Considering how crazy expensive accommodations have become the last couple of years, concentrated in the hands of greedy corporations, landlords and how little politicians seem to care about this problem, do you think we will ever experience a real estate market crash that would bring those exorbitant prices back to Earth?
No, unless we separate housing from investment, it will never be affordable. I don’t foresee the political will to make it happen.
This is the biggest issue right here. Houses weren’t always investments and making them investments was a terrible idea that’s now difficult to fix.
Real estate has become a huge part of stock market and GDP figures. People’s retirement funds have become other people’s mortgage and rent payments. Affordable houses for some would mean economic decline for others, and no political party wants to create economic decline.
Maybe, but really the issue is construction of new houses. Cities are much cleaner now so people want to live in them. They used to be filled with factory smoke and animal feces.
Yes, more than now. No I don’t care that you saw some poop yesterday. The streets were literally caked with horse poop. You wouldn’t even notice dog poop.
And most jobs used to be physical, so the average person would have some experience in carpentry. If houses were too expensive, you would find a friend or relative with some expertise and build something yourself. So houses outside the city were cheap because you could build new ones, and houses inside the city sucked (and were cheap).
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Still trying to understand how everything has to be crushed under capitalism. Food. Health care. Housing. Travel. It all there to spin up cash.
Can’t wait till they figure out how to monetize air 🫠
Can’t wait till they figure out how to monetize air
Saw this at a Walgreens last week.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that it isn’t capitalisim that is doing this. Blaming capitalism for fucking the 99% is like blaming science for inventing nuclear weapons. Capitalism is just the process. The focus is determined by key players. Frankly, I’d blame the availability of just about every industry in the stock market for what we are seeing. Companies used to be run by industry experts, who had a vested interest in their business being a sustainable long term asset that would provide wealth to their family for generations. Now, companies are run by “Line Go Up” CEOs appointed by a board of stock holders (mostly financial bros) who just want the stock to look real good before they sell it. There is no concern for the customer, workers, or the general populace beyond government mandated standards. All that matters is making money for people who couldn’t care less or know less about the industry.
Capitalism didn’t ruin food or housing. Capitalists did.
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I honestly think were heading for a total societal collapse. If the people with power and resources were the sort that were inclined to use it for good, they would have done it already. Given that we haven’t seen this, it’s reasonable that this accumulation at the top will continue unabated and that more and more people will fall into poverty and despair.
This is a recipe for revolution, and revolution is largely incompatible with stability, especially in the near term.
I wish this wasn’t the case. I suspect this century’'s deaths will dwarf last century’s.
No way, I think we are going to find out that circus is more important than bread, very soon. When people start needing to eat expired food and bugs, they won’t revolt as long as they have TikTok etc.
god i only hope.
Not without some real force or change, middle class has invested to much of their retirement into the housing market to allow the prices to tank. Those who have are not going to risk it for the have nots.
Imagine storing all of your nation’s wealth in real estate that is actively decaying by the minute instead of into companies that make products and provide jobs. What a stupid fucking idea.
Doesn’t matter. Houses are sold for prices as if they’re still mostly new. If you are good you can beat down the price by a cost of a new roof or a new heating system. Never both. No seller will ever acknowledge that renovation doesn’t make sense and the house should be teared down, actively lowering the land value. And they don’t have to. Someone else is around the corner to buy at any price, turning it into an overpriced rental unit.
No. As the effects of climate change become worse, people will migrate to cooler places, which will only push up prices in those places. Poor people will be left to live in uninhabitable and uninsurable areas, while the rich will get to live in comfort.
Climate change is essentially a class struggle, like everything else in life. As long as the 1% don’t have to suffer, nothing will be done. To get the rich to do something about climate change, it will have to affect them directly.
I also think in addition to what you mentioned people don’t want to address that the population is a problem as well. The earth more than doubled the people living on it in 70 years from all of human history, that’s not just sustainable. You can hypothetically fit 20 people in a one bedroom but just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
limate change is essentially a class struggle, like everything else in life. As long as the 1% don’t have to suffer, nothing will be done. To get the rich to do something about climate change, it will have to affect them directly.
Exactly this. Elysium comes to mind, altough it won’t be a space station in orbit but probably a densely populated blue zone in Western Antarctica defended by turret boats or some shit.
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That’s just decentralized feudalism where we work even more for less
The solution is simple, but will never happen. Make it illegal to own a home you don’t live in.
Or at the very least make taxes paid proportionally more for each home you own past 1
What about apartments? Dorms? Would that make being homeless illegal?
Canada banned foreign ownership, and a bunch of local shell companies popped up. So it is not as simple as it sounds.
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If you don’t live in the building and it’s for permanent accomodation, you don’t own any part of it. Very simple. Feel free to rent out part of the building though if you do.
Whatever mental gymnastics you did to get from there to homelessness being illegal don’t apply.
|Make it illegal to own a home you don’t live in -> Feel free to rent out part of the building though if you do.
