21 ms·

The global housing market is broken, and it’s dividing entire countries

145 points by dane-pgp 4y ago

dane-pgp 4y ago
The first chart[1] in the article shows a stark contrast between the "price to income ratios" of even countries that share a border. That suggests that government policy plays an important role. [1] Reproduced here: https://i.redd.it/7loen1tjhqd91.jpg https://i.redd.it/7loen1tjhqd91.jpg
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Spain, France, Portugal, and Germany seem to be where we could learn a lot of valuable lessons. All EU countries, all next to each other - Germany is bar far the biggest success - also the most densely populated - and yet hasn't seen home prices run away like in France and Spain. On the other side - Portugal hasn't either. Like Spain, it hasn't exactly had an amazing economic boom...
  - spaetzleesser 4y ago
    From what I hear from family in Germany it's got pretty bad lately. Young people don't even dream of owning a home anymore or even moving out from parents' home.
  - allendoerfer 4y ago
    > Germany is by far the biggest success It helps if you compare against a point in time, where you have just absorbed an impoverished communist economy that has to start from 0.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
      Germany has the highest GDP per Capita, the least debt per Capita, and is growing faster than any of the other EU countries in the last 10 years. I think that has little to do with WWII.
      - allendoerfer 4y ago
        I am not talking about the German Empire turning into the Federal Republic, I am talking about the Federal Republic absorbing Eastern Germany (with state-owned property and very little income per person).
- closedloop129 4y ago
  It's "percentage change", not the "house price to income ratio". Without knowing the baseline, the numbers are not really comparable. It's also strange that South Korea is at -40% when the article states: >In South Korea, President Moon Jae-in’s party took a drubbing in mayoral elections this year after failing to tackle a 90% rise in the average price of an apartment in Seoul since he took office in May 2017
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  That chart suggests it isn't a huge deal in the US, but many people here would disagree. Must be vary regional. I do know that I've seen many areas where prices have been declining (I like to browse houses once in a while just to fantasize a bit about my next move).
diob 4y ago
Honestly have no clue how humanity expects to tackle this. We're essentially operating an eternal monopoly game (someone got there before you, sorry future kids, you're out of luck) when it comes to housing. How do we fix this?
- uoaei 4y ago
  Remember when everyone was ragging on China for building "ghost cities" and "subways to nowhere"? You look at those locations today and they are bustling metropolises, engines of innovation and prosperity, a huge boon for the urbanizing middle class of China. The answer is just to build more housing.
- coding123 4y ago
  there are 16 million empty homes in the us. start there. Someone owns them, raise the taxes on them until someone lives in them.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    Are they near jobs
    - coding123 4y ago
      at least 54k of them are in the bay area
      - jpatt 4y ago
        Because nothing in life is allowed to be simple, "vacant" in this context can actually mean a lot of things. Here's a break down of the 2020 figure of 34k +/- 1.6k: > - 6,694 of those vacancies were units currently listed for rent that hadn’t yet found tenants. Another 1,031 were homes for sale that didn’t yet have buyers. > - 6,294 were homes with either current owners or renters that were just not living there. This can happen for any number of reasons: hospital stays, long trips out of town, delayed move-ins, even cases of homeowners who have died but are still technically counted as the resident. > - 8,523 were “occasional use” homes—i.e., these were second homes, vacation homes, some types of short-term rentals, or just any unit that was accounted for but not lived in most of the year. (The Mercury-News references these but classifies them separately from vacant homes, whereas the census considers these vacancies in themselves.) > - Finally, the census designated 11,760 homes in the catch-all category of “other vacant.” "Other vacant." Is a hodge-podge of condemned units, units in foreclosure, units in renovation or seismic retrofitting, a plethora of other corner cases and odds and ends, and homes actually just sitting empty doing not much. (source: https://sf.curbed.com/2020/2/24/21149381/san-francisco-vacant-homes-census-five-year-2020 https://sf.curbed.com/2020/2/24/21149381/san-francisco-vacan...)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
umeshunni 4y ago
Title: Global Actual problem: Seems to be mostly in western countries.
- StevePerkins 4y ago
  Yeah, the Chinese housing market is doing great, lol.
ohCh6zos 4y ago
The places where housing is becoming more affordable to this chart are also places that don't have a lot of immigration, maybe large scale population movements have negative externalities.
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
  higher wages and lower property prices are beneficial only for the unwashed plebeian masses. the ruling class, with their wealth and income tied to properties and businesses, needs the exact opposite.
fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
What happened is the financialization of houses. They didnt use to be thought of as securities. But an investor can go borrow a billion dollars at a 3% interest rate, buy a ton of homes, and become rich. All he needs is the credentials to do that. As long as interest rates stay below inflation rates, there is profit to be made for investors. We cant see them, but they are on yachts, essentially enslaving americans via an abstract financial interface. This is not capitalism, its money being too cheap from central bankers.
- yobbo 4y ago
  Yep. As long as interest rates are held below the inflation rate, this outcome is inevitable.
  - fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
    It's very simple, not sure why we need so many complex discussions on it.
rsaz 4y ago
One thing I wish was brought up more is the missing middle [1]. Having denser neighbourhoods is good for a ton of reasons, and having more available housing units would be super helpful for this. Of course, zoning laws restrict this heavily, and car dependent infrastructure also encourages single-family homes with space for multiple vehicles easily accessible in a driveway/garage. Obviously this wouldn't be a silver bullet, but I really wish North American urban planning would allow for more freedom in housing structures, and put more emphasis on public transportation. Hard to have faith though. [1] https://missingmiddlehousing.com/ https://missingmiddlehousing.com/
- frumper 4y ago
  Great news for Californians. All single family homes are now zoned for up to 4 dwellings. I doubt it'll change much, but we'll see if the missing middle proponents are on to something.
- softfalcon 4y ago
