Most of Europe somehow manages to live in individually-owned private apartments. Even if you rent, the landlord will rarely own the entire building.
Great! Housing should never have been allowed to become a commodity.
How do you solve the problem of condo owners not maintaining a property and letting problems fester for a couple decades after which they might be dead or move out?
There is normally a kind of owners assembly in which the various owners can take (binding) decisions or action regarding such problems or anything that concerns the building as a whole. It might not be mandatory in all countries I suppose, but it should be.
Extreme examples include: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collapse
I cannot express how much pain occurred to figure that out! Still occurring.
The good news for them is, in 5-10 years the dynamics will likely look very different. It's already been changing against landlords, for instance with the covid rent holds, rent control expanding in some areas, cost of money rising and changing market dynamics, etc. I expect a lot of landlords will be trying to exit shortly, and the ones who think they can't are going to be trying to squeeze as much return as they can - as their expected future return due to speculative property prices disappears.
So poster - it might be more worthwhile taking an inventory of who is around you (and if the influence they have is helping you), what YOU actually want your life to look like long term and your own values, and figure out how to get there and if you're willing to pay that price or not.
It may produce more bespoke, custom houses though. But they'll only go to those who can afford to do a LOT more to get it.
The reason why that listing has a $15k broker fee is exactly BECAUSE of the weird and hard to deal with reality that is a rent controlled apartment in NYC.
There are probably other off the books type things going on too, IMO.
If you want something transparent and easy to get for the average person, making it a commodity with clear rules is exactly what you want! If you want to incentivize gaming the system, the other direction encourages that.
Regardless of if it is a commodity or not, there needs to be constant vigilance regarding manipulation, scams, etc. Scams and manipulations are easier to hide when goods AREN'T commodities. There are some amazing horror stories (on both 'sides' of the economy) behind NYC rent controlled apartments and living in NYC in general.
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/commodity]
From the link:
"1 : an economic good: such as a : a product of agriculture or mining agricultural commodities like grain and corn b : an article of commerce especially when delivered for shipment reported the damaged commodities to officials c : a mass-produced unspecialized product commodity chemicals commodity memory chips 2 a : something useful or valued that valuable commodity, patience also : THING, ENTITY b : CONVENIENCE, ADVANTAGE … the many commodities incidental to the life of a public office … —Charles Lamb 3 : a good or service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (such as brand name) other than price 4 : one that is subject to ready exchange or exploitation within a market … stars as individuals and as commodities of the film industry. —Film Quarterly 5 obsolete : QUANTITY, LOT"
As it is though, the social housing sector is woefully underfunded, leading to sometimes decades-long waiting lists (at least where I live, in the Netherlands).
In countries where housing was socialized they had a system of residency. You couldn't move to another city, without a permit. If you live in Tholen, you shouldn't be able to move to Amsterdam, unless you mary someone from there or if society determines there's a social need for more workers in the capital.
After all, you can't socialize things while maintaining bourgeois concepts like "freedom of movement". You can't eat the cake and have it too, right?
Sure, maybe not everyone will be able to live smack in the center of Amsterdam, but there’s enough space in other parts of the city, not to mention nearby places like Amstelveen, Hoofddorp or Almere (which, you will know, house mostly ‘overflow’ from the Amsterdam market).
It isn't expensive to build such areas, so there is no reason not to do it except if you want to punish the poor.
The key is which ones insulate the giver (landlord/lender) from non-payment (e.g., which are guaranteed by the government).
In the aforementioned situation, the home owner is both creating equity and saving 25% extra each month.
It creates a very broken situation. But the Dutch government has coddled home owners for four to five decades already. And the real estate market is often zero sum, where advantaging one group disadvantages another.
Time to make home owners bleed for a couple of decades. Balance must be restored.
Why? What value do they provide, other than having a bunch of money upfront? I’d argue there are many, many ways to fund building construction other than for-profit ownership
Providing capital is useful! You can't just ignore that.
And it’s much much much easier to eventually evict someone and lose thousands than to try to get loaned money back from someone who is judgement proof, losing hundreds of thousands.
I think you’d agree that we could fund a national/regional/global system that would provide a sufficient safety net for a system where everyone is paying into some kind of equity for their land. You just don’t agree that it’s worth it / sets the right incentives / a bunch of other reasons I could never think of that I’m sure are sound. But I hope you see why taking the “but everything’s on fire!!!!” macro perspective is appealing in theory :)
Some may consider it the end-goal, to be fair - as eventually you'd drive landlords completely out of business. The problem is that this is antithetical to higher density, because you need landlords of some form if you have anything denser than a duplex. You can have condos perhaps, but not everyone can afford to get into one, or even wants to.
And if there's a lack of landlords willing to rent, there will be a lack of landlords willing to build to rent, and so the housing stock will continue to increase at a glacial pace.
The laws of unintended consequences can strike in weird ways - making it easier to evict may result in more housing in total ...