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Priced out of home ownership

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Priced out of home ownership

#51

Post by caeril »

bdcravens wrote: post #8

I bought in 2022, and while it was new construction, it's a pretty mid-range house. No premium finishes, in a growing but small city northwest of Houston. If you told me 10 years ago how much I paid for it, I'd ask what the name of my butler is.

Indeed. My home "value" has roughly doubled in the last five years.

Sounds nice, but land/home values in the area I'd like to move to has nearly tripled in the same timespan.

I feel bad for renters priced out of the market, but many of us who have "enjoyed" the upside are actually deeply underwater relative to our preferences, to say nothing of the doubling of insurance premiums, and ~25% property tax hikes in the last five years.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#52

Post by BigJono »

fl0ki wrote: post #34

I'm an expat now but I'm hearing it's even worse back in Australia. [Disclaimer: Some of this may be off because I'm hearing it second-hand, not actively investigating myself, so corrections are welcome] I hear people who are already in the top 1-2% in income are told their borrowing power is only A$1M (~U$660K) while houses at all worth raising a family in cost A$3-6M. Banks don't seem to want to lend to them becaus…

Australia is always going to be worse as long as we have this weird government/cultural pumping of housing as an investment. Every single bogan here talks like the absolute epitome of life accomplishment is to have a property portfolio to laud over the plebcunt renters. The idea of investing in production or business is laughable, you don't hear it mentioned at all.

Our biggest software employers are banks and real estate companies. Everyone I've worked with in my career has worked for REA or a bank at some point. There's no innovation, just property investing.

As long as every newspaper in the country keeps running stories about some dipshit 20 year old magically buying 6 houses with a paper route, it's impossible for it to ever change.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#53

Post by schnitzelstoat »

throwaway1105q wrote: post #43
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, American houses are massive compared to what we have in Europe and often have large amounts of space around the house too. In England, row housing is quite common and that seems a good compromise between density and comfort. I live in an apartment block in Spain and it's quite a lot worse than even row housing due to noise from neighbours, lack of parking etc. It's okay for young people, but it'll be hard to ra…

I have lived in an apartment my entire life. I'm in a building with 15 floors and 5 flats on each right now. My direct neighbors have a newborn baby. I don't hear a thing, literally - I wouldn't know there are other people if I wasn't 20 meters above the ground. Don't compromise on build quality like the Spanish do, build it like the Germans, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks do - and you won't have any issues.

Yeah, that's true. I guess I don't trust developers to build decent buildings, especially affordable ones.

In England, the new-build homes are often of a far inferior build quality to the older ones built after the war.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#54

Post by rr808 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #24
rr808 wrote: post #11

I always assumed when the baby boomers retired there would be a flood of big family houses coming up for sale. I see it in my parents that they're pretty comfortable staying in the family house as long as possible, I'm happy with this. It is made a lot easier by the fact that prices keep going up so staying in a house that is oversized financially is rewarding. I'd like to think it'll all come to and end one day as t…

> I always assumed when the baby boomers retired there would be a flood of big family houses coming up for sale. Here in Munich, they indeed are... and wherever possible, they and their often beautiful gardens get torn down, and the entire plot gets "densified" by creating as much indoor space as possible. What was one house for one family is now at least 6-8 apartments for DINKs, often built in shoddy quality with c…

Germany's population has only risen 5% in 50 years. It is one country that should be able to have affordable houses.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#55

Post by mschuster91 »

rr808 wrote: post #54
mschuster91 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always assumed when the baby boomers retired there would be a flood of big family houses coming up for sale. Here in Munich, they indeed are... and wherever possible, they and their often beautiful gardens get torn down, and the entire plot gets "densified" by creating as much indoor space as possible. What was one house for one family is now at least 6-8 apartments for DINKs, often built in shoddy quality with c…

Germany's population has only risen 5% in 50 years. It is one country that should be able to have affordable houses.

The problem is rural flight. We have insane housing pressure in the largest cities (Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt), but a loooot of vacant housing in the rural areas - over 10% of units [1], in extreme cases in Eastern Germany 15-18% [2]. Turns out young people flee in droves as soon as they can, when they don't even get ADSL at their home, where they don't have any chance at employment, or where neo-Nazis have been taking over.

[1] https://www.zeit.de/news/2021-03/25/leerstand-auf-dem-land-f...

[2] https://www.demografie-portal.de/DE/Service/Blog/191028-Wohn...

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#56

Post by chomp »

bdcravens wrote: post #8

I bought in 2022, and while it was new construction, it's a pretty mid-range house. No premium finishes, in a growing but small city northwest of Houston. If you told me 10 years ago how much I paid for it, I'd ask what the name of my butler is.

I bought in the same exact area 10 years ago, this house was over 200k cheaper than it is now. There’s no way I’d be able to afford modern prices.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#57

Post by dustincoates »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #31
dustincoates wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similar thing has happened in France, where the government has restricted the rental of less energy efficient dwellings[0]. This is generally a good thing for the environment, but it has already had an effect on rental prices as those apartments are now taken off the market. The exact impact is a little hard to work out, because, at least in Paris, it's also coincided with apartment owners wanting to hold on to emp…

>apartment owners wanting to hold on to empty apartments to rent them for the Olympics rather than to locals. Sounds like something that can be fixed with laws. Edit: would you mind explaining your downvotes with arguments please? thanks.

I'm not sure it's something the government wants to or can fix.

Many apartments that are being rented are those that house people otherwise, Paris being very well known for emptying out in July/August. For those that are being held back to rent, it can probably be hard to know what's the truth, "we didn't find a tenant" versus "we didn't want to find a tenant."

Also, I think there's also a benefit to the government, as they want to have this empty short-term housing stock available for tourists coming in. A lot of money is being invested in the games, it's important to get the tourism money to make it profitable.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#59

Post by jeffbee »

None of the measures mentioned in the article — lower interest rates, lower transaction fees, down payment subsidies — will lower costs. Every one of them will raise prices. You can only fix this with supply: build homes.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#60

Post by holoduke »

Same here in the Netherlands. I currently rent a 130m3 house for 2500 euros. 500 energy. 2500 euros daycare (4 kids). I think I spend around 6000, 7000 euros after taxes on fixed costs. I wont complain. My life is good, but for most peope here impossible to pay those amounts. Result is that lots of my friends with "normal" jobs end up living in small apartments far outside the cities or even move to a completely different part of the country. Its very hard now to start a life now. Unless you make a shitton of money. Everything became so expensive these days. Its unsustainable imho.
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