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Priced out of home ownership

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Priced out of home ownership

#481

Post by kylehotchkiss »

nasmorn wrote: post #289
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The land under UAE doesn’t have dozens or even hundreds of years of plot splitting and ownership claims too, there is just an enormous advantage to how new much of the county is and a government incentivized to grow. It does help that citizens form a smaller part of the population and that it seems like they get advantageous jobs and housing to keep them happy. Hard to compare to western counties.

Also they build with what is almost slave labor.

Blame the nearby countries providing no jobs, no education, and no future for these laborers instead. Also don’t forget the hundreds of thousands of people from the exact same countries who gain respectable middle class, stable jobs in UAE that their home countries don’t provide. I’m not here to defend every decision that UAE has made but they’ve done a lot of good for people who come from countries with unspeakably shitty governments that deserve a lot more condemnation.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#482

Post by roenxi »

aegypti wrote: post #325
tmnvix wrote: post #274

People intuitively jump to the conclusion that the problem is caused by a lack of building. While more building would help, a lack of it isn't the main cause of this problem. Ask yourself, do Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Britain, Ireland, etc, all have the same inability to build or is there maybe some other common cause? In my view this is symptomatic of a more fundamental issue - global asset price infla…

The OECD link you’ve provided shows the complete opposite of your point. The UK, Ireland, Canada, and New Zealand are at the bottom of % vacant dwellings indicating the opposite of underutilization.

And they have below-expected dwellings per 1,000 residents. The "Total number of dwellings per thousand inhabitants, 2022 and 2011" suggests there are potential supply problems.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#483

Post by feoren »

MainlyMortal wrote: post #443

U.K. view here... and I'd guess this applies the the majority of the world too. I was born in, grew up in and currently live in a location that the HN community never even thinks about. Most people in here have no idea of how the regular 99% live and then base their whole world view on expensive capital cities and hold the strangest views of housing. I bought my current house in the 2010s, my mortgage is still half t…

Hot take: already own a house and live somewhere with a livable minimum wage. You are the one who sounds like you are completely unaware of your own privilege.

You just said that where you live, if you were on minimum wage, you could "manage to" pay for half the price of renting. Think hard about what you just said here. You are saying that someone on minimum wage can't nearly afford to rent. But their problem is their own warped view of the world. The warped view that someone working full time should not be forced into homelessness? How warped!

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#484

Post by renjimen »

MainlyMortal wrote: post #443

U.K. view here... and I'd guess this applies the the majority of the world too. I was born in, grew up in and currently live in a location that the HN community never even thinks about. Most people in here have no idea of how the regular 99% live and then base their whole world view on expensive capital cities and hold the strangest views of housing. I bought my current house in the 2010s, my mortgage is still half t…

Maybe for your location, but not in Canada. I live in a rural town in Canada that is several hours of travel away from any big city. You will typically pay at least $1200 USD a month for rent. A mortgage for a cheap house will cost around $2000 USD a month. For reference, minimum wage after tax is around $1700 USD. Home ownership here is simply out of reach for many people now, and even renting is a struggle.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#485

Post by novok »

itake wrote: post #382
tmnvix wrote: post #274

People intuitively jump to the conclusion that the problem is caused by a lack of building. While more building would help, a lack of it isn't the main cause of this problem. Ask yourself, do Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Britain, Ireland, etc, all have the same inability to build or is there maybe some other common cause? In my view this is symptomatic of a more fundamental issue - global asset price infla…

While I agree building housing is a symptom, and not the core problem. But I'm skeptical that increasing building or density would actually lower housing costs. If that were true, high dense cities like Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, or Hong Kong would have much lower cost housing. Housing more people in a concentrated area creates more demand for services, which creates more demand for housing which jacks up prices. Pac…

Tokyo does have cheaper housing at a income : cost ratio and is growing in population.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#486

Post by joe_the_user »

tmnvix wrote: post #274

People intuitively jump to the conclusion that the problem is caused by a lack of building. While more building would help, a lack of it isn't the main cause of this problem. Ask yourself, do Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Britain, Ireland, etc, all have the same inability to build or is there maybe some other common cause? In my view this is symptomatic of a more fundamental issue - global asset price infla…

Lack of building can play a part but even the interests that want housing as investment naturally want to limit supply.

The main thing is that the US has been printing dollars for several decades - primarily to deal with or prevent periodic financial crises. Ben Bernacke's "Helicopter Dollars" speech was infamous but nothing has changed but the (increasing) scale (and, yes, all the central banks of the developed world are doing it too).

Effectively, the modern order has come to involve an endless hand-out to those who already have money while "market discipline" prevails against those who don't. Of course, this has long term problems aside from its immorality.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#487

Post by thelastgallon »

joecool1029 wrote: post #452
WalterBright wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of houses are empty simply because they are for sale. It's not unusual to take 6 months to sell. Nobody is going to want homeless people living in it in the meantime. Houses are also "empty" while they are undergoing renovation.

> A lot of houses are empty simply because they are for sale. It's not unusual to take 6 months to sell. A thought: Disincentivize having them for sale for too long, tax a % of the listing price every year it's on the market. That way gougers get penalized for crazy asking prices and there's some additional negative price pressure.

They are already paying mortgage principal and interest, property taxes, utilities and maintenance.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#488

Post by breatheoften »

tmnvix wrote: post #274

People intuitively jump to the conclusion that the problem is caused by a lack of building. While more building would help, a lack of it isn't the main cause of this problem. Ask yourself, do Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Britain, Ireland, etc, all have the same inability to build or is there maybe some other common cause? In my view this is symptomatic of a more fundamental issue - global asset price infla…

Other strategies to discourage the usage of properties as investment have existed at various times ... Things like squatters rights laws have been deployed for this purpose in some parts of the world at various times (Netherlands for example had quite large movements where the youth would occupy empty homes owned by rich investors in order to take advantage of favorable (to the squatters) laws -- which discouraged folks from sitting on unoccupied investment properties home at least at some historical points in time

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#489

Post by feoren »

vladms wrote: post #437

I find it a bit strange that the article (and also a lot of the discussion here) does not discuss the size of these houses (in square meters per person), or alternatively the distribution of the sizes/areas. I grew up in a 20 square meter per person apartment (with multiple person living there, for a total size of 60 square meters) - and it was definitely not pleasant. But I feel that nowadays people also expect a lo…

The people buying up their 5th investment property are taking up a lot more that 65 square meters. This feels like the usual "you should all just get used to living in poverty so that the few can exploit you more." If everyone got used to 20 square meters, pretty soon the rich would buy the rest and then we'd hear "your standards are too high; you should be happy with 10!"
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