The key to solving it is to make sure everyone is focused on affordable housing.
Once you got a impactful part of society focused on something else, for example extracting rent - you've lost.
That's why Germany managed to create a working, affordable housing system after ww2.
And that's why Israel, in it's early years, managed to do the same, and offer affordable housing to everyone,while working under dire economic situation.
However this info may be out of date / incorrect.
In exchange for my illusory benefit of paying "only" a few thousand every month, I get:
- To keep the remaining 30% of my salary (as ever rising rents creep past 70% of take-home).
- Enjoy the 10% yearly rent raise.
- No security, can be kicked out any time (it happens every few years, sometimes a week before Christmas).
- No permission to paint anything.
- Forbidden to have pets of any kind. Could move, but can't find anywhere within commuting distance that allows pets and is in the same price bracket.
- Can't change anything structural, like a window for a nicer one.
- Can't change the locks to something I'd like.
- Can't try out the fancy new home control tech (Nest etc)
- Can't fit solar panels, even if subsidised by a power company, as the offer is only to homeowners.
- Forbidden to "run a business" from home (it says in the contract), and forbidden to register a company at my home address.
- No guests allowed to stay over longer than X days.
- When I hit retirement age and soon after that run out of money, I'll be evicted and homeless, because pension isn't enough to pay the rent, and rent is rising faster than inflation anyway. State benefits exist for pensioners, but the housing component intended to cover rent is widely known to be less than real rents.
So fair enough, I avoid buying somewhere with a million in capital.
Instead I spend more than a million in rent over a working lifetime. Sure would have been nice to live in a stable home during it, to enjoy the freedom to do what I want in the home, and to stay there at the end.
also, the landlord has NO right to enter the property unless there is an emergency, and even then they may have to break the lock to do it because the lock may be changed, and the landlord may not have any keys.
we also did replace windows in one place we lived, and completely rewired the electricity (which included putting new pipes into the walls to hold the wires). it was an old building, and the change was made in consultation with the landlord, but there is no reason it can't be done.
apart from that any change that doesn't change the structure and stability of the house is possible, and any change that an easily be reversed in most cases doesn't even need permission of the landlord.
in another apartment we added a hardwood floor on top of the floor that was there. a sheet of foam and the hardwood on top. for the first room we paid a contractor, for the others we did it ourselves.
if my pension is not enough the government will chip in with housing allowance to make sure i can pay my rent. at worst they will ask me to move into a smaller home if i happen to occupy a place large enough for all my kids who have long moved out and no longer need the space.
i won't be living on the street and i enjoy the freedom to move whenever i like without being tied to a particular location.
also, being a landlord and renting out your property in germany is so onerous that it's not worth it unless you are doing it as a full time business.
that adds a further point in favor of renting because you can't just buy a property and rent it out without putting a major effort into maintenance and paying for upkeep.
finally, as long as you own property you generally don't qualify for financial support, should you ever need it
it's all a matter of perspective.
My experiences are in various places, all outside the US, and some of them in "ordinary" towns that don't have unusually high prices.
Besides, where I am, renting is often more expensive than buying, at current mortgage rates. (It was the other way around when I looked into it about 17 years ago).
House prices are going up for buying and renting in tandem, with some lag either way depending on area. Do renters get a better deal as a result of those rising prices? I don't think so.
Why not buy then, you say? The gatekeeper for most people is limited access to mortgages, not the cost, because perversely they pay more in rent than they would on a mortgage for the same place, and to rub salt in the wound, the money they pay in rent consistently for years is ignored for the purpose of assessing their creditworthiness and affordability.
Not that opening that gate would help for long, because prices would adjust upwards if more people obtained access to mortgages, but it is still perverse when we describe buying as an unreasonable aspiration in an area, when people are paying more in rent than the cost of buying.
So I don't think that's true.
Am I missing something?
[Edit: I mean, I can see that renting being illegal is a restriction on use of property. That's a long distance from private property itself being illegal, though, and I don't see any reason to suppose that would be the end result - either the desired end result or the actual one.]
Either own a home or be homeless. That's more humane. /s
I don't think you know what a commodity is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity
In fact, I think it would make more sense to say, "As a practical matter, housing could only be made available as an unconditional human right if there is [at least a subset of all] housing which IS a commodity."
In strictest terms, real estate can never be a commodity because it is all unique. Commodities have to have "full or substantial fungibility", which can't exist when housing occupies a fixed physical location, which is unique. (So perhaps some housing could be a "commodity" even in a strict sense if it could be moved around. . . Think mobile homes.)
An unconditional human right... where? Does everyone have a right to housing in the uber popular San Francisco? Does everyone have a right to beachfront property in Hawaii? Or if you don't have a house are you provided one in North Dakota?
More people want to live in San Francisco than there are houses. There's going to be winners and losers. I would love to radically increase the number of immigrants we let into the country. Where do they have a right to housing? If that housing doesn't exist who is obligated to build it to give away?
We also have similar discussions around many negative rights. E.g., in the US 4th Amendment rights are subject to all sorts of practical limitations.
That rights are complicated to implement doesn't mean that they shoudn't be rights.
