Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Priced out of home ownership

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

781–790 of 1001 posts

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#781

Post by [deleted] »

Wytwwww wrote: post #404
shuckles wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People intuitively jump to the conclusion that the problem is caused by a lack of building. In my experience, people "intuitively" jump to basically every conclusion besides this one. "Greedy landlords" or "[favorite scapegoat] collusion" are intuitive conclusions which are far more common than supply and demand. > Ask yourself, do Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Britain, Ireland, etc, all have the same ina…

> Yes they do, to varying degrees. The Anglo land use regime is a disaster. Population growth (which is mainly concentrated in relatively small number of areas) is not helping either. e.g. in European countries which have comparable population growth to Ireland/UK like Norway, Sweden, Belgium real estate prices have been increasing at a similar pace.

[deleted]

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#782

Post by sib »

csomar wrote: post #754
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…

But you have to admit that no one could have guessed that increasing the money supply (ie: printing money) would have led to higher asset (including real estate) pricing.

Are you missing a /sarc tag?

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#783

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

> Ask yourself, do Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Britain, Ireland, etc, all have the same inability to build

Yes, everybody does. The population exploded everywhere, and rent-seekers enriching themselves out of land price increases popped out everywhere. All at about the same time.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#784

Post by broken_clock »

cgh wrote: post #441
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…

Yes, at one time it was estimated that roughly 1/3 of Vancouver’s condo supply was vacant. So the city implemented an empty homes tax [0] and promptly raised $115,000,000 in tax revenue [1]. However, the tax is still far too low and it contains various loopholes that allows developers to hold condos empty for years until deep-pocketed buyers show up [2]. Vancouver isn’t unique. Housing is being traded like poker chip…

> roughly 1/3 of Vancouver’s condo supply was vacant.

Why do you choose to just tell lies?

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#785

Post by elevatedastalt »

atemerev wrote: post #638
elevatedastalt wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure that a tiny country that's smaller than 40 US states is a useful model for what kinds of homeownership can work.

This is not a useful model; in fact, things are quite bad here. I just wanted to say that US homeownership is absolutely exceptional, has no analogues anywhere else, and exists only by means of extensive government support. In most other countries, buying a house in your thirties is absolutely unimaginable.

What age is reasonable? Okay, maybe not 30s. How about 40s? The way we are headed most GenZs are not going to have enough to be able to afford a house in their 40s or even 50s.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#786

Post by returningfory2 »

piltdownman wrote: post #704
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…

Ireland are a complete outlier, as the government incentivised itself not to deliver on housing as a result of IMF/Troika bullying. It set up National Asset Management Agency in 2009 to clean the property crash related debts from the balance sheets of the main Irish banks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Asset_Management_Agen... As per the usual government mouthpieces, it was a roaring success - "NAMA's overal…

What is the connection between the Irish housing crisis and NAMA?

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#787

Post by b112 »

suoduandao3 wrote: post #731
derlvative wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a lot of mental gymnastics to pretend people don't need places to live. More people are born, hence more housing is needed.

but it's not necessarily needed in dense urban centers. Plenty of laptop class people could secure housing in rural areas for a fraction of the cost of what they're paying now.

One of the many things contributing to pricing, is that not enough road corridors are being built or widened.

It's harder live further out, when traffic slowdowns extend commute time 10x. And governments love the idea that expensive roads can be waved away using environmentalism as an reason.

Yet these same governments don't build fast transit either, and without fast amd efficient transit, trips take far far longer than a car.

At this stage we should be building both, as we're that far behind.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#788

Post by dleslie »

hedora wrote: post #762
dleslie wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3% vacancy tax producing $115M in revenue indicates roughly $3.8B in empty housing stock. Average condo prices in the CoV are roughly $2.1M, and so we can conclude there is likely around, or a little less than, 2000 empty condos hit by this tax. That's not 1/3 of Vancouver's condo supply. Not by a long shot.

I'd guess that many of the unused condos are borderline condemned, and priced way below median. So, it's possible there are ~20,000 condos that need enough work to make repair uneconomical. Still, it doesn't sound like that'd make much of a dent in Vancouver's housing supply. (Razing them and building higher density buildings might, though.)

IIRC, the oft-repeated and rarely-cited 1/3 vacancy is a misunderstood statistic which showed that 1/3 of condos in BC are investor-owned[0]; where an investment property is any property where the owner is not the occupant.

0: https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/02/03/bc-condos-investor-...

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#789

Post by [deleted] »

kerkeslager wrote: post #741
apwell23 wrote: post #714

all housing posts on HN can be summarized with this without reading any of the comments all housing posts have the following discussions 1. housing shouldn't be an investment 2. 'local democracy' always turns into nimby 3. something about gentrification 4. something about govt incentives/disincentives: don't give tax breaks for homeowners, tax second home ownership ect . 5. something about airbnb 6. some comparisons…

The fact that your response to real solutions is to list them dismissively underscores why we need to continue to say these things.

[deleted]

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#790

Post by elevatedastalt »

jajko wrote: post #733
lpapez wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everything is a purely financial decision. A home is primarily a place to live, not an investment opportunity. I am always shocked at how many people simply don't understand this. For example: no matter how many index funds I buy, I will still have to find a landlord who allows pets in their home if the current landlord decides to kick me out for a better tenant (whatever that means for them). I don't have to d…

A very US-centered view for sure, I see just tons of insecurity and other negative emotions. Europeans don't have this with such ferocious intensity. One of happiest countries in the world - Switzerland, has minimal home ownership, people simply focus on more important matters in life (and rules and their actual enforcement are on next 10 levels compared to general US, yet nobody does biggest financial move in their…

No, it's the other way round. Wanting a place you can call your own is a basic fundamental human desire. It's the insanity of the world today that such a basic thing is viewed as a luxury and people engage in semantic gymnastics to justify permanent renting.
Post reply on HN