Also in the EU country I live in schools are managed centrally and equally, so there is no such thing as a "good school district" I read happening in other countries, which seems to expand inequality and cause financial hardship to their population for no reason other than the ideological assumption that central planning is to be avoided.
Is this actually legit full true? It might be less of a gradient than other places, but in our two years in Norway our children went to two different public schools which were in immediately adjacent suburbs - both good locations, and there was a definite difference in the management of the schools which was visible through all our interactions with them.
The second school was clearly better in our experience, despite being part of the same system.
Norway isn't "EU" for those purposes, but I suspect it's similar. The same way that different hire car offices or different pizza parlours in the same "chain" can have quite different quality despite theoretically operating under the same policies.
(edited to add)
While these things, in theory, normalise out over time as staffing changes in individual schools or individual franchisees - your kids are often only at each school for a handful of years, so there'll definitely be some attempt to find the better ones based on what you hear from parents of kids a year or two ahead... and those with enough money to just move house into the "best" zone will still get their kids into the better school.
Czechia doesn't have multiculturalism so it therefore doesn't have this concept.
So that would be all our schools. :) (Czechs and Vietnamese, respectively)
> and children who will not be disruptive in class
In my experience that seems to depend more on the type of school rather than on location. Gymnasia would be expected to have better-behaved students than vocational schools, even if the students come from the same region. I suspect that has a lot to do with entrance examinations. If you can pass the entrance examination for a Gymnasium, you're much less likely to be someone who had been disruptive in class in the past, and consequently also not likely to be disruptive in class in your new school.
Do Czechia have social classes? If yes do they live in different neighborhoods?
Here in Melbourne, Australia - many schools allow some out-of-district students - as a percentage of their total enrollment - but pretty much all public schools are required to make a place available to any student inside their district (which are drawn based on distances between schools, so they're sometimes pretty weird for transport)
It depends on which school you like. In case of high schools, if you choose a vocational high school (which teaches a specific craft or a group of crafts), as opposed to a gymnasium (a school that prepares you for further university studies), it also depends on your intended future profession.
> Presumably there are limits on how many places are at each school
That's what standardized entrance exams sort out.
> and you need some way to make sure that a child doesn't wind up with the only place left for them being on the other side of a city - so you'd have some degree of locality.
We have good public transport that was free for schoolchildren (and for high school students was very affordable), so this wasn't a problem for me even if my school was on the other side of town.
Do you have children of your own in the school system? I found that my expectations didn't always match the reality either in Australia or in Norway when it came down to actual experience for my kids.
Myself, I grew up in a remote area and was home schooled, and then for the final years of high school I went to the closest school, about 90 min drive away, so I lived in a lodging by myself during the week from age 16.
BTW the fact that districts limiting attendance don't exist means that you don't have to change a school if your parents move, which happened to me at least once. Or, that your parents are prevented from moving if you want to keep your school.
But what if they did? What if our governance said old homes must be updated? Then old homes would probably be worth less because it costs a lot to retrofit sometimes.
I may have some or many of those details wrong, just thought it was another example of how political decisions drive housing prices one way or the other.
You'll find a lot of people trapped in homes they cannot sell. The cost to update very old homes would far exceed what most people can spend out of pocket, and by the time they paid off the debt to do so, the codes may have changed again.
Also, older couples who have lived in one place many years and are now retired generally cannot take out lots of money. Instead of being able to sell and move to a senior community or nursing home, they would be stuck with a property they cannot maintain, compounding the problem.
Essentially, you would be hurting vulnerable people at the advantage of the young and wealthy.
If the updates were mandated as the code changed:
See all of the above, but now you're forcing people out of their homes even faster.
I agree there are challenges in both having homes that appreciate and homes that depreciate.
In the US ex post-facto laws are generally unconstitutional. Our law defaults to grandfathering (there are exceptions), so a change in code applies to new construction, or renovations to existing structures. My experience owning older properties is that this was not a feature. Often what would be a repair in a new property would lead to a major renovation because whatever was being worked on would have to "be brought up to code".
Here are a couple examples showing both an ex post facto change and a non-ex post facto change.
Example 1: The building code is changed to say that all electrical outlets installed in kitchens must be installed with GFCI protection. Your non-GFCI kitchen outlets were installed before this change. In this case fining you for not having GFCI outlets probably would violate the ex post facto law prohibition because you are being fined for something that occurred before the new law--the installation of non-GFCI outlets.
Example 2: The building code is changed to prohibit non-GFCI outlets in kitchens. Your non-GFCI kitchen outlets were installed before this change. Fining you for having non-GFCI outlets would probably not violate the ex post facto law prohibition because you are being fined for something that is happening after the law--having non-GFCI outlets in your kitchen.
