Unfortunately it is mostly rich people and companies so millennials will have the privilege of renting houses for ridiculous prices.
Abolish landlords
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Yeah, it’s not like the immediate appreciation in your primary residence is any real financial windfall. To realize any of it, you’d have to go out and pay a jacked up price to live somewhere else, making banks and real estate agents the only real winners.
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Yeah, I’ve been coming around on that one.
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Institutional investors buying and renting millions of houses seems unambiguously terrible.
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Yeah, I mean, it’s certainly the freedom to downsize yourself into a windfall once the kids are out of the house, but lol, when will that ever be? Do I think they’ll be able to find a place to live on a worker’s salary 20 years from now? NOPE. We’re going back to the olden days of 3+ generations under one roof, boiz.
Moving abroad looks better by the day.
I guess that depends on what the alternative is. If we assume for arguments sake that the options are institutional investors do this or a bunch of isolated rich people (or small consortiums of rich people) do it, then it’s not so obvious that we don’t prefer institutional investors. They are more easily regulated (if there is a will to do so).
If you’re talking about alternatives where we just do the sensible thing and develop good housing policy then that’s another story.
This seems untenable, right?
Like, every time I think about getting in the market, i think back to buying our first house in Dec 2007 and selling it 7 years later at a loss.
But ive been feeling that way for three years now.
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Doesn’t look that way.
I feel like multi-generation households should be more efficient and environmentally friendly vs everyone living on their own.
As you can imagine, the variations by country are due to all kinds of isolated factors, I don’t think there’s a single trend that is a satisfactory explanation.
Example - Romania has had that crazy high rate for a long time because when the socialist government collapsed they sold all the state owned homes to the residents at favorable prices. So it’s really a long term economic impact from what amounts to a one time massive transformational government subsidy.
I believe in a lot of non-Western countries you pretty much have to pay cash up front for houses. It seems like everywhere I travel I hear that.
In Costa Rica I heard you could maybe get a loan with a 50% down payment. But straight cash is by far the most prevalent. Maybe that was just for expats though.
Yeah around the world it’s just a completely different culture around housing, different market in terms of supply and demand of housing, different policy around where and how homes are built, different financial systems. It’s really hard to do any kind of comparison across countries. Even countries one thinks of as quite similar like Canada and the US have massive differences in housing policy like tax incentives.
The 30 year fixed rate mortgage exists only in America, where it exists only because of Fannie and Freddie. All kinds of distortions flow from that.
Feeling resigned to never owning my own place again. Not the worst thing, my rent is a third what my mortgage was 10 years ago, though for not as nice a place.
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All the places I want to live abroad are even more ridiculous than here as far as property values.
That more of a me problem though. I’m sure there are good deals to be found somewhere.
I bought my place about a year ago, starting the process basically as the pandemic hit. Looking at things now, it might turn out to be biggest stroke of financial luck in my life. I worry about a ton of stuff (1st time buyer), but thinking long-term I think I fluked into a good situation. … probably made more possible by the fact that the home needs some work but I’m also a single guy on no timeline. Anyway. /brag I guess
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actually that would make an interesting thread … many of us/most go to work every day and salary pays the bills and you save a little … along the way there are all these windfalls and sudden losses. … I wonder to what extent it’s the balance of those big events that determine a person’s financial outlook.
Like, online poker was a huge boon. Early 20s, it allowed me to save a little bit, take some time off, do a thing … later I was fortunate to work for a company that offered stock options, and was later purchased … otoh, I made a terrible investment decision in a cannabis company and lost what to me is a significant amount …
As others have mentioned, I’m having a hard time understanding this mindset.
I’ve also experienced some ridiculous appreciation in my home if Zillow is to be believed. But it’s nearly as useful as Sklansky bucks. If I sell, then I just have to rebuy in this insane market because I’ve gotta live somewhere.
Or rent?
I had to help the woman I dated financially even though her net worth was larger than mine because my assets are liquid and hers weren’t.