  We have this here in Canada. What happens is that investors buy up the entire unit/condominium/apartment-tower and rent it out. Many of them don't even care if they have 50% vacancy because the investment of the property/land is worth more to them than anything. Lastly, many of these investors are foreign or even money laundering and just want to dump their massive cash flow into some kind of a physical investment (in this case, Canadian land/property). We have whole malls that are just ghost towns sitting in the Northern part of my city that aren't even properly built (incorrect piping/HVAC) to function solely for the purpose of legitimizing money laundering and foreign ownership of Canadian land. Building more housing is good, I won't argue that, but the players in this market are so rich they will just buy ALL of it the moment it appears on the market and our local builders are all so corrupt they would love nothing more than to sign a deal to build 20,000 apartment units and immediately sell them all over to these crooked investors. There are literal video recordings of our 3 major builders bragging to one another about how "they own this city" and "we can keep selling these empty properties forever, the city can't do anything about it" and "if anyone opposes us, we'll show them who owns whose ass". This is becoming so obvious it's ridiculous here. We have had a 15-30% vacancy rate for both business and residential near our downtown sector for the last 3 years during COVID, yet we have a record high of buildings being built. The foreign investment is so huge that they just keep building even when there is no market for the space. They don't care, it's all about moving money out of foreign assets into concrete assets here in Canada. Canada has become the money laundering capital of the world: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/sabrina-maddeaux-canada-became-a-money-laundering-capital-while-ottawa-slept https://nationalpost.com/opinion/sabrina-maddeaux-canada-bec...
endisneigh 4y ago
I’ve become convinced there’s no solution. It takes a lot of money and time to build. If you make it easy to build then there’s less money to be made and therefore less will be built. Make it hard to be build and there will be immense pressure to build but it won’t happen. The two ends are constantly trying to find an equilibrium. The only way to make housing affordable is to overbuild, but private money won’t do it for obvious reasons. The government could subsidize building but in essence that’s just making rich people richer. Perhaps that’s the only way short of forcing people to build (like prison labor or something horrible like that). —- I used to believe that eliminating zoning and increasing density is the solution (still think so), but induced demand is a thing. When I studied this I found no evidence denser areas are cheaper. In fact the denser areas tend to be more expensive from my own research.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  I think solution could be some sort of government loan or subsidy scheme. Aim for some low level of profitability 2-5%. And make it low risk enough.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    There are enough housing subsidies aimed at the wealthy.
- gmfawcett 4y ago
  In fairness you haven't ruled out all solutions, only the capitalist ones.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  Another issue I see is that many "regular" people have a lot of their money tied in their house, via mortgages. If housing suddenly becomes cheaper for whatever reason, so will their properties. I can see why the owners wouldn't want that.
  - sleepdreamy 4y ago
    Majority of regular/middle-class folks have their equity tied to their home. I agree (I am one of them)
rr888 4y ago
I think the Baby Boomers slowly downsizing and dying is going to be an earthquake on house prices. I know lots of young families in apartments and small houses while their baby boomer parents have big suburban houses. Why not hang on to your big house if you're healthy enough and it keeps going up in value every year. Once people start selling it'll become a tidal wave of selling - once house prices go down every year for 5-10 years in a row no one will want to own.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  The thing to remember about boomers is there are even more millennials than there were boomers. The hoped-for expiration of the former will only partially satisfy the appetites of the latter, and much later in their lives than they would have liked.
  - rr888 4y ago
    Good point, Demographics look pretty stable actually isn't isn't totally what I expected. I wonder what the regional pyramids look like eg NE vs midWest vs South vs West. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...
dandanua 4y ago
Feudalism is coming. Then slavery. Then savagery. Somehow Russia is ahead of time and went strait to the wild stance.
- sleepdreamy 4y ago
  We've actually never left the Feudalism stage IMO. Just with iPhones & Netflix sprinkled in for some light distraction
lvl102 4y ago
Break down stupid political borders. Allow people to move freely. Have one currency. Solves 90% of all economic problems.
- sleepdreamy 4y ago
  Have you studied Economics? Just curious - There are thousands of nuances and reasons this will never work. Life is not so Black & White
- deepfriedbits 4y ago
  Can't imagine this is a practical solution.
- calebm 4y ago
  There's a reason cells have walls.
rootusrootus 4y ago
Is this really a housing problem, or an income problem? I suppose a little of both, but I doubt we can build our way out of stagnating incomes over the past few decades. They have to be in equilibrium.
parkingrift 4y ago
In my anecdotal experience in NYC+NYS the vast majority of buyers are investors, not homeowners. Properties are bought up to be flipped, added to the short term rental market, and/or bought as secondary/tertiary homes. I can think of a few things that would work toward resolving this that would not destroy existing homeowners. 1. Statewide bans on short term rentals 2. Huge increase in short term rental taxes to the point where it's barely profitable 3. Adjustable property taxes based on vacancy. Something like a 5x property tax multiple for 50% vacancy and scaling down to 1x for 5% vacancy. These proceeds should go toward a public/private partnership to build more housing.
- itsoktocry 4y ago
  >Statewide bans on short term rentals I live in Canada, but we have the same issues. It's going to be a very interesting cross-generational political battle. The sheer number of "normal people" who own investment properties and AirBNBs now is extraordinary. I know people scraping by working average jobs that own multiple units. Meanwhile, the younger generation can't buy a home. We've normalized the idea that real estate can't lose and everyone should own multiple properties, and we can't come back from that without one side suffering a ton of pain.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    At the very least we can kick out Chinese and Russian "investors" that only want a way to keep their cash safe from their dictatorship governments. That should drive down our prices and put some pressure on the elites to push for better governments at home.
    - IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
      You forgot most kingdoms from the gulf. Of course, a major answer to this problem is to simply ban non-americans from buying american property, but that will implode real estate and hurt a lot of homeowners. That is the voting middle-upper class. The majority are voters. And they won't want any of that.
TedShiller 4y ago
Reminder: Owning a home (vs renting) is not a human right. Housing is, though. Everyone should have a roof over their head. Two different things
acd 4y ago
It's the central banking system that is broken. Through quantitative easing central banks pushed down interest rates artificially low. Low bank interest pushed up housing prices to the sky. Most home buyers look at the monthly interest payment expenses which determine house prices. Now that we have high inflation(partially created by quantitative easing) central banks will have to raise interest rates. The reason for higher central bank interest rates is an annual is two percent inflation target. High-interest rates will push housing prices down. Its like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Central banks will have to fix the inflation monster that they partially created. Another part is globalization was causing deflation pressure but central banks measure domestic inflation on a global wage market. Now that trend has partially changed due to protectionism.
- skybrian 4y ago
