Property prices thread

[Valmy]

I'm less disdainful of landlords then I am of airbnb assholes. I mean rentals have to come from somewhere. Not all of them are slum lords. But yes, fuck the bad land lords.

Sure. I'm fine with land lords being a thing that exists. Rentals are needed.
What I really hate though is buy to let. People who get a loan specifically to buy a property to rent out, having renters pay off their mortgage with a bit of profit.

Being heavily leveraged as a landlord is just a really risky and reckless thing to do. Being a landlord has all kinds of costs and risks and these guys are just gambling they won't have big repairs and their properties will increase in value and rents will go up and so forth.

Their reckless decision to heavily leveraging themselves is not anybody's responsibility but theirs. I guess it just depends on how systemic it is that landlords have big mortgages to be paid off.

[Tamas]

Dishonest crap continues even from the Guardian: "highest property price rise in 10 months!" then you read it and it turns out it's asking prices on rightmove do nothing to do with property prices: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/mar/18/house-prices-rise-in-biggest-increase-for-10-months

[Admiral Yi]

Tamas, you're a perfect data point to demonstrate the validity of my latest Great Truth.  Namely, that people do things that make them angry because anger is a pleasurable emotion.  This was Roger Ailes profound insight when he founded Fox.

[HVC]

Like with roller coaster, but with rage?

[Tamas]

Tamas, you're a perfect data point to demonstrate the validity of my latest Great Truth.  Namely, that people do things that make them angry because anger is a pleasurable emotion.  This was Roger Ailes profound insight when he founded Fox.

  if you are implying that people should avoid reading news that upsets them despite what's in there and why it is written having considerable impact on their lives, then you are a great data point for one my Great Truths: systems like Orban's work because people want to be lead and want comfortable lies created for them so they can shed feelings of responsibility.

[Admiral Yi]

if you are implying that people should avoid reading news that upsets them despite what's in there and why it is written having considerable impact on their lives, then you are a great data point for one my Great Truths: systems like Orban's work because people want to be lead and want comfortable lies created for them so they can shed feelings of responsibility.

But Orban' lies are not "comfortable" lies.  They are threatening lies.  Danger lurks.  We are under assault by the Jew  moneymen and gays and dirty immigrants.

[frunk]

if you are implying that people should avoid reading news that upsets them despite what's in there and why it is written having considerable impact on their lives, then you are a great data point for one my Great Truths: systems like Orban's work because people want to be lead and want comfortable lies created for them so they can shed feelings of responsibility.

But Orban' lies are not "comfortable" lies.  They are threatening lies.  Danger lurks.  We are under assault by the Jew  moneymen and gays and dirty immigrants.

They are comfortable lies because it gives a clearly defined reason for all the problems in your life, and a man/party who is fighting for you.  You just need to give them power and they'll take care of it.

[Sheilbh]

I think both are maybe true. It is, on a political level, a comfortable lie (and, to an extent, all "explanations" in politics are) that is not necessarily challenging as a belief to hold.

But I also think that in somme cases there is a libidinal/pleasure principle side of it which has an impact on the form of that politics. Trump is, I think, the most extreme example (and before him it was Berlusconi) of that I think. It's also true of Fox News - it's a dopamine hit and pure id.

Though I'm not sure the extent it applies to all of the different "Trumpian" or populist or radical right movements. For example, I think if you look at some of the European movements like Le Pen in France or Meloni in Italy, they're very much repressing that in order to achieve and/or maintain power. I think Orban probably falls into this category too - I'm not sure Orban supporters get the same vicarious thrill that I think Trump ones do.

[viper37]

Ibiza locals living in cars as party island sees rents soar

[Syt]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rents-aren-t-unaffordable-young-112110154.html?guccounter=1

Working less won't help young people get on the housing ladder
Tom Harris
Mon, April 8, 2024 at 1:21 PM GMT+2

Two major events in recent memory have contributed to the sense that the current generation of young people have had their life chances stolen from them.