(This is all assuming that fines for building code violations are punitive. The prohibition against ex post facto laws in the US generally only applies to changes that increase punitive aspects of laws).
My personal experience having owned multiple properties is that code changes rarely, if ever work the way you are describing. I've actually renovated a few kitchens, and had to deal with GFCI because the law around the permit for construction required us to, not because the code change was applied to pre-existing non-GFCI outlets. It would be impossible to maintain a property if the law worked as you described - the government could declare the kind of shingles on your roof illegal, and take your property for non-compliance, which is exactly why ex post facto laws are unconstitutional.
City centers exist, just look at tourism and public transport. It's more valuable when you can rent out apartment as AirBnb, it becomes more valuable when tourists can't drive, distance from museums and shopping malls increases value and possibility that the land you own could be bought out for development of high density building is what drives the value up.
Housing is not a bottle of water you can buy in groceries. Housing is one of the few things most of us buy on debt. If you increase the amount of debt people can take by lowering risks for banks, the price will rise.
Also there are many other factors like that cities that complain about high cost of housing mostly have draconian municipal building codes and zonings. Even racism has a play in it, it's truly interesting topic to study.
> Housing is one of the few things most of us buy on debt.
Hard disagree there. Most people I know buy phones, cars, bike, washing machines, computers, sofas, desks, and damn near everything else I can imagine on financing plans. I feel like a weirdo because I tend to save up for everything and not accumulate debt! But I also grew up in a very frugal household, so maybe others were raised differently.
In much of Europe the core of a city is much more expensive than the periferia.
In US most houses are made from wood panels and nobody expect them to out live the owner. In Europe most houses were made from bricks and concrete and people passed them to the next generation.
This is just nonsense.
I expect my house to outlive me.. a wood framed house has a 100 year life expectancy but that will be longer with maintenance. We have older homes from the 1800s too. Plenty of people buy homes from the 1920s.
My house in the Bay Area is ~65 years old, it’s timber frame & stucco. When a strong wing gusts against it in a storm, you can feel the house slightly shudder. It’s not going to fall down (I’m reasonably certain, at least it hasn’t in the last 15 years and we’ve had a few storms :) and it’s not “made from wooden panels”, but in terms of solidity and construction, it’s not in the same ball-park (to use an Americanism) as my mother’s house.
Oh, and my house cost today would cost about 10x what my mother’s would…
[edit: it’s kind of wild that your username is what I used to sign into Unix systems with when I was in college. Sjg are my initials and they changed our account-names every semester for some reason]
Those areas are also very close to all amenities like top public transport connections, quiet green spaces, entertainment, good doctors, top companies, good schools, lawyers so walkability is top noch, you don't even need to use public transportation, let alone own a car.
Buildings in those areas are also typically much more spacious and more solid than the current matchboxes being built.
I don't think that's what they were describing. They were describing new homes, not old: I think the "supposed-to-be" pattern is up for 10-30 years after first being built, as the area is still growing and becoming more desirable, then down once the growth no longer outpaces the aging.
That is absolutely not true. There's a reason why it is called center in the first place. Amsterdam, for example is completely flooded by tourists in the center and not so much outside of it.
Look at the real estate market in Singapore or Tokyo where housing prices are more reasonable
Singapore is facing the same issue every other locality is with housing prices: prices have no fundamentals any more and are just inflating upwards out of reach from the median buyer. One can compensate slightly with smaller homes, but that has an impact on fertility rates and other quality of life indicators.
[0]: https://www.straitstimes.com/business/invest/property-no-lon...
If you look at the private condo market (you can’t look at public as the prices are subsidized), it’s not unusual for condos to cost >$2,000 per sq ft in desirable locations. A 750 sq ft 2 bed condo can run $1.5 to $2.0M.
San Francisco is closer to $1,500 per sq ft for a house in a prime location.
I assume a huge factor has to simply be that Japan's GDP and population growth has been basically flat for ~25 years.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/16/japan-reusabl...
That's why, the most expensive part is the land and not the building itself.
Why is it "supposed" to be this way?
It doesn't work this way in a lot of Asia. People don't want old, used homes and they lose value over time. Cities often don't have one specific point in the center (America's zoning is absolutely horrendous and forces this to happen) and so businesses, restaurants, shopping, activities, and so on are fairly equally spread across towns.
When American cities expand, they build more houses farther away but further condense business in the downtown core. But that's a problem that's politically invented and not so much a problem elsewhere.