61–70 of 244 posts
>> Home ownership is the American dream: In Australia, for many people the (new) Australian dream is: "One day I hope to have the income to be able to afford to pass the grueling real estate agent's suitability test to rent a house and move out of the tent/car."
I don't even know how we got here. Population growth has been below average for the last 3 years(no immigration). Housing/Apartment construction didn't slow down. I just don't understand it. Mortgages are insane. If you're buying a rental property with a mortgage, you can't afford to not rent it out. But home costs are up, rental costs are up, and properties are vacant. Do we really have so many people able to afford…
I presume you mean Australia. Here is how we got here:
The government pays money to property investors/landlords via negative gearing.
The government gives tax incentives to property investors/landlords.
Australia excludes real estate from money laundering - making it a prime destination for proceeds of crime from China, Russia and many other places, driving up prices. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/09/wides...
AirBNB has turned vast numbers of houses into hotels/short stay accommodation, pushing local ordinary people out of the local housing market, especially in popular tourist towns.
Australia sells its residential real estate to any buyer from anywhere around the world - which results in millions of empty houses, and locks Australian's out of owning houses.
Australian politicians have huge property portfolios, so they have incentive for all the above mechanisms to stay in place.
The Australian government does not build any substantial number of public houses any more.
Australia has a vast flow of foreign students into our universities and the unspoken transaction is that if you buy the education then you also get a permanent resident visa, putting pressure on housing.
The current Australian government - the ALP - has a "huge Australia" policy and is importing 715,000 migrants this year and next, with 1.5 million overall for the next five years - despite what the government says, these people need somewhere to live.
>> Home ownership is the American dream: In Australia, for many people the (new) Australian dream is: "One day I hope to have the income to be able to afford to pass the grueling real estate agent's suitability test to rent a house and move out of the tent/car."
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I bought a local house in 2004 that suffered a failed furnace in deep winter (with great damage) for $17k. I put another $10k into it for repairs, and rented it. I started getting postcards around 2012: "I/we want to buy your house." I have a pile of them. None of them offered more than $20k. I had pandemic tenant problems; they didn't pay during the last six months, and the damage was substantial. I repaired the dam…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Propublica reveals homeowners with advanced dementia who signed their shaky signatures to transfer their homes for a fraction of their market value. They show how Homevestor targets neighborhoods struck by hurricanes, or whose owners are recently divorced, or sick. One whistleblower tells of how the company uses the surveillance advertising industry to locate elderly people who've broken a hip: "a 60-day countdown…
There is a nuclear waste disposal site next to aboriginal villages on Orchid Island off the coast of Taiwan because someone handed a contract to a Chinese-illiterate person and said, "sign this and we will build a cannery and help your local economy, trust us." What do you call volition without symmetrical information? What happens when other people's livelihoods rely on your volition? Should vulnerable people deserv…
If you mean there's some maximum acceptable threshold of asymmetrical information then the obvious rejoinder is who gets to decide what that threshold is?
(And, philosophically, how is that decided when any possible deciders, or combination of deciders, are themselves asymmetrically informed?)
I bought a local house in 2004 that suffered a failed furnace in deep winter (with great damage) for $17k. I put another $10k into it for repairs, and rented it. I started getting postcards around 2012: "I/we want to buy your house." I have a pile of them. None of them offered more than $20k. I had pandemic tenant problems; they didn't pay during the last six months, and the damage was substantial. I repaired the dam…
(... kidding, but where is this?!)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't even know how we got here. Population growth has been below average for the last 3 years(no immigration). Housing/Apartment construction didn't slow down. I just don't understand it. Mortgages are insane. If you're buying a rental property with a mortgage, you can't afford to not rent it out. But home costs are up, rental costs are up, and properties are vacant. Do we really have so many people able to afford…
> I don't even know how we got here. From my perspective 2007 just destroyed the market. So many troubled assets and loose government money and no one putting any effort into helping the average citizen. A giant wealth and land transfer occurred. The second largest in recent memory. > I think we need a wealth tax on people who own more than 2 properties. All you will do is create a "straw purchase" market for homes.…
2007 was the end of the destruction of the market (that time when housing prices doubled for no other reason than the money that left dotcom poured into housing.)
Fact is, after people are used to paying more, there's a new baseline and a new level of profit expected. Not even by the landlord, who overpaid for the property and needs you to pay an absurdly high rent or they'll get behind. It was just a phase change in how much people were expected to pay for housing, and that money ultimately went to the people who owned that real estate back in the 90s.
I met a guy who in 2005 sold a house in Los Vegas for $750K that he bought for $175K 5 years before. We're still paying him. Multiply that by orders of magnitude for real, wealthy property owners. Then to add insult to injury, when a bunch of leveraged people lost their shirts on property derivatives, we bailed them out, paying twice.
I bought a local house in 2004 that suffered a failed furnace in deep winter (with great damage) for $17k. I put another $10k into it for repairs, and rented it. I started getting postcards around 2012: "I/we want to buy your house." I have a pile of them. None of them offered more than $20k. I had pandemic tenant problems; they didn't pay during the last six months, and the damage was substantial. I repaired the dam…
You need to fix your keyboard, your current one is dropping "0"s (... kidding, but where is this?!)