  Low interest rates are good for housing developers too, so the question is why it hasn't resulted in more new homes being built? Perhaps one reason is that they did build a lot of housing in 2008 and got burned? (At least, in less fashionable places.)
  - slaw 4y ago
    Could you elaborate why low interest rates are good for housing developers?
    - skybrian 4y ago
      They borrow money to fund construction and don't earn income on it until much later, after leasing or selling completed properties. The higher the interest rate, the more it costs, and delays mean more interest paid while waiting.
- slaw 4y ago
  > central banks will have to raise interest rates Looks like central banks are not going to raise interest rates to even match inflation.
personjerry 4y ago
Why is it so important to own a house?
- nprateem 4y ago
  So you don't bleed money and could find yourself out on the street with 2 months' notice.
- bontaq 4y ago
  It's pretty nice when you're paying off your mortgage instead of your landlords.
- nly 4y ago
  Because nobody spending 50% of their take home pay on rent will ever be able to retire. This all basically boils down to defined benefit pension schemes being a thing of the past. My dad worked for the same company for 30 years, paid off his 3x gross income mortgage, and retired on a final salary inflation-linked pension. I'm earning 3x as much as my dad ever did, still borrowing almost 5x my salary over 33 years for a worse/smaller home, and have no guarantees on my pension beyond what I sacrifice and what the stock market yields.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    what do you think pension funds invest in?
- Ekaros 4y ago
  I'm not sure it is absolutely needed. But it is sensible long term investment even with flat property values. On other hand we could move toward to public housing with prices levels aimed to cover initial investment and maintenance.
- xdennis 4y ago
  Freedom. You don't have to move everything in one month because your landlord wants you out. You can drive a screw through the wall and not have your landlord shout at you.
twblalock 4y ago
50 years ago housing was affordable in areas that are now expensive, like Silicon Valley and Vancouver. That outcome did not require land value taxes or targeted taxes on landlords or bans on foreign investment or other novel solutions like a lot of posters here are suggesting. It was just easier and cheaper and more profitable to build housing back then, and the market took care of the rest. What changed? It got harder to build because the government empowered NIMBYISM and nonsense “environmental impact” rules (hint: nobody actually cares about the endangered burrowing owls, they just don’t want affordable housing near their homes). The affordability crisis was caused by government. Any solution that piles even more government on top of the current government-caused problem is a no go — especially pie-in-the-sky solutions like land value taxes. The only solution is to make it easier to build. But that's politically painful so it’s not going to happen. We even see places like California making it more expensive to build by requiring solar panels on new homes, in order to virtue signal about climate change without actually solving anything. So, invest in expensive areas, they are only going to get more expensive!
- parkingrift 4y ago
  There are 130 million more people in the US today than there were 50 years. What changed? 130 million people is what changed.
  - raverbashing 4y ago
    You had 50 years to build housing for those, that's a trivial problem if not for the NIMBYs
  - theplumber 4y ago
    So there is not enough land for all? Have you considered building a new town and you couldn't find land?
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      You know what China has been doing. And then they were laughed for doing it and told that it was stupid. They might have overdone it, but still. They did exactly build entirely new cities.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
> The result, in America as elsewhere, is a widening generational gap between Baby Boomers, who are statistically more likely to own a home, and Millennials and Gen Z — who are watching their dreams of buying one go up in smoke. Sigh, Gen X, forgotten again.
- nineplay 4y ago
  Sigh? Thank goodness we're forgotten. Few things are more tiresome and pointless than these generational spats.
qeternity 4y ago
Plenty of observations and suggestions in the comments, but most missing the core issue: we turned housing into a retirement scheme, and encouraged investment, which of course inflated prices. We then concocted a lot of policies to sustain demand, and hamper supply, the keep this scheme afloat. Housing cannot be both affordable and a good investment.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  > we turned housing into a retirement scheme You make it sound like a nefarious plan or some backroom deal. It seems more like real estate became our de facto retirement scheme due to everything else paling in comparison. Pensions? Gone. Savings? Nope, no interest (ha ha) in that. Stock market? Sure, but its volatility prevents sane people from putting their entire nest egg into it....
  - thicknavyrain 4y ago
    If you're in the U.K., I'd highly recommend reading "Rethinking the economics of land and housing" which outlines the history of several clear policies decisions that _encouraged_ housing as an investment which (along with supply restrictions) are in turn why it outperforms lots of other forms of investment. It's not just the market speaking, it's been shaped through lots of conscious decision making that can be undone.
  - qeternity 4y ago
    It wasn’t a nefarious backroom deal. But it was a very conscious choice by many governments, spearheaded by the UK and US. And once we ventured a little bit down that path, it’s impossible to unwind bc nobody wants to lose money on their home.
  - userabchn 4y ago
    the word "scheme" has negative connotations (of something shady) in America that it doesn't have in other countries. Also, it is very much an intentional policy of governments in some countries to encourage people to invest in a house as their retirement savings.
crazygringo 4y ago
Setting aside geographical variation, I'd like to understand better is how much of this problem is due to: a) Not enough housing supply to meet population demand (in a purely physical people-in-homes allocation sense) vs. b) Too much housing wealth tied up in boomer ownership (e.g. overly large houses with just 2, 1, or even 0 people living in them most of the time) In other words, to what extent does the solution correspond to: a) We absolutely need to build more, there's no other way vs. b) Significantly higher redistributive taxes (e.g. land/property taxes, wealth taxes) to incentive people to both "right-size" their living situation as well as compensate for how lucky the boomer generation happened to be in terms of housing I'm sure the answer is "both" to some extent, but I'm just wondering if there's hard data that actually compares the two rather than just opinion.
rcarr 4y ago
How about an exponential land tax? Own one property: no tax. Own two: 1 percent tax on each. Own three: 2 percent on each. Own four: 4 percent on each. Own five: 8 percent on each. Still allows for genuine homeownership, a home in a place convenient for work and a holiday home an achievable aspiration for high performers whilst making mass property ownership uneconomical.
- rcarr 4y ago
  Also: ban foreign citizens and non-doms from owning more than one property.
  - rcarr 4y ago
    Going through my comments and realised that 'foreign citizens' could be interpreted wrong by anyone who comes across this in the future. I meant anyone who doesn't live in the same country as the property they are purchasing e.g wealthy citizens of other countries who are buying property as investment vehicles rather than residences.
