753
house
(quokk.au)
Not being rich sure is expensive.
The poor tax is crazy
I think the world should work like kindergarden. If you dont use a toy, others can take it. If you dont use a house, others can take it.
Tax for unfilled housing. The rate you pay for the tax is proportional to the amount you are asking for rent. 100% of the funds collected goes to housing assistance.
Or just have a socialist government protect the prices. That's what my country does. Landlords can't even increase the prices or kick you out. The only price changes is an "index" that changes every year to make your rent follow inflation.
There should be no profit on housing.
That probably makes it hard to do upgrades and repairs on the houses/apartments, but I'll absolutely conceed that is not as bad as the runaway housing costs in the US right now.
This is possession.
I agree. We should abolish ownership/property, and use this system of “possession”.
Even without getting rid of the economic system itself, it's quite possible to make landlording not worth it via legislation. Tenant protections, taxation on corporation-owned homes, etc.
Like many things under capitalism, it's fine with heavy control and safe guards, just not the runaway "invisible hand of the market" version we actually have.
Make any property that is not a persons primary residence subject to 10x the normal property tax.
Problem solved.
Pretty much.
Actually in my country, your primary residence is exempt from property tax. Note that this isn't transitive - you don't get the tax exemption from your tenants' primary residences that you own and they live in if you're a landlord. You're exempt only on the one property you live in, if you're the owner.
Now a reasonable next step would be to greatly increase the normal property tax.
The rich tastes like Bacon
Nice artwork style.
The good news in the US is that in many regions, renting is now actually cheaper than the total ongoing cost of owning a home (mortgage + prop tax + insurance + hoa), and we've even got segments where new homes are selling for less than old homes.
Bad news is that something like 30 million homes got purchased in the last 3-4 years, meaning most of them are underwater now, and thus at significant risk of becoming foreclosures, within this year.
The bubble is popping, but its huge, and moves in slow motion compared to say, the stock market.
How is the house not affordable if it's half of the rent? Half is less, yes?
The supply is limited and the pig bought all the houses. The mortgage HE is paying is half the rent. The mortgage the cat could get depends on the price he could get, but guess what, pig jacked up the price. For pig, the houses are assets. Why would he sell for less than he can make by renting over a long period of time?
So the price goes up because supply is limited. Not to mention that new supply would be typically captured by pig (or his fellow pigs) almost immediately.
The pig is going to buy more houses, so he hasn't bought all the houses...
Otherwise... can't you buy an empty lot and build the house yourself?
Yes, but cat is going to be competing with pig for any house that comes into the market. And pig, given his leverage can easily outbid cat.
When it comes to empty lots, maybe, but people want to generally live close to where their friends/relatives/jobs/services are. Sure, some people are going to be ok moving out to the boonies. But that can't be a society's overall housing policy, not least because sprawl is prohibitively expensive in the long run.
The real answer is to stop making excuses for pig's antisocial hoarding behaviour and step in to limit it or abolish it. Housing should not be a financial asset. The financialization of housing is socially destructive and economically unproductive (imagine if all that capital was invested in actual productive enterprise instead).
you could, if you weren't paying excessive amounts of money to the people hoarding housing.
but since you are, you don't have the cash to do that, at least not for a couple decades at least
Idk, I did it myself (this decade, not in the 1960s)
Congrats, you're in the minority.
Well, it's a once in a lifetime purchase, every buyer is in the minority, statistically.
That was of the previous sale, the next sale is for more.
Yeah, but you need a down payment, and you need a bank to loan you the rest money for the house. The payment on that loan is half of rent, but that doesn't mean it's functionally accessible to most regular people.
Just an FYI for those in the US. If you're a first time homebuyer then there are loan programs available where you can pay as low as 0% down. The payments will be higher than if you made a 20% down payment of course but in my case they are still cheaper than rent would have been in my area. Basically they just tack on an extra monthly fee until you hit 20% equity but that fee isn't too horendous. In my case it adds about 7% to my total monthly mortgage payment. The whole 20% down thing is only really expected if you already own a home.
Loan accessibility and obcene home prices are still an issue of course. So while there are a lot of obsticles to buying a home, the down payment isn't nearly as big of one as many people think.
Don't you have banks that finance 100% of the price? Sure, they will charge higher interest, but if you're saving half the rent it won't be that bad...
Banks don't give loans like that to people who aren't high earners already.
People could happily spend 50%+ of their income on their mortgage but banks will not give them those loans because they are seen as high risk, whereas people can rent at 50%+ of their income because there's less risk for the landlord (their only real risk is having to find a new tenant).
Have you applied? I found banks very reasonable, like math based. Landlords go on feelings/profiling, in my experience and very often go on 35% rule.
Yes I've applied. I bought a place last year so it's very fresh. Banks being math-based is exactly the point. They won't bend the rules for you. Plus the expense is mostly set in stone once you buy, whereas with renting you can rent an affordable place and have it increase year-on-year every year following, taking it from within that 35% to above it.
Isn't that all in favor of buying?
Yes, it's in favour of buying in the past. If you missed your window you're fucked though. That's why I bought, because I recognised the sliding window and knew if I didn't buy now I'd be locked out of buying forever and instead get stuck renting forever. I don't think anyone is against buying, just often unable to.
I don't see how those reasons (strict solvency checking, rules based decision making, etc) would lock anyone out.
Banks will not give you the loan if you do not make enough such that your repayments would be less than 35% of your income. But you could very well already be paying more than 35% of your income as rent. Trust me bro not everyone is renting because they feel like it. One of my friends saved a $100k deposit but didn't have the income to get a big enough loan for a house. These people aren't just stupid. Buying isn't an option for them.
The argument was that mortgage was half of rent. You won't be paying 70% rent...
You can be if you stay in the same place and the rent keeps increasing.
And my grandma had wheels she would be a bicycle
If the concept of someone staying in the same rental for a while and having their rent increase over time is that foreign to you then I don't think you should be commenting on this topic.
Yeah, rent doubling while income remains unchanged, not even inflation adjustment... is foreign to me.
Last year my job refused to give me an inflation adjustment, then they laid me off 6 months later because they didn't have as much growth as they projected.
Cool anecdote, bruh.
You said it was foreign to you... So I provided an example of it happening...
Yeah, for 6 months, for one person, without rent change, who might or might not be lying. So... cool anecdote, bruh.
It being foreign to you is literally an anecdote too you fucking idiot lmfaoooo
That's not the definition of anecdote, but hey, fun to see it got under your skin...
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
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