I don't see how it's irrational to find women's gymnastics more interesting and artistic. You can do that without making a judgment on the difficulty or superiority of one over the other.
There are several movie theaters that serve alcohol. The Alamo Drafthouse is the only place that tries to make the movie going experience a genuine blast.
Definitely not just a rich kid thing. The camps are usually run by small-ish organizations like the local church. And considering the point is to bring in children, there are often options for those who need financial assistance.
Besides, rich kids go on overseas vacations during the summer.
I'm disgusted by the whole real estate market, people buying dozens of apartments and houses just to rent them - and hence increasing prices for people who just want something on their own instead of making rich people richer - is destructive for society, especially for young people. Owning a roof over your head shouldn't require an average person to work their ass for half of their lives.
It wasn't like that. The inflated real estate market is a result of several factors that emerged in the last 15-20 years and combine and reinforce each other:
- A decade of near-zero interest rates
- A lack of investment opportunities: real estate usually has a below average ROI but there is nothing else to invest in nowadays (look at startup valuations to understand how desperate investors have become)
- Too much money printed worldwide (again, look at startup valuations)
- The desire to park money earned (or stolen) in developing countries in a Western country that hypocritically turns a blind eye on money origin because banks, construction industry, and legislators (who own real estate en masse) all are interested in heating up the market as much as possible (looking at you, Canada)
What makes it worse, is that all stakeholders are now locked up in this situation. Increasing interest rates is not possible because it will bankrupt millions of families with mortgage. Western countries are in the late industrial cycle, so creating new investment opportunities is problematic until a new industrial cycle begins. In this situation central banks have no choice but to print money and lie about inflation as long as possible because there is no way this whole situation can be resolved without money losing value.
Without regulation, capital will strangle society and the future to squeeze whatever returns can be juiced from both. This is to be expected with secular stagnation [1].
I point out the observation of current state, absolutely. I also believe in and contribute to progressive policies and candidates (respectively) who will hopefully improve the situation through policy. Please don’t interpret my analysis and understanding of a system as an endorsement of it. What is the point of property and capital if the outcome is dystopian and feudal?
Both people and systems are complex and not boiled down to binaries. Thanks for getting to know me a bit more!
That’s fair, I apologize for misattributing your position.
I just can’t shake the perception that the more power there is in local, bottoms up, grassroots democracy, the less housing (and transit, and everything else) there will be. Seems like we only got what we have because communities weren’t empowered enough, back then, to hold back capital.
Most financial gurus preach real estate as a way to get rich. They don't care about the next generation, fuck them. I have a colleague who earns in dollars, but he buys real estate in his home country (India). He'd buy a few apartments in a building right when a new project is announced. By the time the project is completed (2-3 years usually) the apartment value has already gone up by 10-15% minimum, sometimes more. He'd sell it and move on to the next project. The closest he has ever been to these apartments is the 15-30 mins he spends looking at the brochure. If you have the cash, this is the easiest and safest way to grow your wealth.
It was disgusting to see. I asked him if this doesn't bother him (he was already wealthy, he didn't need this extra money) and he looked at me as if I had two horns. Most of the projects he was buying and selling, was outside the range of almost the entire local population, except the rich. It was a fun game for him.
I know it is an unpopular opinion around here, but rentiers are a cancer. Housing should be a basic right. Rich people can buy and play in the art market (or super yachts or whatever) for bajillion dollars for all I care, but not basic necessities like land, water etc.
Why do you think it's morally bad what this guy does? Developers make a profit, he basically provides loans to developers, takes on risks.
Prices are too high because there aren't enough units being built, not because folks speculate on new developments.
The rentiers are who do nothing yet they earn extra profit due to market failures. (Usually mandated monopolies or emergent oligopoly markets, see ISPs in the US.)
I agree that the end result of only luxury units being built is disgusting. And I think that's absolutely not an unpopular opinion. But it's this way because society, voters, representatives, local governments, etc.. are stuck in a very suboptimal configuration.
Not enough units being built is only part of the problem. There are empty apartments in the buildings that he buys. You know why? Because they are owned by people who reside abroad (US, Australia, Canada etc). These people have plenty of cash, so they buy multiple properties and just let it sit there (if they can't sell it for a profit), visiting for a week every 2-3 years. They are simply pricing the locals out. The only reason they buy is to sell it at some point in future, for a profit.
You asked why it is morally bad. It is morally bad because the prices are artificially inflated. This guy I told you about, he can sit on these empty properties for 5, 10, 20 years if he chooses to, because he doesn't need the money.