- Zhenya 4y ago
  How does that stop someone from creating multiple LLCs and having the LLC own a home each, for example?
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Exponential fees on LLC creation.
  - jlokier 4y ago
    Similar to how some tax thresholds are determined on a company-group basis, except grouping by beneficial owner (the "ultimate" owner, i.e. the person who owns the LLCs).
  - xdennis 4y ago
    Don't allow LLCs to own homes.
swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
Higher taxes on property - and higher taxes on unused, vacant, and especially abandoned lots and non-primary residences would go a long way I think to increasing housing supply. As it is, it's a good investment because supply is globally constrained. Investors have parked a huge portion of the world's wealth into land. It's obvious when you talk to investors. This investment can spur development, or it can greedily be sat on.
PhineasRex 4y ago
The problem is right there in the title: Global Housing Market. The commodification of housing has been disastrous. The cost to develop new housing and the length of time it takes has means market manipulation is always going to be an easier path to profitability. Why would anyone build something new when they can just sit on what they have and let it appreciate while renters subsidize the mortgage and taxes. Imagine if you could just put iron ore in a warehouse and make a 25% return every year, we'd have no steel!
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Can state level actors do market manipulation of countries to destabilize them? I mean, look at all the private equity buying up properties in the US, causing our shortages, who is funding that? Is that an actual threat to security? It used to be we were paranoid about foreign ownership of production, well we don't make anything anymore, so this is another means.
system16 4y ago
Every time this issue comes up, people seem to think there is a single silver bullet that will resolve it. This is a perfect storm problem and will take a solution from multiple angles: - Restrict and tax short-term rentals. - Introduce a scaling speculation tax on three or more properties to remove the incentive for small-medium size investors to hoard. It will return supply back to the market. - Limit residential real-estate purchases to citizens and permanent residents (i.e. taxpayers). - Remove barriers to development to increase supply. Ignore the NIMBYs. - Cap rental increases. - Introduce a vacancy tax. - Limit immigration until the housing issue is resolved. - Eliminate "blind bidding" from real estate sales. I doubt any government has the political will to truly tackle this though, especially when most politicians are landlords and speculators themselves.
- dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
  Each of these would and is causing uproar in every country or region that introduced or tried to introduce similar laws. And the last one is plain impossible to realize. How do you even approach limiting immigration in the modern world? I'd argue a lot could be done by revitalizing deserted areas, where houses exist but people are gone. Usually there is one primary cause: find it and try to find a solution, even if it takes years.
- thelastgallon 4y ago
  Or copy Singapore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
planarhobbit 4y ago
I suspect a lot of people are ok and happy in fact with things being “broken” in their favour.
vannevar 4y ago
The housing market is not "broken", it's working exactly the way it's expected to in a relatively unregulated capitalist system. In unregulated capitalism, the wealthiest segments of the population get richer at a faster rate than poorer segments, which means the rate at which they can purchase property increases over time faster than their less wealthy peers. Eventually, a tiny fraction of the population owns everything and rents it out to the rest at higher and higher rates. Building additional housing can provide temporary relief but does not address the underlying mechanism. Only retooling our economic systems to moderate the rich-get-richer feedback loops can ultimately fix the problem.
- alexb_ 4y ago
  In an unregulated capitalist system, supply increases to meet demand. In our regulated hellscape, it's impossible to build anything due to existing owners using the government to prevent supply increases.
  - vannevar 4y ago
    >In an unregulated capitalist system, supply increases to meet demand. But demand comes from capital, not from the housing needs of individuals. In one tier of the economy, a house is a home; for another, that same house is an investment. The poor cannot afford to outbid the wealthy for housing, and the gap is widening at an accelerating pace. That's why building more houses won't solve the problem in the long term, because the rich are getting wealthier much faster than the poor (or middle class), and any increase in supply will go to serve their demand for rental property.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
  Extremely cheap interest rates caused by the government is not capitalism. It's actually socialism, cheap money to prop up zombie businesses.
closedloop129 4y ago
>The city government on Friday announced it’d buy nearly 15,000 apartments from two large corporate landlords for 2.46 billion euros ($2.9 billion) to expand supply. How do you expand supply if you buy existing apartments? If they had taken the $2.9 billion and had built 15,000 new apartments, that would have expanded the supply.
switch007 4y ago
IMO it's the single most important immediate issue in many countries and politicians don't care, because they're landlords. It's utterly depressing. People are making suggestions here, many of which require political will which does not exist.
temporallobe 4y ago
In central Florida, there are now entire rent-only single-family home communities. Yes, entire neighborhoods are owned by investors similar to apartment complexes. Apparently, renters will eventually have the right to be able to purchase the home, but until that point they won’t be enjoying any of the benefits of home ownership and in the end it will be costlier to convert that home to ownership, while the developer rakes in the cash. This is a very troubling trend that I believe could be very harmful to the housing market.
bell-cot 4y ago
Amusing Idea: Have the minimum wage scale with the local cost of housing. So in (say) Ghostville, NE, where rural population decline has dropped the rent on a livable house to "$0 plus property tax and utilities if you seem trustworthy", it's Federal minimum wage. Vs. places like SF and NYC it's more like $72.50/hour - for everyone - landscapers, day care workers, grocery clerks, deliver drivers, janitors, you name it. So the NIMBY's are free to build up property price bubbles to their heart's content - they just can't expect to be waited on hand & foot for unlivable wages when they do it.
wellthisisgreat 4y ago
Ban housing as investment
more_corn 4y ago
This was a nice snapshot of the global housing market.
fulafel 4y ago
This is talking about the biggest cities in respective countries. Most people don't live in them, but their relative pull has increased. So this is data picking to overstate the effect.
xpil 4y ago
"The cost of an apartment in Shenzhen, China’s answer to Silicon Valley, was equal to 43.5 times a resident’s average salary as of July" I stopped reading after this. There is no mention whether the cost means a monthly rental price or a purchase price, or if the considered resident's salary is monthly or annual, gross or net. Buying a house that costs 44x my monthly gross salary is nothing unusual and well below bank mortgage limits. Renting an apartment that costs 44x my annual salary per month makes no sense. Journalists should put more effort into data quality and focus less on the sensational part. Unfortunately, the latter sells better.

