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Priced out of home ownership

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Priced out of home ownership

#81
post #59

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.

There’s another way to fix it. You can regulate financial speculators. In the US 1/4 of all US homes are owned by financial institutions. I doubt it’s very different in Europe unless they are regulated. This situation ensures only the rich can own a home as buyers are competing against hedge funds.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#82

Younger people need to join the YIMBY movement in droves. Your economic future depends on removing the crushing restrictions on building new homes, especially homes in high wage cities. The older Boomer generation will never change its NIMBY views. Never.

So developers can build more low density unaffordable housing that includes nearly no social housing?

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#83
post #77

Younger people need to join the YIMBY movement in droves. Your economic future depends on removing the crushing restrictions on building new homes, especially homes in high wage cities. The older Boomer generation will never change its NIMBY views. Never.

They will die though

Boomers are choosing to age in place and the youngest Boomers are in their late 50s.

Do you want to wait 20 years?

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#85

Where possible, states should build more tiny house communities, or have land where putting up a tiny house is legal and pain-free. There should also be a law prohibiting a person from owning more than one of them, except for temporary periods of moving out of one and into another. (The same should hold for regular houses, too.) Effectively, land is a different sort of commodity than most others: it is truly finite,…

Row houses and flats are better. Zoning laws prohibit them in most neighborhoods though.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#86
post #77

Younger people need to join the YIMBY movement in droves. Your economic future depends on removing the crushing restrictions on building new homes, especially homes in high wage cities. The older Boomer generation will never change its NIMBY views. Never.

They will die though

1.8M/year (55+ cohort) is potentially not fast enough to bring about housing policy change in a timely manner from this alone. Non market housing is also a necessary component besides YIMBY. Housing locked up from market forces is housing that can remain affordable.

Vienna is an example: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#87

The problem is pretty easy to fix. 50-70% of homes (Depends on Area) are owned by people over 58-70 (Baby Boomers). They don't have good senior apartment/living options. Make more senior housing and provide incentives for them to sell their homes. There are so few available affordable senior apartment options. It's really saddening. Most places have 5-10 year waiting lists, if the waiting list is open at all. Fixing…

Handouts to the homeowners does not feel like the right call here

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#88
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this happening everywhere right now? On Reddit I see this in so many places (US, UK, Europe, not sure about Asia)

Situation in Europe is often reported in misleading ways. Everybody calls it "housing crisis" - but we do not have millions of homeless roaming the street. It is actually a "moving crisis" - people want to move to nicer places but can't afford it. I.e. here in Germany, we have close to 1M perfectly habitable empty flats/houses - but they are in rural areas or the countryside. Indeed there is high demand for urban are…

So, there is an urban housing crisis, or housing crisis for people that need to live near jobs or other people then?

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#89

The problem is pretty easy to fix. 50-70% of homes (Depends on Area) are owned by people over 58-70 (Baby Boomers). They don't have good senior apartment/living options. Make more senior housing and provide incentives for them to sell their homes. There are so few available affordable senior apartment options. It's really saddening. Most places have 5-10 year waiting lists, if the waiting list is open at all. Fixing…

I bet this isn’t the entire solution but it seems like a really good part of it. I know seniors are snapping up Ranchers in the US, which takes away a starter home option for people just getting into homeownership.

Re: Priced out of home ownership

#90
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this happening everywhere right now? On Reddit I see this in so many places (US, UK, Europe, not sure about Asia)

Situation in Europe is often reported in misleading ways. Everybody calls it "housing crisis" - but we do not have millions of homeless roaming the street. It is actually a "moving crisis" - people want to move to nicer places but can't afford it. I.e. here in Germany, we have close to 1M perfectly habitable empty flats/houses - but they are in rural areas or the countryside. Indeed there is high demand for urban are…

There are many cheap vacant dwellings in fly-over states and backwater towns in the US as well.
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