next buyer and very little value was added. It's often the proverbial "lipstick on a pig" house after the renovations. There's little to no regulations on flippers. They can be DIY people that hav…

How is that the flipper's fault? Ultimately, a regular home owner is buying the finished product. If they are willing to pay more for better housing, what's the problem? Of course, they're not willing to "pay more". Interest rates get lowered, and they can keep the same payment and buy more house. The reason flipping is attractive is because Central Banks push up house prices - which flippers capture on leverage. If…

> How is that the flipper's fault? Ultimately, a regular home owner is buying the finished product.

The flipper is just making money via arbitrage. The 'profit' they make is simply: (holding cost + holding risk) * time + value of improvements + cost of hassle of renovating

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#372

Post by jlokier »

blitzar wrote: post #363
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wage rises without solving the housing issue is only going to raise house prices further. There's a bunch of potential solutions, but no-one directly benefits from them in the short term. Any attempt to fix it will be met with sob stories about old ladies in multi-million dollar homes being "forced out of their homes". So we'll all just sit and watch as things slowly spin out of control.

> solving the housing issue What is this mythical 'housing issue' we hear so much about. A housing shortage? I dont see that, if you want a house, you walk into one of the estate agents, they are every second shop on the high street, and you give them money and they give you a house. 'But I want a 12 bedroom house on Park Lane with a 50 foot garden for 100k.' Yes there are issues there.

One does not give money one doesn't have.

For many people, 100% of the available properties in that estate agent's window are too expensive, not just the 12 bedroom places. These people will probably never be able to buy anywhere useful, and they are not renting the places in the window either. They rely on a less formally advertised market of lower price rentals.

Then there are the people for whom a maxed out mortgage would only just cover the bottom rung prices if they could get such a mortgage, but they can't so they have to rent, perversely at a monthly price higher than the mortgage would be. They don't gain equity for their payments, which harms their financial and housing security later in life, and limits their access to other credit. They don't know what they will do at retirement when they can no longer afford the rent, which is currently 50% of their income.

Then there are a few people who can afford the not-bottom prices. These people mostly already have a home, and are a minority.

For the first two groups, renting is their only option, and renting in some countries sucks for many reasons. Insecurity, no location stability (random evictions are common and new options limited), no equity, regular home inspections, often not even allowed to decorate, no home improvements (solar, windows, kitchen etc).

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#373

Post by NiceWayToDoIT »

grogenaut wrote: post #326
long_time_gone wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

==first year of operation on a 300 acres farm made a yearly profit of £144== Profit in Year 1 is better than most of the startups I read about on HN.

I think you're also discounting that Amazon probably paid him several million dollars to film that show and he also made a lot of stupid and poor decisions for the purpose of entertainment. So while a lot of his struggles are real his actual revenue number is completely unreliable. Also most farms don't start off by buying a several hundred thousand pound Lamborghini tractor and getting all of their equipment every y…

His series production earnings are not important in this context as the main topic is how UK farmers have lot of crops/fruits rotting on the fields as they cannot find people to work.

Was trying to say that it is not easy to be a farmer, I watched few youtube guys in america saying the similar thing, earnings are tied to subsidies and also fluctuations in crop price, and can literally mean boom or bust.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#374

Post by ZeroGravitas »

blitzar wrote: post #363
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wage rises without solving the housing issue is only going to raise house prices further. There's a bunch of potential solutions, but no-one directly benefits from them in the short term. Any attempt to fix it will be met with sob stories about old ladies in multi-million dollar homes being "forced out of their homes". So we'll all just sit and watch as things slowly spin out of control.

> solving the housing issue What is this mythical 'housing issue' we hear so much about. A housing shortage? I dont see that, if you want a house, you walk into one of the estate agents, they are every second shop on the high street, and you give them money and they give you a house. 'But I want a 12 bedroom house on Park Lane with a 50 foot garden for 100k.' Yes there are issues there.

So my solutions to the problem you dont thik exists would probably make that house more expensive, because the value of the land underneath it is the main driver of price increases, and the person who owns the home does little to drive that, but reaps all the benefit.

This distorts the market and forces people into buying property. If someone could just rent for a few years then they probably would, and then we could write laws that support rrenters and owning and renting buildings would just be a boring business.

Instead, people do the sums and realise they are rewarded for buying that property and getting the free money as the area is developed. So we are all nudged into buying property and then we get laws that benefit people with property.

If there was a land value tax, then people living in low density homes in amazing locations in cities would be taxed out and high density homes would be built in their place. These would likely still be expensive, but by splitting the tax among several people, would be able to afford the land tax.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#375

Post by blitzar »

jlokier wrote: post #372
blitzar wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> solving the housing issue What is this mythical 'housing issue' we hear so much about. A housing shortage? I dont see that, if you want a house, you walk into one of the estate agents, they are every second shop on the high street, and you give them money and they give you a house. 'But I want a 12 bedroom house on Park Lane with a 50 foot garden for 100k.' Yes there are issues there.