Wouldn’t renting out a building you don’t live in be illegal? Or is AirBnB a loophole?
Wouldn’t renting out a building you don’t live in be illegal
Yes. That’s the point. You can own it if it’s your residence even if someone else lives there too.
Also you don’t seem to comprehend the concept of bed and breakfast
So the only apartments in this brave new world would have the landlords literally living in them with you. That doesn’t sound like an upgrade to me.
Your grasp of the distinction between apartment and building is as abysmal as every other concept you mention.
Also you seem to be equally ignorant of the idea of owning an apartment and of social housing.
Ah, you are just a common troll. Got it. I was a bit tired, so I fed you after midnight. Won’t make that mistake again. Good night.
This is so stupid. The fact that people upvote this makes me want to go back to reddit
I think the people here are young and well meaning but don’t have much real world experience yet.
I bought an apartment about 15 years ago. I finally finished paying it about 3 years ago, and recently got an offer to move to Ontario. With the current house prices and what I was offered there (about 80k), I could barely make rent for my family. I really wanted to move but had to say no because of stupid absurd rent prices. What’s weird is that if I wanted to rent the place I bought I would not be able to afford it either. This is bullshit.
This is kind of just something that krept into my mind but I think with a slowing birthrate that we may just end up with too many homes at some point in the next 25 years.
If you’re talking about the US, the slowing birthrate is compensated for by immigration. This is what drives immigration policy and why the US hasn’t fallen into the same demographic slump as Japan has, and China soon will.
Add to this that much of the tight housing market is driven by people around the world investing in US real estate. Some estimates are as high as 30% of homes sitting empty, held by foreign investors, just appreciating.
Between these two things, we are extremely far from being able to visualize too much housing. I hope we get there, though. Because it would fix the high pricing and allow us to demolish some of the oldest, shittiest housing which is only still around because the market is so nuts.
It’ll probably even out as we may not have enough people to build them?
The problem is not affordable housing, there’s plenty of that in the US, the problem is getting people to states where housing is affordable without significant drops in quality of life due to lack of access to services and such.
Like, you could buy land in Detroit for the price of a decent car, put a trailer on it and you’re already on the property ladder, but you’re in Detroit.
No. With climate change more land will be unlivable, there will be more conflicts and more immigration (legal and illegal). Housing will increase because demand is high and supply will shrink further b
After the climate mass deaths, migrations and/or wars, there should be plenty of land.
Although it might not be habitable.
Plenty of unoccupied land, but not unowned.
No. Not because of overpopulation or such, but because the powers that be have simply discovered how lucrative it is to use housing as a business investment, and the fact that everyone NEEDS housing, no exceptions.
This is essentially a supply problem, so the “supply side” of this equation is the side with all the power. The end.
Only if capitalism falls. Otherwise zero chance. Sry.
Well, birth rate is steadily dropping. As people die the housing market could change. There are free houses in rural Japan because their population has been declining and young folks all moved to the cities. In 30-50 years we could see something similar.
you’re not factoring in catastrophic climate change into your equation. in 30 to 50 years much of the equatorial regions will ne unlivable. massive levels of climate refuges will be shifting. we’re seeing unlivable wet bulb temps TODAY. so this isn’t catastrophising. it’s an almost certainty at this juncture.
I dunno, I try not to worry about these things to much. I’m not having kids I do what I can to live a low carbon footprint life. Not really anything I can do about it. Thinking about moving somewhere cooler with more solid natural water access incase of societal collapse… I like to garden and preserve shit anyway.
That’s honestly the best you can do at this point. individual change is really limited when industry is like 85% of the issue. I try and do the same. grow my own food, drive an ev powered by solar panels, don’t eat meat etc. but it really feels futile when it’s a drop in the ocean as far as impact goes.
No.
I never wanted to be a homeowner personally, but earlier this year I noticed that four AirBNB’s had materialized just on my little block in America, so I bought a condo. I paid $40,000 more than it cost ten years ago, but it’s beautiful, I like it, and it gives me the ability to stay where I want to long-term, so here we are.
The Federal Government is not going to act on the forced scarcity of housing, so expect the issue to be handled similar to the way states handled COVID. Some states had good policies. Most had shitty policies, but overall, the outcomes were negative to some degree, and that’s almost certainly what will occur with housing over time.
To be honest, I never saw myself buying anything. But when rents were raised a whipping $500-600 in a single year in my area, I got concerned for the future. I bought a small condo that I could afford (still at a cost far above what it was worth pre-2020…around $40k like yours) because I was terrified at what would happen if rents continued to skyrocket at suck a rapid trend. Never in my life have I seen that happen before.
Idk if I made a good financial decision or not, but it seems both of us took a similar path). We’ll see what the future holds.
I mean I do kind of expect the world to completely collapse within 20 years, so kinda?
A cave or a half-destroyed building in an overgrown city are free right? Doesn’t get cheaper than that.