The first is the credit crunch and associated financial crisis of 2008, the consequences of which, even now, have yet to be appreciated. When young couples have their application for an affordable mortgage rejected by their bank, the seeds of that decision all too often seem to trace back to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the United States and the subsequent exposure of the appalling mismanagement of their own organisations by bankers across the world.

The second cause of grief for the living standards and aspirations of the current generation is, of course, the Covid pandemic. Social historians of the future will have their work cut out for them as they seek to reconcile the enthusiasm with which the public demanded the shut down of the economy and the previously unimaginable scale of state support to be paid out to employees for work not done, and the subsequent outrage at the fall in productivity and anaemic wage growth that followed, as if the two factors were entirely unconnected.

Whatever the causes of the current discontent, the despair of Generation Z at the throttling of their aspirations is a palpable political reality, and one with which current and future governments must deal. Young workers face the prospect of not being able to buy their own homes until well into their thirties, or even forties, unless they can rely upon generous handouts from wealthy parents, further institutionalising the disparity between this country's haves and have-nots. With growth in rents set to outstrip wages for the next three years, the issue will only become more salient.

But the answers to this dilemma from those directly affected fall far short of economic reality. Of course higher wages for less work would suit many; when has such a prospect not been popular? But as the pandemic proved in painful detail, such solutions, while having a short-term attraction, can only store up massive – perhaps insurmountable – problems for the future.

Even the civil service, the backbone of the British establishment, is responding to the long-term economic impact of lockdown by demanding the same pay for 20 per cent fewer hours worked – an indication, were cynical ministers to exploit the claim, that the service is significantly over-staffed with far more employees than the workload might justify.

Unless some top secret economic theory has been unearthed that turns financial orthodoxy on its head and promises extra productivity in exchange for less work and higher, unaffordable wages, the only apparent solution to the current crisis facing people in their twenties seems to me to be for the economy to grow at a far faster rate than has occurred in the last decade, for consumer demand to mirror that growth and for lending institutions to begin to take risks on mortgages.

It might be remembered that the current expectation of home ownership after securing your first job was not a reality for many when the current generation of boomers and Generation X were children. The vast expansion of private home ownership and associated prosperity of the '80s and '90s did not come about because of workers' rights, but because of free market economic policies that freed up the jobs and the financial markets.

If solutions to the current challenges exist, they do not exist in repeating the follies of the dim or recent past: 1970s corporatism and economic lockdowns served only to store up misery for the many. As former chancellor Denis Healey once said, when in a hole, stop digging. A generation reared on positive affirmation from their parents, who were authoritatively assured by them that everything they said, did or painted was marvellous, can no longer rely on other people – particularly the older generation – to solve their problems for them. There is no deus ex machina waiting to swoop to their rescue.

Today's problems are not new; previous generations faced the same dilemmas, and they suffered a long, difficult road on the way to salvation. The chief difference is that too many of the current generation seem to believe they are so special that they can rely on the magnanimity of the state and their employers to come to the rescue.

A rude awakening awaits.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Yeah, whatever.

[HVC]

can no longer rely on other people – particularly the older generation – to solve their problems for them.

We broke it, now stop complaining and fix it

[Richard Hakluyt]

He's worried about his pension and rents, get to work gen Z layabouts 

Hard to imagine the hubris of someone lecturing an entire generation.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Mr Harris' wiki page :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Harris_(British_politician)#:~:text=Thomas%20Harris%20(born%2020%20February,the%20party%20in%20August%202018.

Looks like he is following a Lee Andertal trajectory to me. It is strange how many people, once they near retirement age, conclude it is very important for the workers to work hard and take the crumbs they are given 

[Josquius]

Well he ticks all my "would punch" boxes.

I'm seeing lots of stories lately bemoaning how landlords are dropping out of the game due to how hard its becoming for them with tightening regulations (what? A house fit for habitation? Ridiculous!) and rising interest rates.
Oh dear, tiny violins at the ready.
Though it is interesting in its shifting around the groups in the game of "Who doesn't get a house" with it being single mothers with 3 kids reliant on benefits now being left homeless whilst those who've been able to save up enough to buy are able to move out of their parents house.