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What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

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Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#381

Post by illiarian »

slaw wrote: post #370
jjav wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it doesn't collapse, then society may collapse? But there are plenty very cheap areas to buy houses or rent. Sure, many people don't want to live there, that's why it's cheap today. But it is a possibility nonetheless, one that is better than collapsing society. I'm always honestly confused why today it is seen as impossible to move to a cheap area? People have been doing this for generations (centuries?). It's…

Could you point me to these plenty cheap areas? I work remotely and may consider moving there.

In Sweden if you move from Stockholm to Eskilstuna (1h30m drive away) you can find a 5 room 100 sqm apartment in the dead center of the town for the price of a 2 room 45-50 sqm apartment in any of the immediate suburbs of Stockholm.

Or, to put it simply, move out of the big city, and the prices drop by a factor of two or more.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#382

Post by illiarian »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #367
jjav wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it doesn't collapse, then society may collapse? But there are plenty very cheap areas to buy houses or rent. Sure, many people don't want to live there, that's why it's cheap today. But it is a possibility nonetheless, one that is better than collapsing society. I'm always honestly confused why today it is seen as impossible to move to a cheap area? People have been doing this for generations (centuries?). It's…

What really attracts people to those places? Cuisine? Night life? Tinder opportunities?

That you have more shops than one. More restaurants than one. Theaters. Clubs. Sports. Connectivity. Places and activities for kids. Places for hobbies. Concerts. Other various activities and events.

There are significantly more of each in a big citu.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#383

Post by Radim »

nemo44x wrote: post #319
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do.you have kids? "Having space and feeling like they can give them a better future" is about 1 thing. Money If you eliminated any of income taxes, or a combination of SS + reducing deficit spending (inflation), or the % of income going to heakthcare by eliminating its employee and employee subsidies (Medicares), there would be a populatiom boom. All you need to do is free people from having to make money, to meet ba…

I think we need to change the income tax code to massively incentivize people to get married and have kids. I’d support increasing the tax rate pretty massively and then introducing a tax deduction of like $20k per kid. For instance a couple with 3 kids and a home would have around $70k-$100k in deductions (60k kids, 10k-40k in state/local taxes etc). If they had an income of $120k it would be adjusted to like $30k a…

Why stop there?

Since you believe that human reproduction is a de-facto property of the state, simply calculate how many women should have babies, for optimal society, and force them to?

No need to muck around with some tax incentives. Redistribute the true source "commodity".

As a bonus, if you're high up enough, you might even get to choose who mates with whom.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#384

Post by acd »

It was zeeo interest rates policys by central banks who helped inflate this real eastate boom.

Sweden has also had fixed prices on rental prices. This means that you need to queue very very long to get a rental contract.

Combine price control on rental, "zero" interest rate policy by the central bank driving up home prices.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#385

Post by robocat »

bandrami wrote: post #366
Aeolun wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 90s I didn’t have a house, I was in diapers. In my experience growing up, everyone I knew could afford to buy a house on a single salary when 28-30, so that’s what I expect for myself. Anything other than that is a regression.

> everyone I knew could afford to buy a house on a single salary when 28-30 Did you grow up in 1958? Because that's the last time that was true.

Depends on where they were. For example #15: Clarksville, Tennessee: Median home value: $172,700, Median household income: $58,853 https://www.businessinsider.com/best-places-to-buy-a-home-un...

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#386

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

Aeolun wrote: post #184
nivenkos wrote: post #7

The main problem is the terrible rent control system - with a lucky few getting rent-controlled first-hand contracts, and everyone else facing a cut-throat almost completely unregulated market of sub-letting. Rent control never works.

The Netherlands has a variation of this for newly built properties. The prices for new properties are controlled, but the prices for second hand properties are not. If you win the lottery, you get to buy a newly built house for like €250k, which will them immediately jump in price to €450k, because that’s the price you can now sell it for. It’s completely bonkers…

If it's really a fair lottery, seems a better way to distribute a public resource (land) than rich people buying all the land and getting even richer from it.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#387

Post by rullelito »

robocat wrote: post #80
belorn wrote: post #16

It should not be a major surprise that the gap between the haves and the have-nots will widen if you have a large compareable influx of have-nots, or to speak more precisely, an influx of new citizens with low social-economic status compared to those who already were ctiziens. In a very dispassionate perspective, it is just plain math. It is going to take time to return back to the same levels as before.