145 points by dane-pgp 4y ago

The first chart[1] in the article shows a stark contrast between the "price to income ratios" of even countries that share a border. That suggests that government policy plays an important role. [1] Reproduced here: https://i.redd.it/7loen1tjhqd91.jpg https://i.redd.it/7loen1tjhqd91.jpg

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Spain, France, Portugal, and Germany seem to be where we could learn a lot of valuable lessons. All EU countries, all next to each other - Germany is bar far the biggest success - also the most densely populated - and yet hasn't seen home prices run away like in France and Spain. On the other side - Portugal hasn't either. Like Spain, it hasn't exactly had an amazing economic boom...
- spaetzleesser 4y ago
  From what I hear from family in Germany it's got pretty bad lately. Young people don't even dream of owning a home anymore or even moving out from parents' home.
- allendoerfer 4y ago
  > Germany is by far the biggest success It helps if you compare against a point in time, where you have just absorbed an impoverished communist economy that has to start from 0.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Germany has the highest GDP per Capita, the least debt per Capita, and is growing faster than any of the other EU countries in the last 10 years. I think that has little to do with WWII.
    - allendoerfer 4y ago
      I am not talking about the German Empire turning into the Federal Republic, I am talking about the Federal Republic absorbing Eastern Germany (with state-owned property and very little income per person).
closedloop129 4y ago
It's "percentage change", not the "house price to income ratio". Without knowing the baseline, the numbers are not really comparable. It's also strange that South Korea is at -40% when the article states: >In South Korea, President Moon Jae-in’s party took a drubbing in mayoral elections this year after failing to tackle a 90% rise in the average price of an apartment in Seoul since he took office in May 2017
rootusrootus 4y ago
That chart suggests it isn't a huge deal in the US, but many people here would disagree. Must be vary regional. I do know that I've seen many areas where prices have been declining (I like to browse houses once in a while just to fantasize a bit about my next move).

diob 4y ago

Honestly have no clue how humanity expects to tackle this. We're essentially operating an eternal monopoly game (someone got there before you, sorry future kids, you're out of luck) when it comes to housing. How do we fix this?

uoaei 4y ago
Remember when everyone was ragging on China for building "ghost cities" and "subways to nowhere"? You look at those locations today and they are bustling metropolises, engines of innovation and prosperity, a huge boon for the urbanizing middle class of China. The answer is just to build more housing.
coding123 4y ago
there are 16 million empty homes in the us. start there. Someone owns them, raise the taxes on them until someone lives in them.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Are they near jobs
  - coding123 4y ago
    at least 54k of them are in the bay area
    - jpatt 4y ago
      Because nothing in life is allowed to be simple, "vacant" in this context can actually mean a lot of things. Here's a break down of the 2020 figure of 34k +/- 1.6k: > - 6,694 of those vacancies were units currently listed for rent that hadn’t yet found tenants. Another 1,031 were homes for sale that didn’t yet have buyers. > - 6,294 were homes with either current owners or renters that were just not living there. This can happen for any number of reasons: hospital stays, long trips out of town, delayed move-ins, even cases of homeowners who have died but are still technically counted as the resident. > - 8,523 were “occasional use” homes—i.e., these were second homes, vacation homes, some types of short-term rentals, or just any unit that was accounted for but not lived in most of the year. (The Mercury-News references these but classifies them separately from vacant homes, whereas the census considers these vacancies in themselves.) > - Finally, the census designated 11,760 homes in the catch-all category of “other vacant.” "Other vacant." Is a hodge-podge of condemned units, units in foreclosure, units in renovation or seismic retrofitting, a plethora of other corner cases and odds and ends, and homes actually just sitting empty doing not much. (source: https://sf.curbed.com/2020/2/24/21149381/san-francisco-vacant-homes-census-five-year-2020 https://sf.curbed.com/2020/2/24/21149381/san-francisco-vacan...)

deleted 4y ago

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umeshunni 4y ago

Title: Global Actual problem: Seems to be mostly in western countries.

StevePerkins 4y ago
Yeah, the Chinese housing market is doing great, lol.

ohCh6zos 4y ago

The places where housing is becoming more affordable to this chart are also places that don't have a lot of immigration, maybe large scale population movements have negative externalities.

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
higher wages and lower property prices are beneficial only for the unwashed plebeian masses. the ruling class, with their wealth and income tied to properties and businesses, needs the exact opposite.

fdgsdfogijq 4y ago

What happened is the financialization of houses. They didnt use to be thought of as securities. But an investor can go borrow a billion dollars at a 3% interest rate, buy a ton of homes, and become rich. All he needs is the credentials to do that. As long as interest rates stay below inflation rates, there is profit to be made for investors. We cant see them, but they are on yachts, essentially enslaving americans via an abstract financial interface. This is not capitalism, its money being too cheap from central bankers.

yobbo 4y ago
Yep. As long as interest rates are held below the inflation rate, this outcome is inevitable.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
  It's very simple, not sure why we need so many complex discussions on it.

rsaz 4y ago

One thing I wish was brought up more is the missing middle [1]. Having denser neighbourhoods is good for a ton of reasons, and having more available housing units would be super helpful for this. Of course, zoning laws restrict this heavily, and car dependent infrastructure also encourages single-family homes with space for multiple vehicles easily accessible in a driveway/garage. Obviously this wouldn't be a silver bullet, but I really wish North American urban planning would allow for more freedom in housing structures, and put more emphasis on public transportation. Hard to have faith though. [1] https://missingmiddlehousing.com/ https://missingmiddlehousing.com/

