Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent
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I think that makes sense. There is no reason to favor individuals investing into an unproductive investment (property) over productive investments (stocks and bonds, which enable companies to raise money to start new projects, create jobs, etc). Over-borrowing to bid the maximum amount one can to buy a nineteenth century house doesn't create any job for anyone, it just transfers wealth to the hands of the seller.
Basically, unless you are investing in an IPO, the company doesn't see a dime from the ongoing trading of it's stock. So the vast majority of investors are not creating jobs by buying stock. Similarly, most bond investors are not buying new issue bonds, they are buying bonds from the current owner of the bond.
Bonds barely trade on the secondary markets. When you invest into a fund that buys bond, it's pretty much 100% primary market (i.e. new issuances).
If the paint in my personal home starts peeling, my incentive to fix it is higher - I don't want to walk down the hall and see peeling paint.
If the paint in a corporate-owned tenement starts leaking, what incentive does the corporation have to repair it? They will do the bare minimum to prevent me suing them for breach of contract. A tenant is unlikely to sue over peeling paint. And they actively discouraged from re-painting, as they will likely lose their security deposit should they paint in any color other than generic off-white.
> If the paint in a corporate-owned tenement starts leaking
LOL. It's the opposite effect. If I own the place, and The paint is peeling, and I have to fix it... then maybe I'll just live with it until it gets worse, or I plan to sell. If it was a rental, then I complain to the landlord to fix.
What incentive does the landlord have to fix minor problems? It costs you more to move/sue than it costs him to sit on the problem.
As a landlord I want my current and future tenants to respect the valuable asset I have entrusted to them and maintain a good relationship. Fixing the little things is important in a "broken windows theory" way.
"the cobbler's children have no shoes"
Not just stock: companies are constantly comparing alternative sources of capital. Any increase in demand from investors for any particular source of capital (bonds, stocks, loans, etc...) will tend to make that capital available at a lower cost to the company.
I have not thought about whether aggregate increases in the demand for housing have the same positive effect on firms, though you could argue that increasing housing values creates home equity and the mortgage interest deduction encourages homeowners to borrow against that new equity and invest the proceeds in ways that will generate a higher return than the interest rate - marginal tax rate, such as stocks. But that happens a lot in economics, many seemingly conflicting forces can lead to the same effect.
You could have a stock that's through the roof, but if you don't pay your bills on time that means absolutely nothing to me as a financial institution. On the flip side your stock could be in the gutter, but if you are financially viable and pay your bills on time, I couldn't care less.
Generally speaking there is a correlation between stock price and "health of the company", but not always.
Finally - stock price increasing creates jobs???? Source? I have never, in my life, heard of a company of any size hiring people because their stock went up. That's the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard.
Technically and in the extremely specific case, yes, buying stock on the market doesn't create jobs for anyone. However, the liquidity of stock in the aggregate is one part of the confidence of the financial system. Upon IPO, buyers of the stock need to know they can sell their stock on the market after it fulfills their objectives.
An existing company making a new issue is kind of unusual because it dilutes the value of existing shares which is harmful to existing shareholders. generally a bad thing.
Selling Treasury stock does get new cash in the hands of the company, but usually that was because at some point the company had excess cash and invested it in it's own shares in the form of a buyback, less often the company is still holding shares from it's own IPO. It later needs the cash and re-sells the stock, hopefully at a better price.
I would argue though that the day to day trading of common stock on the open market is the more general rule not a "extremely specific case". Normally, if I go to make a trade in my account, it is not a new issue and would be a coincidence if it was at the time a company was selling treasury stock.
no argument in stock liquidity being a measure of confidence, but not really to the point I was addressing.
I wanted to mention liquidity because I (wrongfully) thought your post implied it wasn't particularly important; is indeed paramount for the stock market to work at all.
so it clearly adds value to the original seller
> the deduction began as an unplanned technicality. When the federal government first levied income taxes in 1913, Congress allowed Americans to deduct from their taxes the cost of all interest payments. This is standard policy for corporations: the government only wants to tax profits—not money spent on loans for tractors or a new office. In 1913, the government allowed deductions on all interest—probably because all interest payments were business-related. No one took out car loans in 1913 or paid interest on credit card debt, and the majority of mortgages were for farms.
https://priceonomics.com/the-case-against-everyones-favorite...