So not only people like him inflate the prices, they also let properties sit empty.
None of this is illegal, of course. One can argue it is just business, that is also true. But that doesn't make it ethical or moral. Real estate prices in cities like Bangalore are absurd, thanks to people like him. It is happening in Canada, Australia etc too. Chinese people "parking" their money in NYC, Toronto etc housing markets (it is just one example, I am not picking on Chinese, just to be clear)
Why can they sell for a future profit? Because there prices are going up faster than inflation? What does this mean? Demand grows faster than supply. What does this mean? Not enough units are being built.
... it's microeconomics. It's real estate. One of the most liquid of markets, one of the most well studied of economic fields. One of the most common example in microecon. Literally econ 101, no oversimplification, no simplification.
Sure, we can add other aspects, like vacancy. (Just as there's a natural rate of unemployment, there's a natural rate of vacancy. And if property taxes are too low, then this rate is too high.)
Also it's possible to tax vacant units. As some cities in Canada do.
> This guy I told you about, he can sit on these empty properties for 5, 10, 20 years if he chooses to, because he doesn't need the money.
What's the problem with that? He basically subsidized the construction. That's equivalent to a direct zero interest loan to the developers.
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Yes, we all know that since the market has a tendency to remain irrational longer than one anticipates it's rarely a good idea to bet against very visible trends. Especially if those trends directly emerge from very visibly bad politics.
In this sense I think buying real estate and letting it sit empty is questionable. But, like I said, it's still funding development. High prices still incentivize development. We know how these things go. We know how irrational people are. (How we regularly fail to elect competent governments.) At some point it's impossible to paper over this. Like you said, basic housing should be provided, not something to fight tooth and nail for. But for some reason it's not happening. (And it's not like we don't know how. Soviet high-rise blocs are all over Europe and they are pretty okay, yet somehow the 'projects' in the US failed spectacularly. [And of course we know why they failed.]) And it's hard [but not impossible!] to hold people accountable for looking out for themselves in this crazy world (by using their existing capital to invest into housing).
Historically the price of the Average Home should be about 2x average household annual income.
We are way off that good median today, so either prices have to fall or incomes have to go up.
However the causes of this can not be simply explained away by "people buying dozens of apartments and houses just to rent them" the reality is far more complicated than that. even if you put a ban or cap on the number of rentals a person / company could have it would not solve the housing issue, and likely make it worse.
Interest rates have steadily fallen for about 40 years. So the 2x income idea is badly outdated as it assume interest rates around 15%.
When you consider inflation and interest rate decreases, owning a home today is essentially the same as it was 40 years ago in most markets. There are some outliers but overall the inflation adjusted monthly payment isn’t that different. It’s just that a bigger part of that payment is going to principal rather than interest.
The biggest issue is the outdated idea of putting 20% down. As interest rates fall, down payment percentages should fall. And although you can put less down you end up paying PMI which should be adjusted down too.
>>So the 2x income idea is badly outdated as it assume interest rates around 15%.
I 100% disagree, what is badly outdated is the idea that someone can actually afford 2x income home at 15% interest. Doing that would mean likely the inability to have an emergency fund, or save for retirement.
The metrics banks use today to determine "affordability" put people in terrible situations. the focus is on the monthly payment level not the over all debt load. Which IMO is a mistake. the classic Mortgage payment of 30% gross income is WAY to high IMO.
I mainly agree with your feelings but it is how it is. People look at what they can “afford” per month and bid houses up to that point. Many people don’t consider what they’ll have left to save/invest, etc and they stretch themselves to be the one who gets the house.
I don’t think this is a recent phenomenon though. I’ve heard stories from my parents from 40 years ago and it’s similar. One that sticks out is when rates fell to 12% they were assured they’d never see rates like that again - time to lock in. And of course the banker was right as rates just slowly made their way down over the following 30 years.
So anyone that says “rates can’t stay this low” are just joining the chorus from way back when.
There is a big difference between saying "Rates can stay this low" when they are 12% during a time when the government was not printing money, nor in the housing market so mortgage has to actually be profitable for the lenders
and a time when the fed is literally printing money and giving it away for 0% interest to institutions with the sole purpose of driving up costs so consumer confidence does not collapse...