frumper 4y ago
Great news for Californians. All single family homes are now zoned for up to 4 dwellings. I doubt it'll change much, but we'll see if the missing middle proponents are on to something.
softfalcon 4y ago
We have this here in Canada. What happens is that investors buy up the entire unit/condominium/apartment-tower and rent it out. Many of them don't even care if they have 50% vacancy because the investment of the property/land is worth more to them than anything. Lastly, many of these investors are foreign or even money laundering and just want to dump their massive cash flow into some kind of a physical investment (in this case, Canadian land/property). We have whole malls that are just ghost towns sitting in the Northern part of my city that aren't even properly built (incorrect piping/HVAC) to function solely for the purpose of legitimizing money laundering and foreign ownership of Canadian land. Building more housing is good, I won't argue that, but the players in this market are so rich they will just buy ALL of it the moment it appears on the market and our local builders are all so corrupt they would love nothing more than to sign a deal to build 20,000 apartment units and immediately sell them all over to these crooked investors. There are literal video recordings of our 3 major builders bragging to one another about how "they own this city" and "we can keep selling these empty properties forever, the city can't do anything about it" and "if anyone opposes us, we'll show them who owns whose ass". This is becoming so obvious it's ridiculous here. We have had a 15-30% vacancy rate for both business and residential near our downtown sector for the last 3 years during COVID, yet we have a record high of buildings being built. The foreign investment is so huge that they just keep building even when there is no market for the space. They don't care, it's all about moving money out of foreign assets into concrete assets here in Canada. Canada has become the money laundering capital of the world: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/sabrina-maddeaux-canada-became-a-money-laundering-capital-while-ottawa-slept https://nationalpost.com/opinion/sabrina-maddeaux-canada-bec...

endisneigh 4y ago

I’ve become convinced there’s no solution. It takes a lot of money and time to build. If you make it easy to build then there’s less money to be made and therefore less will be built. Make it hard to be build and there will be immense pressure to build but it won’t happen. The two ends are constantly trying to find an equilibrium. The only way to make housing affordable is to overbuild, but private money won’t do it for obvious reasons. The government could subsidize building but in essence that’s just making rich people richer. Perhaps that’s the only way short of forcing people to build (like prison labor or something horrible like that). —- I used to believe that eliminating zoning and increasing density is the solution (still think so), but induced demand is a thing. When I studied this I found no evidence denser areas are cheaper. In fact the denser areas tend to be more expensive from my own research.

Ekaros 4y ago
I think solution could be some sort of government loan or subsidy scheme. Aim for some low level of profitability 2-5%. And make it low risk enough.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  There are enough housing subsidies aimed at the wealthy.
gmfawcett 4y ago
In fairness you haven't ruled out all solutions, only the capitalist ones.
vladvasiliu 4y ago
Another issue I see is that many "regular" people have a lot of their money tied in their house, via mortgages. If housing suddenly becomes cheaper for whatever reason, so will their properties. I can see why the owners wouldn't want that.
- sleepdreamy 4y ago
  Majority of regular/middle-class folks have their equity tied to their home. I agree (I am one of them)

rr888 4y ago

I think the Baby Boomers slowly downsizing and dying is going to be an earthquake on house prices. I know lots of young families in apartments and small houses while their baby boomer parents have big suburban houses. Why not hang on to your big house if you're healthy enough and it keeps going up in value every year. Once people start selling it'll become a tidal wave of selling - once house prices go down every year for 5-10 years in a row no one will want to own.

jeffbee 4y ago
The thing to remember about boomers is there are even more millennials than there were boomers. The hoped-for expiration of the former will only partially satisfy the appetites of the latter, and much later in their lives than they would have liked.
- rr888 4y ago
  Good point, Demographics look pretty stable actually isn't isn't totally what I expected. I wonder what the regional pyramids look like eg NE vs midWest vs South vs West. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...

dandanua 4y ago

Feudalism is coming. Then slavery. Then savagery. Somehow Russia is ahead of time and went strait to the wild stance.

sleepdreamy 4y ago
We've actually never left the Feudalism stage IMO. Just with iPhones & Netflix sprinkled in for some light distraction

lvl102 4y ago

Break down stupid political borders. Allow people to move freely. Have one currency. Solves 90% of all economic problems.

sleepdreamy 4y ago
Have you studied Economics? Just curious - There are thousands of nuances and reasons this will never work. Life is not so Black & White
deepfriedbits 4y ago
Can't imagine this is a practical solution.
calebm 4y ago
There's a reason cells have walls.

rootusrootus 4y ago

Is this really a housing problem, or an income problem? I suppose a little of both, but I doubt we can build our way out of stagnating incomes over the past few decades. They have to be in equilibrium.

parkingrift 4y ago

In my anecdotal experience in NYC+NYS the vast majority of buyers are investors, not homeowners. Properties are bought up to be flipped, added to the short term rental market, and/or bought as secondary/tertiary homes. I can think of a few things that would work toward resolving this that would not destroy existing homeowners. 1. Statewide bans on short term rentals 2. Huge increase in short term rental taxes to the point where it's barely profitable 3. Adjustable property taxes based on vacancy. Something like a 5x property tax multiple for 50% vacancy and scaling down to 1x for 5% vacancy. These proceeds should go toward a public/private partnership to build more housing.

itsoktocry 4y ago
>Statewide bans on short term rentals I live in Canada, but we have the same issues. It's going to be a very interesting cross-generational political battle. The sheer number of "normal people" who own investment properties and AirBNBs now is extraordinary. I know people scraping by working average jobs that own multiple units. Meanwhile, the younger generation can't buy a home. We've normalized the idea that real estate can't lose and everyone should own multiple properties, and we can't come back from that without one side suffering a ton of pain.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  At the very least we can kick out Chinese and Russian "investors" that only want a way to keep their cash safe from their dictatorship governments. That should drive down our prices and put some pressure on the elites to push for better governments at home.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
    You forgot most kingdoms from the gulf. Of course, a major answer to this problem is to simply ban non-americans from buying american property, but that will implode real estate and hurt a lot of homeowners. That is the voting middle-upper class. The majority are voters. And they won't want any of that.