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/model-estimates/individual-in...
For someone earning $500,000 a year, a $5,000 tax break is a $5,000 tax break, it isn't going to do much of anything to their behavior.
Considering that mortgages usually require a down payment, you could also make the argument that the benefit overwhelmingly accrues to the financially stable. People that can't get the down payment together aren't going to be stabilized by a benefit they can't access.
I'm very sensitive to this at the moment, because "wealthy" is used as a term when people talk about CA income taxes, which can be frustrating since in reality, much of the wealth in California is enormously under taxed (thanks to Prop 13), which basically amounts to the continuing siphoning of wealth from the young to the old.
Just got my tax bill and I see I'm paying a percentage of my home value for things like school districts, etc.
Why I as a relatively new resident who has not benefited from these services yet is paying a disproportionate percentage of the taxes by a massive amount compared to people who have benefited from these services for decades while paying a pittance due to their locked prop 13 tax rates is beyond infuriating.
Doubly so when those long time owners have captured absolutely massive value through collecting rents and massive asset appreciation.
I'm all for paying my fair share for services in my community. This is not my fair share. At the very least it should be equal if not based on how long people have lived there.
House prices are only high because everyone is over-bidding to buy them. And that's driving rents up.
Now this is different to the question of whether you should individually follow the crowd in a country where everyone over-bids on property. If you don't, you still pay a high rent to repay the massive mortgage of the guy who bought the property. And in a country like the UK, there is a massive moral hazard: because so many voters are all-in into property, politicians will do anything it takes to ensure prices never go down, even if that means printing massive amounts of money, robbing savers from their investments, having negative interest rates, etc. In that world, it probably doesn't make sense to bet against the central bank.
But as a society I think it is a bad allocation of resources.
There's a reason why even rich, successful businesses rent office space instead of buying. They just can't manage a property as efficiently as the companies that focus on that.
These big companies do not manage one single house (office). They manage a real estate portfolio. Most of big companies have a mix of rented and acquired office space. Ultimately, owning real estate or not is an investment decision.
Some big companies, like HP recently, went from owning most of its real estate to sell large chunk of it ... Reason is to get some cash flow and to rationalise some expenses. But not because someone else could manage better their real estate.
Outsourcing stuff always costs more, because you have to pay for the profit of the company you're outsourcing to. It's worth it when it's something you don't do that much of, or aren't very good at, but if you do a lot of it, it's worth it to do it yourself.
For an extreme example, think about printing: is it worth it to outsource all your computer printing needs to a specialized printing company? Or should you just buy a laser printer for $100-500 and do it yourself? It doesn't take very much printing for it to be a massive waste to pay someone else to print stuff for you.
No way. My family of four eats around $250 of food every week. That works out to $3 per person per meal.
The other expenses would have to total more than $600 before we would break even eating fast food every day. The food we make at home is considerably better than fast food, so I think it would cost an extra $1000 to eat out than cook at home.
For many of us, time with family, friends, hobbies, is a relaxing and physically/mentally/emotionally healthy thing to engage in, rather than trying to exploit every waking hour for income.
I guess I don't make the most involved meals, but they certainly taste good.
EDIT: Besides, why can't the time I spend cooking be with my family or friends? Not like my home is big, if my girlfriend doesn't want to be in the open floor plan kitchen/living room/dining room and would rather hide in the bedroom, I guess she can. Would be awkward. Similarly for when friends are over. It's not like I need intense concentration while I cook, just enough to not burn/cut myself or burn the meal.
Eating out at a nice sit-down restaurant takes a huge amount of time. I can cook myself a meal at home and eat it in much less time than going out.
The only way it's faster to eat out is if you get fast food takeout, which is absolutely shut nutritionally and will put you into an early grave.
You sound like all the dummies who think I'm wasting time by changing the oil in my car myself. It takes me less time than making an appointment, driving all the way to the dealership, then sitting there and waiting for them to do the work (which probably takes longer than me because they have a bunch of cars to work on and their scheduling isn't perfect, just like a doctor's office), then driving back home. I can do it myself in my garage in 15 minutes. I can't even drive to my nearest dealership in that time. On top of all that, you have to figure how much work time I'm missing in the process, since auto shops aren't open weekends or evenings usually (and especially not dealerships).
