Comment on Another WSJ banger about why the poors aren't doing more
merc@sh.itjust.works 2 days agoIt’s more than just speculation incentives from housing. I agree that needs to be done, but it’s nowhere near enough.
A bigger issue is that with the complete mess things are in, for a lot of people near retirement age, the only asset they own is their home. That means they’re going to desperately fight to keep house prices high, and ideally to keep them going up and up. But, this completely fucks over anybody who doesn’t yet own a home.
As part of their fight to protect the value of their homes, they’ll block any new construction in the neighbourhood because it will lower the value of their homes. As a result, this blocks new, denser housing construction for anybody who needs a house. The only place where NIMBYs aren’t blocking new housing are suburbs in the middle of nowhere. And, construction companies aren’t going to be building condos or small houses out in the middle of nowhere. Those homes are going to be big, suburban homes. So, the only real hope for someone who needs a house is that someone moves out to one of these big new homes in the suburbs. But, retired people aren’t going to do that. They’re looking to downsize, if anything. So, they’re more likely to just stay in their current homes.
Basically, what’s needed is to do whatever it takes to keep houses from appreciating in value, and to go around NIMBYs who try to block densification. But, to do that, you also have to address the problem that these boomers don’t have a real safety net, and their house is the one thing they own of value. Oh, and the boomers vote and lobby effectively… so…
The housing market is just a big fucking pyramid scheme.
Stocks go up and up and up too, but they aren’t an essential good (e.g. shelter) or even tied directly to any day-to-day utility. They can also be cut into smaller increments by splitting or via fractional shares, so they remain accessible even to people with modest amounts of money to invest.
Real estate as a speculative investment has been hugely detrimental to society.
IMO in a well run country real estate should not go up in value. If your great-great-great-great-grandfather could have bought a house for 3 years of his wages, you should be able to buy an equivalent house for 3 years of your wages, assuming you’re buying a similar house and have similar wages.
The value of a house should go up only because of overall inflation going up. But, it should slightly lag behind inflation, because older houses need repairs to bring them back up to the standard they were in when they were new.
Basically anything other than a house should be a better investment than a house: a treasury, a savings account, a gold nugget.
I mean, imagine if there was anything else in the world that went up in value in a way similar to stocks, but was also something that you used. Imagine if, instead of depreciating immediately, your car went up in value each year. Or, imagine if your clothes were consistently worth more than when you bought them. It’s ridiculous that houses are both something you use and put wear and tear on, but also something that goes up in value every single year.
IronBird@lemmy.world 1 day ago
hey, I dont think nimby’s are as much a problem outside of the biggest-most organized cities.
our democratic participation is so shit across the board all it would take is a decently coordinated ad-campaign to sweep in whatever local government reforms you could want
the bigger issue (imo) is finding someone with the capital/connections required to get big projects like high-density housing started, who isnt also just another rich piece of shit.