TedShiller 4y ago

Reminder: Owning a home (vs renting) is not a human right. Housing is, though. Everyone should have a roof over their head. Two different things

acd 4y ago

It's the central banking system that is broken. Through quantitative easing central banks pushed down interest rates artificially low. Low bank interest pushed up housing prices to the sky. Most home buyers look at the monthly interest payment expenses which determine house prices. Now that we have high inflation(partially created by quantitative easing) central banks will have to raise interest rates. The reason for higher central bank interest rates is an annual is two percent inflation target. High-interest rates will push housing prices down. Its like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Central banks will have to fix the inflation monster that they partially created. Another part is globalization was causing deflation pressure but central banks measure domestic inflation on a global wage market. Now that trend has partially changed due to protectionism.

skybrian 4y ago
Low interest rates are good for housing developers too, so the question is why it hasn't resulted in more new homes being built? Perhaps one reason is that they did build a lot of housing in 2008 and got burned? (At least, in less fashionable places.)
- slaw 4y ago
  Could you elaborate why low interest rates are good for housing developers?
  - skybrian 4y ago
    They borrow money to fund construction and don't earn income on it until much later, after leasing or selling completed properties. The higher the interest rate, the more it costs, and delays mean more interest paid while waiting.
slaw 4y ago
> central banks will have to raise interest rates Looks like central banks are not going to raise interest rates to even match inflation.

personjerry 4y ago

Why is it so important to own a house?

nprateem 4y ago
So you don't bleed money and could find yourself out on the street with 2 months' notice.
bontaq 4y ago
It's pretty nice when you're paying off your mortgage instead of your landlords.
nly 4y ago
Because nobody spending 50% of their take home pay on rent will ever be able to retire. This all basically boils down to defined benefit pension schemes being a thing of the past. My dad worked for the same company for 30 years, paid off his 3x gross income mortgage, and retired on a final salary inflation-linked pension. I'm earning 3x as much as my dad ever did, still borrowing almost 5x my salary over 33 years for a worse/smaller home, and have no guarantees on my pension beyond what I sacrifice and what the stock market yields.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  what do you think pension funds invest in?
Ekaros 4y ago
I'm not sure it is absolutely needed. But it is sensible long term investment even with flat property values. On other hand we could move toward to public housing with prices levels aimed to cover initial investment and maintenance.
xdennis 4y ago
Freedom. You don't have to move everything in one month because your landlord wants you out. You can drive a screw through the wall and not have your landlord shout at you.

twblalock 4y ago

50 years ago housing was affordable in areas that are now expensive, like Silicon Valley and Vancouver. That outcome did not require land value taxes or targeted taxes on landlords or bans on foreign investment or other novel solutions like a lot of posters here are suggesting. It was just easier and cheaper and more profitable to build housing back then, and the market took care of the rest. What changed? It got harder to build because the government empowered NIMBYISM and nonsense “environmental impact” rules (hint: nobody actually cares about the endangered burrowing owls, they just don’t want affordable housing near their homes). The affordability crisis was caused by government. Any solution that piles even more government on top of the current government-caused problem is a no go — especially pie-in-the-sky solutions like land value taxes. The only solution is to make it easier to build. But that's politically painful so it’s not going to happen. We even see places like California making it more expensive to build by requiring solar panels on new homes, in order to virtue signal about climate change without actually solving anything. So, invest in expensive areas, they are only going to get more expensive!

parkingrift 4y ago
There are 130 million more people in the US today than there were 50 years. What changed? 130 million people is what changed.
- raverbashing 4y ago
  You had 50 years to build housing for those, that's a trivial problem if not for the NIMBYs
- theplumber 4y ago
  So there is not enough land for all? Have you considered building a new town and you couldn't find land?
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    You know what China has been doing. And then they were laughed for doing it and told that it was stupid. They might have overdone it, but still. They did exactly build entirely new cities.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

> The result, in America as elsewhere, is a widening generational gap between Baby Boomers, who are statistically more likely to own a home, and Millennials and Gen Z — who are watching their dreams of buying one go up in smoke. Sigh, Gen X, forgotten again.

nineplay 4y ago
Sigh? Thank goodness we're forgotten. Few things are more tiresome and pointless than these generational spats.

qeternity 4y ago

Plenty of observations and suggestions in the comments, but most missing the core issue: we turned housing into a retirement scheme, and encouraged investment, which of course inflated prices. We then concocted a lot of policies to sustain demand, and hamper supply, the keep this scheme afloat. Housing cannot be both affordable and a good investment.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
> we turned housing into a retirement scheme You make it sound like a nefarious plan or some backroom deal. It seems more like real estate became our de facto retirement scheme due to everything else paling in comparison. Pensions? Gone. Savings? Nope, no interest (ha ha) in that. Stock market? Sure, but its volatility prevents sane people from putting their entire nest egg into it....
- thicknavyrain 4y ago
  If you're in the U.K., I'd highly recommend reading "Rethinking the economics of land and housing" which outlines the history of several clear policies decisions that _encouraged_ housing as an investment which (along with supply restrictions) are in turn why it outperforms lots of other forms of investment. It's not just the market speaking, it's been shaped through lots of conscious decision making that can be undone.
- qeternity 4y ago
  It wasn’t a nefarious backroom deal. But it was a very conscious choice by many governments, spearheaded by the UK and US. And once we ventured a little bit down that path, it’s impossible to unwind bc nobody wants to lose money on their home.
- userabchn 4y ago
  the word "scheme" has negative connotations (of something shady) in America that it doesn't have in other countries. Also, it is very much an intentional policy of governments in some countries to encourage people to invest in a house as their retirement savings.

crazygringo 4y ago

Setting aside geographical variation, I'd like to understand better is how much of this problem is due to: a) Not enough housing supply to meet population demand (in a purely physical people-in-homes allocation sense) vs. b) Too much housing wealth tied up in boomer ownership (e.g. overly large houses with just 2, 1, or even 0 people living in them most of the time) In other words, to what extent does the solution correspond to: a) We absolutely need to build more, there's no other way vs. b) Significantly higher redistributive taxes (e.g. land/property taxes, wealth taxes) to incentive people to both "right-size" their living situation as well as compensate for how lucky the boomer generation happened to be in terms of housing I'm sure the answer is "both" to some extent, but I'm just wondering if there's hard data that actually compares the two rather than just opinion.

rcarr 4y ago

How about an exponential land tax? Own one property: no tax. Own two: 1 percent tax on each. Own three: 2 percent on each. Own four: 4 percent on each. Own five: 8 percent on each. Still allows for genuine homeownership, a home in a place convenient for work and a holiday home an achievable aspiration for high performers whilst making mass property ownership uneconomical.

rcarr 4y ago
Also: ban foreign citizens and non-doms from owning more than one property.
- rcarr 4y ago
  Going through my comments and realised that 'foreign citizens' could be interpreted wrong by anyone who comes across this in the future. I meant anyone who doesn't live in the same country as the property they are purchasing e.g wealthy citizens of other countries who are buying property as investment vehicles rather than residences.
Zhenya 4y ago
How does that stop someone from creating multiple LLCs and having the LLC own a home each, for example?
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  Exponential fees on LLC creation.
- jlokier 4y ago
  Similar to how some tax thresholds are determined on a company-group basis, except grouping by beneficial owner (the "ultimate" owner, i.e. the person who owns the LLCs).
- xdennis 4y ago
  Don't allow LLCs to own homes.

swagasaurus-rex 4y ago

Higher taxes on property - and higher taxes on unused, vacant, and especially abandoned lots and non-primary residences would go a long way I think to increasing housing supply. As it is, it's a good investment because supply is globally constrained. Investors have parked a huge portion of the world's wealth into land. It's obvious when you talk to investors. This investment can spur development, or it can greedily be sat on.