One does not give money one doesn't have. For many people, 100% of the available properties in that estate agent's window are too expensive, not just the 12 bedroom places. These people will probably never be able to buy anywhere useful, and they are not renting the places in the window either. They rely on a less formally advertised market of lower price rentals. Then there are the people for whom a maxed out mortga…

> One does not give money one doesn't have.

Off base opener, becuase that is exactly how buying property works in the majority of cases.

Ohterwise we agree the problem is people are too poor, it is affordability that is the issue. There are plenty of houses, but not enough money.

Building more studio flats in battersea that cost 750k solves the 'supply' issue, but it is supply that is really useless.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#376

Post by effingwewt »

luckylion wrote: post #366
effingwewt wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will always be people willing to accept the bare minimum. That doesn't have anything to do with the fact that those who do work are still in poverty, with no way out. Also many have never had a single vacation in their lives. Some just needed the break. e-spells

Oh definitely, you can be working and still be poor, but that's a separate issue. I was pointing out that the number of people on unemployment benefits isn't the number of those seeking work, so there's no problem having 3m people vs 1m open jobs that don't get filled. It's an inconvenient truth to many, but it's still the truth. Getting them back to work would be a great improvement. But I don't think we can make lo…

Yea it's a mess to be sure. Our society is so dirty even if we have UBI rents will magically jump to whatever it is, I'm sure.

It feels like we are all on the Titanic, we see the iceberg coming, but half of us want to steer to avoid it, and half of us want to pretend it isn't there.

But if someone doesn't do something we are all going to sink.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#377

Post by blitzar »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #374
blitzar wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> solving the housing issue What is this mythical 'housing issue' we hear so much about. A housing shortage? I dont see that, if you want a house, you walk into one of the estate agents, they are every second shop on the high street, and you give them money and they give you a house. 'But I want a 12 bedroom house on Park Lane with a 50 foot garden for 100k.' Yes there are issues there.

So my solutions to the problem you dont thik exists would probably make that house more expensive, because the value of the land underneath it is the main driver of price increases, and the person who owns the home does little to drive that, but reaps all the benefit. This distorts the market and forces people into buying property. If someone could just rent for a few years then they probably would, and then we could…

The result of the tax you are suggesting almost already exists. As the 5 floor town house gets to a price tag of 10mil the owner realises that it is easier to find 5 people who will pay 2mil for a 1 floor appartment than one person who wants a 10mil house.

This works for a while, but we are now at a point where 100's of prime location studio appartments are built and the price tag is the best part of $1mil. Here we hit the mismatch of affordability and function - if you have a mil for a property, you probably dont want a studio appartment. If you do want a studio appartment in central city, you probably only have 1/2 the money you need (if you are lucky).

The only real function of a land tax would be to depreciate the present value of the land by the future libaility of those taxes. In theory this just changes the cash flows, but also might have a dampening effect on growth which would be desireable / undesirable.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#378

Post by TheCoelacanth »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #69

When a few companies or industries can’t find enough labor, the solution is simple: Raise wages to attract a larger percentage of the labor pool. When every company and industry is struggling to hire, raising wages is still necessary but it no longer fixes the bigger problem. Those higher wages aren’t producing more labor, they’re just convincing employees with jobs to switch to other jobs. Switching jobs creates a v…

Higher wages also serves the purpose of allocating scarce labor to the most valuable businesses. Low value businesses will go out of business leaving the workers for the higher value businesses.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#379

Post by auroraceiling »

Sorry I really could not go through all 360 comments, but as a business owner I believe in a model of attractive recruitment. Meaning that we use https://www.talenteria.com/ that helps us identify microsites to attract the best candidates, and also write attractive vacancies and manage employees retention well.

Re: Job vacancies surge past one million in new record

#380

Post by jlokier »

blitzar wrote: post #375
jlokier wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One does not give money one doesn't have. For many people, 100% of the available properties in that estate agent's window are too expensive, not just the 12 bedroom places. These people will probably never be able to buy anywhere useful, and they are not renting the places in the window either. They rely on a less formally advertised market of lower price rentals. Then there are the people for whom a maxed out mortga…

> One does not give money one doesn't have. Off base opener, becuase that is exactly how buying property works in the majority of cases. Ohterwise we agree the problem is people are too poor, it is affordability that is the issue. There are plenty of houses, but not enough money. Building more studio flats in battersea that cost 750k solves the 'supply' issue, but it is supply that is really useless.

Treat it as "have (access to)", because that's obviously what was meant.

I think it's not really about not enough money, because if everyone at the bottom had more money, prices at the bottom would increase to compensate, ensuring it stays just out of reach for many, and just at the edge of achievable for others.

I'm not against injections of money, I think it's a good idea. But I don't expect it would solve the housing affordability problem, unfortunately.

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