I will not say rates cant not stay this low, but doing so is highly irresponsible and will cause massive problems in the 10 year time frame.. The longer the fed keep the money printing brrrrrring the worse off we are all going to be very soon
So I do wonder where the equilibrium is between inflation and raising interest rates. That is, inflation gets to a point where homes double in dollar value over a few years but interest rates go much higher creating a situation where anyone with an existing, low rate mortgage is making pretty easy payments (due to inflation and therefore wage inflation) but the real value of their house hasn't really gone up in value due to that same inflation.
Would end up with a win-win situation for existing and future home buyers as opposed to a situation where rates go up but inflation does not which would crust millions of existing home owners and probably lead to regime change, making it political unviable.
Orchestrating this is the difficult part as it couldn't happen over night. But rather as inflation begins to take hold and we see increases in wages, interest rates rise slowly enough to let the housing market avoid collapse.
> low rate mortgage is making pretty easy payments (due to inflation and therefore wage inflation) but the real value of their house hasn't really gone up in value due to that same inflation.
Situations like this are not always bad... This generally will lead to more Home Improvement, and people investing in their homes making them better then dumping them on the market. I find that personally to be better for society instead of letting whole neighborhoods die due to people letting properties run down then moving when the maintenance gets to expensive.
Also inflation does not always track wages. Especially for the middle class. We are seeing that right now in some sectors, where skilled labor rates are more or less flat for the last few years (when adjusted for current inflation may even be dropping) however unskilled labor has seen pretty significant gains recently.
What if we could stage a rental strike with teeth?
Buy up some land in multiple states to build a "campground" that has Yurts for office space (work from home), plenty of places to pitch your own tent, showers, bathrooms, etc... it'd be somewhat less comfortable than 'normal life' but in the end if rental units sit vacant long enough it'll drive prices down, no?
I don't know the original source, but it fairly common financial advice. Here is one source [1] but a simple DuckDuckGo search or Google Search will show many others. Some are starting to recommended 3-4x due to low interest which as I said in other comments I do not agree with.
I don't see how buying apartments and renting them out makes housing more expensive.
I'm the exact opposite. All these emotional people don't make sense.
From my perspective there is a whole bunch of emotional people that wants expensive housing and they complain when someone else i.e. landlords benefit from the thing they wanted. I can't stand the double standard.
The problem has never been properties. Just think about how illogical it is for a house to go up in value even though it is a depreciating asset. It's the land that is going up in value. Expensive land needs expensive rents.
Why is land expensive? Because of all land owners, not just the ones that are renting dozen apartments on land that could at most fit 2 single family homes. Yes, the average home owner is rent seeking just as much as that landlord with 12 apartments is doing.
The worst part is those home owners don't actually want their windfall because they want to live in their home. They do not want the liability of increasing property taxes as their land goes up in value. They'll vote for tax freezes and lower taxes which obviously makes it easier for homeowners and landlords to earn money at the expense of other people.
You know, if there were no owner occupiers and everyone was renting then people would just vote for increased property taxes on landowners to make land a liablity which lowers its value.
In America, we have just made it too difficult to build new houses.
We have short circuited the market equilibrium.
The real way to make money here would be in building new houses. It is somewhat odd to me how this point never comes up. At least where I am, there is absolutely no shortage of land that could have new houses built but there is so much red tape it is not a good investment. This is especially true when we juice the stock market constantly to create a much better alternate investment.
Of course, any real problem in the world is multivariate but we like to dimensionality reduce everything to a single variable.
Hedge funds buying single family homes is bullshit. Not building enough new homes while giving everyone money borrowed from the future and rules to promote home buying has obvious consequences on price and supply though.
I heard a message the other day that there's 3 main vehicles of investment: stocks in companies, bonds in governments, and property (owned mostly by banks and a few rich people).
I've been thinking about it ever since, particularly that money usually flows between these 3. The exponential growth required for compound interest to work is only possible in a shortage. Stocks in companies follow a contract-expand business cycle. Governments grow linearly at best. But property has been increasing exponentially due to an increasing population.
I fear the day when companies realise that they'll make more money by starting a war, which would devastate governments and property. Many people of a similar age are getting married and buying houses, but I don't know feel that the future is stable enough to make either of those decisions. The kind of house I'd want now as a single guy is different to a house that would be suitable for kids (in the right school zone), or a house for retirement. I think the only safe investment is philanthropy: give it all away, and if I'm still alive, hope that some of those people I help now will be able to support me in my old age after economic, political, and environmental disasters strike.
>The exponential growth required for compound interest to work is only possible in a shortage.