PhineasRex 4y ago

The problem is right there in the title: Global Housing Market. The commodification of housing has been disastrous. The cost to develop new housing and the length of time it takes has means market manipulation is always going to be an easier path to profitability. Why would anyone build something new when they can just sit on what they have and let it appreciate while renters subsidize the mortgage and taxes. Imagine if you could just put iron ore in a warehouse and make a 25% return every year, we'd have no steel!

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

Can state level actors do market manipulation of countries to destabilize them? I mean, look at all the private equity buying up properties in the US, causing our shortages, who is funding that? Is that an actual threat to security? It used to be we were paranoid about foreign ownership of production, well we don't make anything anymore, so this is another means.

system16 4y ago

Every time this issue comes up, people seem to think there is a single silver bullet that will resolve it. This is a perfect storm problem and will take a solution from multiple angles: - Restrict and tax short-term rentals. - Introduce a scaling speculation tax on three or more properties to remove the incentive for small-medium size investors to hoard. It will return supply back to the market. - Limit residential real-estate purchases to citizens and permanent residents (i.e. taxpayers). - Remove barriers to development to increase supply. Ignore the NIMBYs. - Cap rental increases. - Introduce a vacancy tax. - Limit immigration until the housing issue is resolved. - Eliminate "blind bidding" from real estate sales. I doubt any government has the political will to truly tackle this though, especially when most politicians are landlords and speculators themselves.

dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
Each of these would and is causing uproar in every country or region that introduced or tried to introduce similar laws. And the last one is plain impossible to realize. How do you even approach limiting immigration in the modern world? I'd argue a lot could be done by revitalizing deserted areas, where houses exist but people are gone. Usually there is one primary cause: find it and try to find a solution, even if it takes years.
thelastgallon 4y ago
Or copy Singapore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

planarhobbit 4y ago

I suspect a lot of people are ok and happy in fact with things being “broken” in their favour.

vannevar 4y ago

The housing market is not "broken", it's working exactly the way it's expected to in a relatively unregulated capitalist system. In unregulated capitalism, the wealthiest segments of the population get richer at a faster rate than poorer segments, which means the rate at which they can purchase property increases over time faster than their less wealthy peers. Eventually, a tiny fraction of the population owns everything and rents it out to the rest at higher and higher rates. Building additional housing can provide temporary relief but does not address the underlying mechanism. Only retooling our economic systems to moderate the rich-get-richer feedback loops can ultimately fix the problem.

alexb_ 4y ago
In an unregulated capitalist system, supply increases to meet demand. In our regulated hellscape, it's impossible to build anything due to existing owners using the government to prevent supply increases.
- vannevar 4y ago
  >In an unregulated capitalist system, supply increases to meet demand. But demand comes from capital, not from the housing needs of individuals. In one tier of the economy, a house is a home; for another, that same house is an investment. The poor cannot afford to outbid the wealthy for housing, and the gap is widening at an accelerating pace. That's why building more houses won't solve the problem in the long term, because the rich are getting wealthier much faster than the poor (or middle class), and any increase in supply will go to serve their demand for rental property.
fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
Extremely cheap interest rates caused by the government is not capitalism. It's actually socialism, cheap money to prop up zombie businesses.

closedloop129 4y ago

>The city government on Friday announced it’d buy nearly 15,000 apartments from two large corporate landlords for 2.46 billion euros ($2.9 billion) to expand supply. How do you expand supply if you buy existing apartments? If they had taken the $2.9 billion and had built 15,000 new apartments, that would have expanded the supply.

switch007 4y ago

IMO it's the single most important immediate issue in many countries and politicians don't care, because they're landlords. It's utterly depressing. People are making suggestions here, many of which require political will which does not exist.

temporallobe 4y ago

In central Florida, there are now entire rent-only single-family home communities. Yes, entire neighborhoods are owned by investors similar to apartment complexes. Apparently, renters will eventually have the right to be able to purchase the home, but until that point they won’t be enjoying any of the benefits of home ownership and in the end it will be costlier to convert that home to ownership, while the developer rakes in the cash. This is a very troubling trend that I believe could be very harmful to the housing market.

bell-cot 4y ago

Amusing Idea: Have the minimum wage scale with the local cost of housing. So in (say) Ghostville, NE, where rural population decline has dropped the rent on a livable house to "$0 plus property tax and utilities if you seem trustworthy", it's Federal minimum wage. Vs. places like SF and NYC it's more like $72.50/hour - for everyone - landscapers, day care workers, grocery clerks, deliver drivers, janitors, you name it. So the NIMBY's are free to build up property price bubbles to their heart's content - they just can't expect to be waited on hand & foot for unlivable wages when they do it.

wellthisisgreat 4y ago

Ban housing as investment

more_corn 4y ago

This was a nice snapshot of the global housing market.

fulafel 4y ago

This is talking about the biggest cities in respective countries. Most people don't live in them, but their relative pull has increased. So this is data picking to overstate the effect.

xpil 4y ago

"The cost of an apartment in Shenzhen, China’s answer to Silicon Valley, was equal to 43.5 times a resident’s average salary as of July" I stopped reading after this. There is no mention whether the cost means a monthly rental price or a purchase price, or if the considered resident's salary is monthly or annual, gross or net. Buying a house that costs 44x my monthly gross salary is nothing unusual and well below bank mortgage limits. Renting an apartment that costs 44x my annual salary per month makes no sense. Journalists should put more effort into data quality and focus less on the sensational part. Unfortunately, the latter sells better.