[gwd]

For lots of people, owning a home is a trap: It means if the local area has an economic downturn, you're stuck with a worthless asset.

Making it difficult for anyone (corporation or individual) to be a landlord will hurt the poor more than it will help them.

> * banks should be banned from requiring deposits

The purpose of deposits is to reduce the risk of default. Banning deposits will simply mean that banks will give fewer loans, and loans which are granted will have a higher interest rate. This will only hurt the poor.

> The goal is to crash house prices as far down as they possibly can be crashed.

I'm pretty sure the best way to accomplish this would be to actually build a lot more housing.

> I welcome the economic conditions that will lead to housing markets being ruined and will party and celebrate those investors who own multiple houses suffering ruinous losses - I'll laugh.

People owning multiple houses aren't primarily the cause of society's trouble in this regard: It's people owning vast swaths of the stock market. FWIW I'd be happy to have the price of our housing assets collapse if it would mean making the world a better place. I can't really benefit from the high house price anyway, since I have to live somewhere.

[black_puppydog]

> if the local area has an economic downturn, you're stuck with a worthless asset.

the idea of GP is that a house should not be considered an asset to begin with. it should be considered something like a beard trimmer: you buy it because you intend to use it, not as an investment to flip it later.

[gwd]

> the idea of GP is that a house should not be considered an asset to begin with. it should be considered something like a beard trimmer: you buy it because you intend to use it, not as an investment to flip it later.

It should be like a car or a washing machine -- a capital asset that you use to achieve a goal. The minimum value for a house will always be the price of reconstructing the house from scratch. I'm not seeing that price ever be in the range that a working poor person could treat it like a beard trimmer; which means a home will always und up being large percentage of the capital of the person owning it. Assuming a properly competitive rental market, it would be much better if whatever capital could be scraped together were put into something more diversified.

[foogazi]

> The minimum value for a house will always be the price of reconstructing the house from scratch.

That’s always it’s value - plus the cost to move it to your own plot - it’s a depreciating asset that needs maintenance

The observable price increase comes from the price of the land - they are not making more you know

[endisneigh]

A fun ideology but silly - land in desirable areas is inherently scarce.

[cudgy]

> The purpose of deposits is to reduce the risk of default. Banning deposits will simply mean that banks will give fewer loans, and loans which are granted will have a higher interest rate. This will only hurt the poor.

I disagree … having the deposit available to pay for unexpected expenses allows for a financial cushion for buyers after purchasing a home. Instead, many buyers are draining their savings cushion in order to just get the keys to a house and have little to no available cash to handle any financial disruptions.