Compound interest doesn't need exponential growth. That money is not destroyed when you repay the loan, it's just the profit margin of the banks. If interest rates are above what can be repaid they will have to be lowered until they can be repaid. The 0% lower bound is good enough. It's when people withhold deposits and never use them to pay for anything (you know as dictated by the responsible citizen always earning more than he spends) that you need endless growth because debts must grow fast enough that past debts can be repaid even at 0% interest.
>I fear the day when companies realise that they'll make more money by starting a war, which would devastate governments and property.
Well, the problem is that it's true. The broken window fallacy isn't about doing something smart it's about doing something smarter than what is being done today.
Governments grow in proportion to population (tax base), right?
And you can give it away to someone with a promise that they give it back in the future or give you something that they produce, rather than going through philanthropy and hoping things work out. That’s why investments exist.
The stock market (after IPOs and issuances) is all speculation and detached from reality of day to day operations (except for buy backs, dividends, the stock is only worth what someone will pay for it - and some companies don’t pay dividends…).
Real estate Is growing due to heavily regulation and International Capital. Change these parameters and real estate values Will come back to family purchases
You don't have to own a house to have housing. Home ownership is, not a basic aspect of human life, sadly for many people.
But there is a limit to this idea, and housing is heavily regulated anywhere. Investment banks buying up houses, built for individuals, are just wrong on so many levels.
There is also a province-wide speculation tax that levies a charge on unoccupied or secondary residences. The rate is 2% for foreign owners and 0.5% for locals.
I wonder if thats because most of the Canadian population is localized to their mega cities like Toronto, Vancuver etc while US has a much larger rural population.
Or could it perhaps relate to the Canadian government’s historical support of housing markets through the distortions of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which intervenes heavily in the mortgage wholesale market to provide liquidity whenever the economy stumbles…?
Vancouver is famous all over the world as an attractive city (for example I live in Berlin, Germany, and many people I know would like to visit Vancouver). I've never been there, but I have heard it is next to the sea AND next to the mountains, and it lies in a first world country with a solid economy and good health care. Maybe the prices just reflect demand?
Hasn't British Columbia where Vancouver is at, had terrible weather this year? Looks like Vancouver is actually more vulnerable to the climate crisis compared to other major Canadian cities;
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57654133
Yeah, that’s not playing out well. Vancouver and the surrounding region experienced 800 deaths relating to June’s unprecedented one-in-a-thousand-years heat wave.
If the problem is caused by too many people wanting to live there, rather than empty houses, it wouldn't help. Nobody likes to blame themselves, but everyone living in a high-priced area is partly to blame for the high prices, not just some faceless evil baddies.
But they are in need of a place to live. One of the consequences of the current housing market in vancouver is that housing is unaffordable even as a renter. Those vacant homes, if they were available for rent would drive down rents for everyone and help house some of those unhoused people.
Sure, there will be some downward pressure on rents (not necessarily an actual decrease) but that's not an argument that empty homes are a major contributor to the high prices. It might not even be discernable above the noise. The argument of counting homeless people and empty homes is disingenuous because it seems superficially like that's the whole problem when it's surely not.
Idk, my empathy for middle income people struggling to buy a home is tiny in comparison with the empathy i feel towards people living in their cars or tents. I can’t see a way that we would get to full housing without radical changes to the way land is used and commodified, that would likely have upstream benefits that would help with home affordability
That tax was for the city of Vancouver. I heard it did help to some degree, and may have caused a shift in foreign buyers from Vancouver to Seattle, which is not too far away.
In Australia if I recall correctly, foreign buyers are only able to buy newly built homes. Canada would benefit from a similar rule, it would stimulate more housing and not impact the demand for existing homes.
The apartment I lived in before had a few hundred sold, with most sitting empty. The building managers mentioned most of the owners were Chinese, and would rather not rent it out than drop the rent prices, so they had to constantly carry out inspections on apartments that had never been lived in, for a few years now.
Absolutely depressing. The bit that weirded me out most was the post boxes. They were quite big, but about half of them were overflowing, which had to have been the result of a few years of accumulation at least.
If the buying price was 40-50% lower, I could save up for a deposit in a year or two, but the crazy house prices here in Australia are not getting any better at all. It also feels morally wrong to be investing at the cost of someone being able to afford a roof over their heads, so maybe renting it is for me.
Of course, the city also is going to be hosting the Olympics in a while, so that solidifies my moving away plans!
Buying a house and leaving it empty is incredibly common in China and other Asian countries. You’ll see entire developments with nobody living there and most of the units unfinished inside.
