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Re:ECB holds key interest rate at 4% by onlyrealcuzzo on Friday October 27, 2023 @09:15AM (#38038017)
Not sure what's confusing.

>60% of people own a home - it's their largest investment & it's leveraged. They want it to go up, not down.

In Canada, you don't have fixed mortgages. If interest rates go up - they're largest expense is going to go up A LOT. They're going to vote to make sure that doesn't happen.

Nobody cares about people trying to get into the market - unfortunately.

Governments are typically in the business of protecting wealth, not destroying it.

However, recent central bank shenanigans have led them to be able to create wealth by lowering interest rates - and that is distributed highly unevenly.

They don't care. >50% of people are on the winning side of the trade, and majority rules.

Re:ECB holds key interest rate at 4% by toyg on Friday October 27, 2023 @09:36AM (#38038258)
> >60% of people own a home

Er, no. According to this source [0], 66% of people live in owner-occupied houses. If you're a pennyless 20+ year old living with your parents, you're in that number but you're not owning anything - your boomer parents do.

[0] https://madeinca.ca/homeownership-statistics-canada/

Re:ECB holds key interest rate at 4% by didgeoridoo on Friday October 27, 2023 @09:46AM (#38038370)
If you’re 20+ years old in 2023, your parents are most likely Gen X (1965-1980), not Boomer.
Re:ECB holds key interest rate at 4% by onlyrealcuzzo on Friday October 27, 2023 @09:56AM (#38038461)
~35% of Canadians 18-34 live with their parents. There's ~7.75M Canadians in that age group. There's ~8M children and ~30M total adults.

So ~35% of ~25% of adults live with their parents. ~8%.

Congratulations ~58% of Canadians own their own home (worst case) instead of ~60%.

Not sure why kids living with their parents is any different than a married couple living together. Maybe the kid is going to inherit the house. Often times, the kid is living with the parents not out of necessity for the kid - but because the parents are the ones that need help.

You're seeing what you want to see, and distracting yourself from the important part - majority rules, and the majority of people own homes - and a much larger majority of voters own homes.

I'd be impressed if that ~58% doesn't become >64% when you look at voters.

Re:ECB holds key interest rate at 4% by toyg on Friday October 27, 2023 @10:34AM (#38038987)
> Not sure why kids living with their parents is any different than a married couple living together.

Lol; because kids have no agency, of course. They didn't choose where to live and how, their name is not on the deed. They are disenfranchised from the system.

> a much larger majority of voters own homes.

I do not disagree there, but you ignore minorities at your peril. You don't need 50% of voters to create serious political turbulence; in fact, you don't even need 10%.

Re:ECB holds key interest rate at 4% by cmrdporcupine on Friday October 27, 2023 @09:23AM (#38038114)
I don't think I said I was confused by it? I understand the levers in motion.

But it's clear that in the longer term this doesn't work -- even for the majority home owners like you imply.

a) Just because your home appears to go up in value doesn't mean that your home purchasing power has, if other homes have just done the same.

b) It undermines local business because their workers increasingly cannot afford to live where they work. When rent in a 2 bedroom in an industrial town like Hamilton creeps up to $3000, we've hit crisis proportions.

c) it's not sustainable, and will eventually blow.

What it shows is that there's no leadership at the top capable of making adult decisions.

Re:ECB holds key interest rate at 4% by onlyrealcuzzo on Friday October 27, 2023 @09:25AM (#38038133)
No one is going to get re-elected if they pop a bubble on purpose.

The system is pretty much designed not to make "adult decisions".

Re:ECB holds key interest rate at 4% by helloooooooo on Friday October 27, 2023 @09:43AM (#38038329)
We have fixed mortgages. We also have variable. We do not have 30 year term mortgages, but only 5 year financial terms, and sometimes a 10 year.