81–90 of 196 posts
Im +30 in Spain and I thought the demographic winter would land some great opportunities to buy a home. But looking into some deserted municipalities everything keeps being expensive, despite the extremely low demand (and I know this because I scrape the listings and track em). If I want to buy a shitty house that needs restoration I'm investing over 200k. Not to mention that the land registry holds values way above…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the problem with a lack of land and property taxation. Elderly people will hold onto assets forever, until death essentially, whilst the building and society collapses around them. Meanwhile they demand a huge amount of welfare and healthcare services without paying into the system. At least the land tax system in the USA encourages downsizing and efficient allocation of this resource.
And what would you'r solution be? Take from them the houses they worked their whole lives to acquire and put them in elderly homes? They have paid their share to society by providing the taxes for 65+ years that they have worked and brought us where we are today. Those homes are not vanished from the market. They will be inherited by their children and so on. Land taxation is by my opinion inherently bad for that spe…
edit: https://kaalvtn.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-poor-widow-bogey.html
edit: A solution to this problem is to allow seniors to defer payment of the land value tax until the next purchase of the land, at which point the next buyer will receive the deferred tax burden.
Im +30 in Spain and I thought the demographic winter would land some great opportunities to buy a home. But looking into some deserted municipalities everything keeps being expensive, despite the extremely low demand (and I know this because I scrape the listings and track em). If I want to buy a shitty house that needs restoration I'm investing over 200k. Not to mention that the land registry holds values way above…
Move to Italy and buy one of the €1 houses in the article? The language is easy for you, and depending where you are in Spain, it might be a closer move than to other parts of Spain. Of course there's a catch, but if what you really want is to own your own home and you're flexible about where you live, you're the right person for this kind of initiative.
By the way the land is on a consecrated ancient battlefield/holy site, so you can't put a shovel in it without a full archeological review.
I think an interesting point of comparison is Japan's policies around abandoned houses, and efforts to try to prop up vanishing rural communities, where aside from repair/renovation and administration costs, the owner can also be obligated to actively farm agricultural land associated with the property.
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I really don't understand this argument. Land taxes are supposed to pay for the various services in the area (schools, roads, etc). You don't pay your fair share and be done, you pay every year because those services cost money every year. If, at some point, you can no longer afford those costs (excluding those situations where social welfare safety nets are supposed to help), you move somewhere else. You don't get t…
In Germany thats what income tax is for. The municipality receives the money and funds local infrastructure from it. I think the rest of Europe is at least similar in this regard. One can argue about which system is better, but taxing elderly people out of their homes would never fly politically over here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the problem with a lack of land and property taxation. Elderly people will hold onto assets forever, until death essentially, whilst the building and society collapses around them. Meanwhile they demand a huge amount of welfare and healthcare services without paying into the system. At least the land tax system in the USA encourages downsizing and efficient allocation of this resource.
Land tax also does not allow you to simply exist - you have to make a profit to pay the tax. You can't just grow your own food and ignore the economy. It also comes with perverse incentives, like opposing anything that might raise property values unless you want to sell. Perhaps it's a uniquely American view, having no connection to the land you live on, looking at it as just an economic resource to be 'allocated'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really don't understand this argument. Land taxes are supposed to pay for the various services in the area (schools, roads, etc). You don't pay your fair share and be done, you pay every year because those services cost money every year. If, at some point, you can no longer afford those costs (excluding those situations where social welfare safety nets are supposed to help), you move somewhere else. You don't get t…
In Germany thats what income tax is for. The municipality receives the money and funds local infrastructure from it. I think the rest of Europe is at least similar in this regard. One can argue about which system is better, but taxing elderly people out of their homes would never fly politically over here.
No. The main funding for local communities are property tax ("Grundsteuer") and business tax ("Gewerbesteuer"), income tax share only accounts for about a third. The height of both are also set on the local level the community has a very direct way to change the available money.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Move to Italy and buy one of the €1 houses in the article? The language is easy for you, and depending where you are in Spain, it might be a closer move than to other parts of Spain. Of course there's a catch, but if what you really want is to own your own home and you're flexible about where you live, you're the right person for this kind of initiative.
There's usually a catch to these effectively free real estate deals. Like the home is a registered historic site so you're on the hook for tens or hundreds of thousands in maintenance that all has to be approved by some council of greybeards who won't accept anything that isn't made in exactly the same way it was 500 years ago. "These replacement stones were worked with power tools , they've lost their authenticity!"…
* Some towns have a requirement that you start a small business to qualify.
* In some towns the houses are auctioned with a starting bid of one Euro. The nicest ones will get bid up a fair bit, but a lot of them close for one to five thousand euro. The nicest ones (minimal renovation required) can close for up to twenty-five thousand euros.
* Often a refundable deposit of two to five thousand euros is required, with the catch that you start moving in or renovating within a year and complete moving in and/or renovating within three years.
* The houses are often long abandoned. Renovation costs are going to be what they are -- significant -- so you best be handy, as you can cut your renovation costs by 80-90% if you eliminate labor costs. Regardless, your renovations will need to be approved.
* Tax contracts and real estate closing costs, which will typically be a few (as in, around 2 to 3) thousand euros.
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Or you could just wait. A lot of people have been surprised that the housing market hasn't crashed. Two of the theories are: 1: supply is more elastic than demand. In other words, more sellers took potential listings off the market than buyers stopped looking. 2: governments printing money inflated investor assets like stocks and real estate. If these are true, a backlog of listings from could flood the market next y…
Over the past 30 years buy-to-let has fundamentally changed the housing market to the point where I honestly don't believe there'll ever be a housing market crash again. Rich people will buy up all the available housing stock to rent out (or to AirBnB) if there's a small price drop. That will stop there ever being a big price drop. Barring a sea change in housing policy that enables massive amounts of new houses to b…
Remember when the 2008 crisis hit, no one was buying but no one was renting either. And a lot of banks with real estate on their books just let it sit there (where it sits today).
Once a the credit default domino chain starts to fall, people and organization will need to get liquid. The first stage will see some people jump in on pent-up demand but after that, real estate will fall through the floor. It will literally drop to near nothing in places.