The reason I was told was:1) with crappy equity markets property is a safer investment, 2) not many questions about where the money comes from, 3) very low or non-existent property taxes (costs nothing to hold) and 4) as these countries get wealthier demand for housing only goes up.
For wealthy individuals they can basically buy their residency by operating/investing in an Australian business. After that they apply for a Permanent Residency visa.
Once they are a resident they can purchase whatever property they wish just like an Australian Citizen.
Yes but that's tangential, this person outright bought an existing property as a foreigner knowing full well he's not allowed to. Not a single agent, conveyancer or bureaucrat in the entire process ever tried to stop it from happening. The millions of people who looked at it on the front page of paper didn't think twice.
You can buy citizenship or residency anywhere and get the perks, but that has nothing to do with the point I was making here. The point is that laws are useless until they are enforced.
I agree. I was just adding that even though the laws made to appease the public were created there are still loopholes that invalidate the claim that “only new properties can be sold to foreign citizens.” It’s untrue and even if it was it still ignores the fact that the property market doesn’t distinguish old from new.
Isn't the problem in Australia (and New Zealand) mainly caused by first home buyers? They seem to pay the maximum the bank will lend them with no regard for being profitable or a good investment. Just get the best house possible at any cost. Once they own them, they fill them with lower occupancy than investors do, so the supply of housing effectively decreases. I'm one of those people. My house used to be a rental with 5 people in it. Now we have only 3. My neighbor owner has 1 person in a 3 bedroom house.
The problem is caused by a whole number of factors that incentivise people to buy houses they won’t live in.
Housing in Sydney is becoming a self fulfilling prophecy. The more people spend on it the more it’s value increases hence attracting more investors who drive prices up.
In order for this to stop the majority of the public will need to find this whole situation unacceptable.
I find it absurd that citizens from countries that disallow Australians to buy property can buy residential property here in Sydney. Apparently helping foreign citizens to avoid taxation/capital controls while propping up the construction/banking sector is more important than looking after the average citizens best interests.
And factors that incentivize people to buy houses with rooms they won't live in! I.e. owner-occupiers. I'm trying to say that these people are a major cause of high prices but they're the "us" and the "goodies" and even the "victims" so it's not popular to blame them. Instead, the popular opinion is to blame some outgroup like foreigners, nebulous "rich" people, "evil" investors, etc.
One way for it to stop is for owner-occupiers to stop fetishizing a single family home on a 1/4 acre section and tolerate living in a high density apartment like most people in big cities everywhere else in the world.
They are contributing to the problem no doubt but I doubt they are the major reason. The prices of apartments are also rising. I rented a studio for 10 years in Sydney and the price doubled in that time. I would have purchased it or one similar if not for the lending restrictions that properties had to be over a specific size. So instead of owning my own place I paid off half of the owners investment property while they delayed and refused repairs at every opportunity.
I am not demonising these people. I am just merely saying that the Australian government, the banking industry and Australian society at large believe that it’s more important that a citizen/non-citizen can lease a residential property than it is for an average citizen and wage earner to be able to purchase a property to live in.
I find it funny that at the beginning of the pandemic when people were buying up all the available toilet paper to sell at a markup they were “selfish” but somehow doing the same with shelter is not.
The prices are not being driven up by buyers with 5% down payments. They are being driven up by 100% cash buyers, people moving cash across national boundaries. Just look at the percentage of "all-cash" offers. That tells the whole story.
Considering that foreigners have to buy new build, how do you reconcile that with your view? What evidence would cause you to think it is not foreigners?
> They seem to pay the maximum the bank will lend them with no regard for being profitable or a good investment. Just get the best house possible at any cost.
Where is the direction of causality? I don’t know any first time home buyer that wants to be paying the maximum they can afford given bank lending standards. They are doing so because otherwise they cannot buy a house.
No. They can always buy a house in some small rural town. They chose to buy in more expensive places up to what they can borrow. Some people will buy a house a 1 hour commute from their work because that's all they can afford while others will be only 30 minutes away. I wanted to live closer to the nearby city but couldn't afford it so I ended up in a more distant poor suburb.
In Indonesia, only citizens or businesses with part ownership by citizens are allowed to own property, and I think this is probably the right way to go for most other countries as well.
Unlike the vast majority of other human endeavors, land actually is a zero sum game, at least until we are a space-faring species.
Even if we become a space faring species, land will still be a zero sum game.
