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Artificially decreasing housing prices always creates shortages - that's already well understood. The more people who can take advantage of artificially lowered
by lazzlazzlazz 11y ago
Artificially decreasing housing prices always creates shortages - that's already well understood. The more people who can take advantage of artificially lowered prices, the more pressure there is in other parts of the housing market to absorb excess demand.
The cost of decreasing those housing prices are paid for somewhere else in the system.
- yourapostasy 11y agoHm, how is a cooperative / mutual-aid-like financial/organizational structure imposing artificially lower prices? The profit is absorbed by the members in-kind in the form of lower shelter costs in exchange for the responsibilities of shared ownership, and as the shareholding owners it is their right to take out profits in the form they mutually agree upon. Just because the profit is not capital and not in the norm of conventional land owners, I don't see these Wohngenossenschaften are artificially decreasing prices. The Wohngenossenschaften are smarter capitalism, squeezing out more inefficiencies.
- yourapostasy 11y agoTo add to my comment since I can no longer edit, I see nothing incompatible between cooperatives and capitalism, even if the end result is cooperatives "destroy" the profit margin of profit-seeking equivalent enterprises offering the same goods and services. Cooperatives doing this are commoditizing the cooperative owners' complements, to borrow a concept from Joel Spolsky.
- majewsky 11y agoSeconded. I live in a housing cooperative in Germany (the biggest one in the state actually), and as far as I'm informed, the main reason for their low rents is that they fully own their buildings, whereas most private property owners need to pay off their property credits, and corporate property owners additionally need to generate profit for their shareholders. This is not to say that the housing cooperative does not generate a modest profit, which is then used to build new affordable housing, or to modernize existing properties for modern energy efficiency laws.
- anexprogrammer 11y agoMeanwhile using housing as much as an investment vehicle as housing (see London, SF, and numerous other cities) promotes the creation of shortages to drive up rents and capital gain. You can't seriously be saying that the housing market is working as intended in places where pushing 70-80% of the wages cannot rent a basic apartment there. The cost of those artificially inflated housing prices are paid for someewhere else in the system. As increased stress and illness, as migrant workers in illegal occupation, as companies unable to fill lower pay roles, as a lack of nurses, teachers and firefighters, as lack of opportunity for their children. You don't have to adopt a socialist perspective to see it's broken right now.
- brianwawok 11y agoWell a sane person should cap housing expenses at 25% of income at most. If you can't afford a place, time to move. If you can't afford anyplace, minimum wage has a problem.
- ebiester 11y agoThat's the problem. The places that are affordable don't have jobs, and the places that have jobs don't have affordable housing. As soon as a place has jobs, the affordable housing disappears. This sounds like supply and demand, but is exacerbated by investment concerns changing the dynamics of the market.
- wolfgke 11y ago> This sounds like supply and demand, but is exacerbated by investment concerns changing the dynamics of the market. This rather sounds like the lack of jobs that allow remote work is the fundamental problem.
- brianwawok 11y agoThis is not helping it. I bet 50% of office jobs could be remote. What is the current %, I would guess under 1%.