The optimal situation would more or less be every family owning a single home.
A) This is not the optimal situation, and
B) Owning a home, and being able to profiting off it appreciating are not the same thing and the latter is the problem
If house prices go down equally across the market, single home owners don’t really lose out
Yes they do, this is such a fucking common argument and it’s just straight up false.
If you have a million dollar home that you raised your family in, and now want to downsize into a $400k town house, you’d currently get $600k in cash freed up to spend on whatever you wanted.
If house prices drop by 50%, you’d sell your $500k home, buy a $200k town house, and you’d have $300k in cash.
The majority of people who would lose money are the MAJORITY of people who own homes, which are single home owners.
That homeowner stands to lose a lot of money if a politician says they will pass a policy that drops home prices by 50%, so they wouldn’t vote for that politician.
People like you keep proposing “build more” like it’s going to work.
Let me ask you this, how many houses would we need to build to drop national house prices by 50%?
The simple answer is “you can’t realistically do that”
No developer can be forced to lose money in the long term, and they quite literally couldn’t build housing at 50% of current prices even if the land itself was completely free.
The state could take on a stupidly massive debt to build homes at a loss, but then instead of paying higher rents/housing prices, you’re just paying higher taxes.
Currently, there’s no realistic way forward. It needs to get far worse (fewer homeowners, so that the balance of voting power shifts to renters) before we can start passing policies to make it better. I expect it to be about 20-30 years before that happens, and then it’s probably going to be 20-30 more before the results get realized.
You’re right, if homeowners downsize they’ll lose out with lower prices. People don’t downsize very often.
But what policies are you talking about? How can the answer be anything other than increasing the supply of housing (or decreasing the demand i.e. the population)? Prices are only as high as they are because people pay them because they don’t have any other options. Rent is high because demand is high relative to supply.
The only thing I can think of would be higher taxes specifically in places with high house prices in order to fund huge investment in poorer areas to make them more attractive to people and businesses.
A) This is not the optimal situation, and B) Owning a home, and being able to profiting off it appreciating are not the same thing and the latter is the problem
If you have a million dollar home that you raised your family in, and now want to downsize into a $400k town house, you’d currently get $600k in cash freed up to spend on whatever you wanted. If house prices drop by 50%, you’d sell your $500k home, buy a $200k town house, and you’d have $300k in cash.
The majority of people who would lose money are the MAJORITY of people who own homes, which are single home owners.
That homeowner stands to lose a lot of money if a politician says they will pass a policy that drops home prices by 50%, so they wouldn’t vote for that politician.
People like you keep proposing “build more” like it’s going to work. Let me ask you this, how many houses would we need to build to drop national house prices by 50%?
The simple answer is “you can’t realistically do that” No developer can be forced to lose money in the long term, and they quite literally couldn’t build housing at 50% of current prices even if the land itself was completely free. The state could take on a stupidly massive debt to build homes at a loss, but then instead of paying higher rents/housing prices, you’re just paying higher taxes.
Currently, there’s no realistic way forward. It needs to get far worse (fewer homeowners, so that the balance of voting power shifts to renters) before we can start passing policies to make it better. I expect it to be about 20-30 years before that happens, and then it’s probably going to be 20-30 more before the results get realized.
You’re right, if homeowners downsize they’ll lose out with lower prices. People don’t downsize very often.
But what policies are you talking about? How can the answer be anything other than increasing the supply of housing (or decreasing the demand i.e. the population)? Prices are only as high as they are because people pay them because they don’t have any other options. Rent is high because demand is high relative to supply.
The only thing I can think of would be higher taxes specifically in places with high house prices in order to fund huge investment in poorer areas to make them more attractive to people and businesses.