* Within the Solar System the amount of land available on bodies with not-crushing-gravity is limited to a few times the Earth surface. This includes hospitable bodies like Venus, Titan or the Moon. The entire area of Mars is slightly smaller than Earth's land area, with climate conditions significantly worse than Antarctica. Sobering map: https://brilliantmaps.com/solar-system-surface
* Inter-stellar travel is subject to prohibitive time and energy costs. Physically speaking there is no way for Alpha Centaurians to visit their Earth properties on a regular basis, or vice-versa. This renders the whole concept of 'property owned by foreign stellar body inhabitants' moot.
Land will stop being a zero sum game if we can ever figure out how to create pocket spaces. But then again, speculation has hit even virtual real estate before, so what do I know?
> Unlike the vast majority of other human endeavors, land actually is a zero sum game, at least until we are a space-faring species.
Around 17% of the Netherlands is reclaimed from the sea or lakes. The largest project (the Flevopolder [1]) was 240,000 acres, reclaimed in the 1950s and 1960s. Most of the land is still just meadows/grasslands (it has 2 towns with less than 350k inhabitants in total).
Meanwhile, in Amsterdam (less than 30min away by car or train) house prices keep increasing by 10%+ YoY. It seems that lack of physical land is not the main limiting factor.
That sounds like a recipe for teardowns, which are already a huge problem in vancouver. Incentivizing turning an old lower value house into a new high value house isn’t going to help people.
Probably a false dichotomy; the ideal is somewhere in the middle. It's reasonable to plan to extract some value back out the commutable, family-size when retiring to somewhere smaller and further out. But it's a problem when this becomes the primary or only available means of funding retirement.
But isn't that also a factor of what people prepared to pay? Like if some people are prepared to pay 50% or more of their income to live in an attractive location, prices will rise so that to live in that location, most people will have to pay almost all of their income for it?
I am not sure there should be regulation to prevent people from doing that, as it represents personal choice and preferences.
This is a cheap sentiment to express. You want righteousness points, specify the system by which you will choose who gets which housing. See if that stands up to scrutiny.
Found the landlord. Also, you have made quite a few assumptions there, friend. There are several good ideas listed here, including raising taxes on unoccupied homes.
Investment is a basic aspect of life; housing has been traditionally an investment to earn a living when you retire, whether individually or as part of a pension funds. The problem appears to be the monetary policies of central banks and rampant public debt, and the low interest rates, inflation, and lack of alternative investments that go with it.
You got it exactly backwards. Speculation on housing beats productive work so interest rates have to be dropped lower and lower until productive work beats speculation and then speculation dies instantly in a crash.
The obvious answer is to just have 100% capital gains taxes on land and let people deduct inflation.
You can rent out rooms in the house you live in, but that is less of a thing now than in the past. In the 1800s/1900s widows, spinsters, old women, that had property would often get by by renting out rooms/beds, essentially being a "mother" to young men or women. Men/women came to the city to work, or school, or whatever and they would rent a room and the landlady would serve meals, do laundry, etc.
Recently, in large parts of the Greater Toronto Area, it has not been legal to rent out rooms in your house. It was and is legal in the original city of Toronto and other municipalities that were later incorporated into the megacity. There is a proposal before city council to legalize it across the city, but so far no decision has been made.
Do any of you have some data to back it up or just some anecdotes and stories? The poster claimed this was a tradition and the goal of owning property, so surely there’s some documentation of this being a global phenomenon?
Treated as an investment, but nothing guaranteed. It’s only beating inflation if the cost of housing is going up. Which it has, but now we’re seeing the problems with that.
This is not the case in some prominent housing markets (London & NYC come to mind). There are owners who purchase the properties as a way to store wealth in the US. These dwellings frequently sit empty most of the time.
I learned about it after a trip to OT301 with some friends from the CouchSurfing meetup in Amsterdam in 2013. Apparently the law has changed though, and now people are being criminally charged for squatting empty buildings.
To be quite frank, if there's one thing in the world that has the potential of making me a communist, it's the current state of the global real estate market.
People can only ask for as much money for houses as people are prepared to pay. It isn't true that speculators can simply drive the price up as high as they want.
If investing in housing is a good way to make money, it is an incentive to build more housing.
Even foreign money could be good. If foreigners pour lots of money into your housing market, you could build lots of cheap houses and sell it to them for lots of money, for example. (not saying you should, just saying foreign investment in housing is not automatically a net loss).
Whether we like or not, streamers are very influential to the gaming community, all of the games that blew up in the pandemic (among us, fall guys...) Blew up because of streaming.
Serious answer: Yes, but it's legal discrimination. If you were doing so based on sex, race, or other protected class it would be illegal discrimination.
