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by anneessens 801 days ago
This exactly. It's in the best financial interest of a homeowner to stop as much new construction of homes as possible. Until we move away from the idea that owning a home = wealth, then I don't see how this problem can be significantly fixed.
2 comments
fransje26 801 days ago
Funnily enough, the value of a home in Japan decreases over time to converge to a value of 0 over +/- 20 years.

That doesn't mean that the land it is built on has 0 value, but it vastly changes the financial dynamics of home-owning, and would also remove the nonsense linked to home = wealth.

With the reasonable assumption that the build quality of home in Japan is no worse than in the rest of the "Western world", it really puts the whole real estate financial racket into perspective.

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anneessens 801 days ago
Interesting. I'm curious, do you know if there is another asset Japanese people have that is very valuable if not their home? Or some sort of investment?
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fransje26 800 days ago
At the moment, I do not, unfortunately. But that's a topic I definitely intend to further explore when I find the time.
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cqqxo4zV46cp 801 days ago
In a very short-sighted way, sure. It doesn’t even take that much galaxy-brain thinking to see how housing inequality can be detrimental to one’s finances.
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anneessens 801 days ago
The short sightedness is the problem. As far as I know, NIMBY is endemic in the USA, precisely because home owners are so worried about lowering the value of their home.
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mihaic 801 days ago
Exactly. If you stop seeing your house as an investment, and you own it, it doesn't matter if it's value goes down, if it goes along with the market. It even means it's easier for you to trade up.

For the poor souls that have decades of interest left to pay on a loan it's a different story, but somehow, someone has to lose something for most people to have decent housing costs.

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anneessens 801 days ago
Yeah, it's a very difficult situation. Either few people from younger generation will have access to affordable housing and even fewer will own a home, or we cause a lot of misery and hardship like during the 2008 crash, but for even longer. Hard to tell which is the lesser evil.
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