I usually find that “obvious” reasoning is very often wrong, especially when politically contentious. You could look at countries with higher rates of immigration (say my own country New Zealand at 30% immigrants, compared against Sweden with 20%, although NZ immigrants are often middle-class from culturally compatible English countries). Switzerland has 30% immigrants. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_st…

You think you get the same type of immigrant to New Zealand as Sweden? Please..

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#388

Post by Ekaros »

boringuser2 wrote: post #54

Nobody likes to talk about the effect of moving large populations around globally without the housing infrastructure to support them.

Also not to forget globalization moving populations inside countries. Which might be key effect. Globalization caused many industries to die off and basically those communities now have housing stock that is worth very little or is worthless. As the jobs stopped being there and new jobs have been created in other places which do not have the supply of new housing.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#389

Post by hkt »

ars wrote: post #380
Bellend wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe we are in a time where everyone is milking the 90s-20s real estate bubble and no one wants to be first to fold. Internationally, not just on a per country basis. As soon as say, French real estate collapses (or UK or USA or Germany etc), the whole rotten castle of cards will fold as well. If it doesn't you can enjoy the expensive property, but you won't be eating farmed foods, won't be in a clean environmen…

What does "fold" even mean? Real estate prices are not being artificially elevated, they are a simple function of supply and demand. Just build more houses and prices will do down, and they'll go down slowly, without collapsing. The typical model works like this: The suburbs around a city grow, the city runs out of space. This causes land in the suburbs to become expensive, so they subdivide lots and build more house…

> Real estate prices are not being artificially elevated

Alas, they are. Supply and demand for housing is measured in units of currency, not people. Ask yourself, how many multiples of income can you borrow, with what kind of deposit? The ratio has shrunk over time, allowing roughly the same people to borrow steadily increasing amounts of money.

What's worse is that (in some countries at least) common measures of inflation don't measure house prices. The UK is an example of this. I'm unqualified to tell for sure, but I suspect some central banks have seen house prices as a way of keeping down measured inflation.

The solution (IMO) is a policy of relative decline - look to make house prices rise more slowly than wages for a generation.

Re: What broke Sweden? Real estate bust exposes big divide

#390

Post by twixfel »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #318
barbazoo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If eastern Germany is still affordable like that then it might be for a reason. Don't move there unless you pass as a German and speak the language.

>If eastern Germany is still affordable like that then it might be for a reason. I'm not German, but you can't complain there's no affordable housing when there actually is, but you just don't want it. Just because you only want to move only to a specific city you like, that has the "right vibe", where others also want to live, it's not society's fault you're too picky and you think you're too good for other more aff…

This is just the just world fallacy in a post. If you lived in Germany you would understand that statements like this that you wrote:

> doesn't make you a special snowflake worthy of the German society to turn itself upside down for you and roll the red carpet and make life super easy for you

are utterly, utterly ridiculous. There is absolutely no risk whatsoever of Germany "rolling the red carpet" for immigrants. It's a fairly hostile place to be if you're not German even if you're white. It can also be hostile even if you're German but not white. Among "expat" destinations (so plausible expat destinations, so excluding, e.g. DRC), it regularly tops the rankings as the worst place to live (harder to live in than Japan or China, and no disrespect to those two countries, but they are traditionally considered benchmark definitions of exclusive countries).

> Best learn it if you move there out of respect for the host country and to integrate and become part of society

Let me tell you as someone who lives in Germany right now: the vast majority of 1M Syrian refugees will never, ever, ever integrate into German society. I had no opinion on this before I moved here, now it's obvious. Your idea that integration is purely a one way street is nonsense and only leads to broken societies. Even if you change your name to Winfried and got C2 German, you'll still never be accepted here. Maybe your children will be, but maybe not if they're not white. But the fact is that if countries want immigrants to pay for their boomers' pensions, they need to actually be a generally more welcoming and friendly society. "Fuck you, learn German, and go and live in Chemnitz" don't really pass muster these days. I mean for example this is nonsense:

> make you a special snowflake worthy of the German society to turn itself upside down for you and roll the red carpet

As if Germany is doing everyone a favour by letting people move there. If there was no demographic crisis then immigration would be practically impossible. I am doing Germany a favour by moving here at least as much as they are doing me a favour by letting me.

> there not because you've got some super rare skills nobody there had

I'm an academic in a fairly obscure branch of physics so in this case I can categorically say that I do have those rare skills. Everything you said about the country is wrong. Their advice: "don't move here unless you speak German" is absolutely on point, and what I myself tell people. Living in Germany mostly makes no sense if you're not German or not a refugee.

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