The solution is, to give a plot of land to every human being that turns 18. there's enough land to do this. In most cases they wont want to live exactly in that spot. but, they can sell it or rent it out and use that money to move somewhere else. That's right folks, this is one of those situations where we can actually create wealth out of thin air, just by using up all that land that's been locked up for so long.
Requirements: - be a citizen - get married
The government will then build a flat for you and hand you the keys 5 years later for about a fourth of the private market price.
Of course you need an economy that can pay for all this, so it won't be universally applicable
EDIT: I thought that was a meme and it's not—i'm referring to the growth of the middle class and multi-room houses.
I think everyone in Hong Kong would happily live with their parents for 5 years if it means they can buy their own flat afterwards.
Which makes it all the more important that you correctly identify and apply the mechanisms that push a place towards one end or the other.
>Everyone needs it, and we all have incentive to reduce costs—except landlords.
64% of housing units are owner-occupied [0]. These households are not landlords, yet they are incentivized to raise property values.
[0] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/VET605217
One system that is being tried in some region in China is you buy your house from the government and sell it back. This keeps things democratic and market free. Landlords should be cast into the dustbin of history.
Renting is awesome!
Why do you want to force me to buy a house? I don't want to do that. I want to rent one.
They should feel free to purchase and house whoever they want with their tax dollars.
As long as we are taking stuff from people, what makes the most sense is to so it equally through taxes, and compensate people fairly by purchasing houses.
Or even better, the government could pay money to build more houses.
Wedging that initiative is a very uphill battle.
As I've written elsewhere, a housing market has much in common with a traffic jam or a crowded bus. Everyone takes up space, so everyone is part of the problem, based on how much space they take up. The only way to fix it is to make more space or convince people to go elsewhere.
I disagree. Home renting has all sorts of societal benefits and allows folks to be mobile when needed. Perhaps you are just going to be in the area for a couple of years, yet would like to have space for your dog to run, for example. Or need to divide your large, old house up so you don't have to move. It also means young folks can move out of the house and that everyone gets the choice of sharing walls with a neighbor.
Money and income is a much bigger indicator of whether or not someone can buy a house. If slews of people cannot save up money for a down payment, these folks cannot do such a thing. Bad zoning laws and other such things naturally influence it as well.
If I move for a job, should I immediately buy a house? On the other hand what if I know I don’t plan to be in an area for long? Should I buy a house for a year or two? What happens when I am ready to move and can’t find a seller?
>"The property developer behind the conversion of central London’s Centre Point office skyscraper into multimillion-pound luxury apartments has given up trying to sell the flats after receiving too many “detached from reality” lowball offers.
>Mike Hussey, chief executive of the developer Almacantar, said the company had decided to halt formal sales of the flats in the 1960s brutalist tower, now called Centre Point Residences, rather than slash prices.
>The company said concerns about Brexit and possible tax increases on overseas investors were encouraging potential buyers to make offers well below the asking price. The reception at the redeveloped Centre Point building in London’s West End.
>The decision to halt sales means about half of the tower’s 82 flats, which range from £1.8m for a small one-bedroom apartment to £55m for the two-storey five-bedroom penthouse, will now lie empty, adding to a glut of unsold ultra-luxury property across London."
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/oct/31/brutalist-m...
>"The building is 117 m (385 ft) high, has 34 floors and 27,180 m2 (292,563 sq ft) of floor space. Constructed from 1963 to 1966, it was one of the first skyscrapers in London and as of 2009 is the city's joint 27th tallest building. It stood empty from its completion until 1975, and was briefly occupied by housing activists in 1974. Since 1995 it has been a Grade II listed building. In 2015 it was converted from office space to luxury flats."
How did you make it do this conclusion? Renting is legal all over the place and that scenario has happened literally nowhere.
I'm supporting the point pathseeker was arguing against.
My point is that properties, even rental houses, turn over at some point and there is typically enough turnover that it's probably not going to tie up affect the long term percentage of homes for sale.
The externalities have come back to bite society at large in numerous forms. The unmanageable maintenance debt on the infrastructure to support them. The dependence on private enterprise storefronts to supply developments that can close up shop at any point and leave whole regions without access to a proper grocery store. The ongoing maintenance cost upkeeping all the land and structures. The time lost commuting around areas of extraordinarily low population density. The structural macroeconomic expenses in building supply chains to support such a spread out population. The social isolation and resulting depression that plagues the society as people silo themselves off behind their picket fences.
The broader trend must be towards density. That doesn't mean to compromise privacy, or even necessarily individual usable space - but it does mean a move away from stick houses with 4 lanes in between towards 4+ stories with bus and train access.
Terraced housing as seen all over Europe could house single families without issue. London is full of these things.
100sqm is really quite a decently sized home with gardens front and back. That's already a 10x density improvement.
Not everyone wants to live in an apartment surrounded by other people on all sides with no control over the place they live in (because it's all outsourced to a "management company" e.g. nonsense bureaucracy).
As far as I can tell all you're going to do by building tons of flats is entrench some sort of class system. Outside of elite city center locations only proles will be living in apartments.
Most people I talk to are more concerned with eventually renting out their homes they bought decades ago and using that to buy another house, though. I'm really inclined to believe renting homes shouldn't be legal, perhaps, because eventually you wind up with a situation where no one even has the option of buying their own house.