Comment on 'Investor' is a dirty word for first-home buyers — but are they the real villains?
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 hours agoYeah, that’s right. I remember that campaign. A raft of actual progressive policies to address some of Australia’s most pressing concerns… and it lost. It was a real turning point.
Houses are most people’s primary investment. You can argue about whether or not that ought to be the case but it is the case and can’t be readily undone.
While it’s still getting harder to purchase your first house, everyone who already has a house has an interest in preserving house prices. I don’t have the numbers to hand, but something like 60% of voting Australians live in a home they own, but fewer 20 to 30 year olds own homes than at any time in the last 50 years.
… that’s a complicated way of saying things are harder than ever for first home owners but there’s still no political support to address the core problems.
Taleya@aussie.zone 16 hours ago
Lowering house prices means loans are in danger of default. If a property is worth less than the loan you took out to pay for it, thrn banks start wanting you to close the gap between what you owe them, and what they can get if they take the house in lieu of payment. That’s why you get cunce that overpaid and overloaned shitting themselves at the fact they may have to cough up the difference.
We need more supply. It’s pretty fucking clear at this point that supply and demand are completely decoupled from pricing, so fuckit.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
That’s not really how mortgages work.
If your house is worth less than your mortgage the bank can’t just ask you to cough up. That’s absurd really.
It’s just that if you sell you can’t settle the mortgage with the proceeds.
Taleya@aussie.zone 14 hours ago
Negative equity is absolutely a thing - and if a property with a 900k loan drops to 650,000 for example, then banks consider it a risk
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
I’m not disputing either of those points.
This is absolutely false.
Some loans, “margin” loans, do work how you say and the bank will make a “margin call” asking the borrower to repsy a lump sum to reinstate the margin. However, this type of loan is not generally used to buy residential property.