I think the takeaway is that if you prefer coding over cooking then that's justifiable from a financial and time efficiency point of view. If you prefer cooking and the presumed family quality time over (even more) coding then that's also very reasonable.
Just the transit time for a meal out is already going to cost them a great deal more productive time than cooking would. They don't mention Soylent or frozen meals, which are really the only viable way to spend your time more productively than either meal prep or eating out.
This mode of thinking is interesting, but it's usually overrated as a way of deciding on time value. Most people have a job that takes some time and pays some money, but they can't arbitrarily work a little longer for a little more money as they desire.
This isn't to say your time value might not be high enough to justify not cooking... but it's usually a complex calculus, that involves assessing what you would actually do instead of cooking (for many people, that might just be zoning out in front of the football game), and figuring out the expected future value of it (eg spending the time reading a book may provide you with future intellectual or financial wealth). But then you also have to factor in the human growth from cooking: maybe you'll be a happier person if you cook more frequently.
This is quite a web, but I guess that's the point in my opinion. Annual salary divided by minutes worked in a year feels like a slam dunk way to make these decisions, but it's really not rich enough.
Taking on contract work is a non-trivial time investment. I can't just work for ten minutes whenever I want to pay for takeout, I will have deadlines to meet, which means less time with my family. I've done it, no thanks.
For many businesses it absolutely makes sense to own your own property. For example, if mid-way through a 20 year lease on a building the economy goes bust, do you really want to be paying the same rent that was negotiated during boom times? It could destroy you.
There's textbook theory, and then there's reality. The real world is an incredibly complex system with innumerable variables, and can't be reduced to simple concepts like "specialization". It all depends on context. Obviously for most companies it doesn't make sense to own their property. There's no disputing that, and your point stands. But for rich companies, it often actually makes a lot of sense, notwithstanding insiders trying to extract value for their personal benefit.
If I claimed housing benefit, they would look at the formula, and tell me "Your housing benefit is a maximum of £x: if your rent is more than that, you have to pay it out of your own pocket".
The formula dictated the maximum rent for state-subsidised housing: almost no tenant claiming social security could afford to pay above the subsidised amount from their own pocket.
However, the formula accounted for rental prices in the region over the previous few years, and effectively acted as a price escalator. All DSS landlords priced their rent at the maximum permitted, and the subsidy therefore regularly increased with their prices. As a result, buy-to-let became very popular, with a number of training courses/presentations pitching this price-escalation practice, which also helped sustain the price escalation.
As rental prices increased for state-subsidised landlords, unsubsidised private tenants also had their rents increased, both sectors mirroring each other.
The government have since introduced caps to various benefits, which may put a stop to the routine escalation, but it's a good demonstration of some of the legislative flaws. For most people, a place to live is high if not top on their priorities, and most debt advice councilors recommend paying rent/mortgage as the top priority, above every other bill, so even given excruciating increases, most people will still pay it.
I don't think he is saying that. As an individual it may be better to invest in the house. Depending on many individual factors. e.g. Capital gains, timeframe, etc.
What I think he is saying is that collectively it is better for society that more people invest in productive activities that generate new wealth.
It's incredible that we've gone this deep into thread and subthread talking about aggregate economic benefits and not once mentioned families and children.
Never mind the plants you're buying at the nursery - what is the long range economic impact, in the aggregate, of creating additional human beings ?
(which, according to many, works best in a stable environment of ownership)
Having 100% of your net worth in your home is very risky and comparable to having 100% of your net worth in a single stock.
Unless your family can't afford maintenance, upkeep, insurance, and taxes.
I beg to differ. I think that real estate, like farming, has critical societal benefits that are worthwhile to develop and maintain.
Namely, it is very difficult to raise a family of four in a mutual fund. Investing in a home may is absolutely "productive."
See, there are significant societal benefits to home ownership that you are not considering. For example:
1. A paid off home is a social safety net against homelessness for an entire family and many of their social circles. Even if all of them are unemployed, all of them have a roof over their heads.
2. A paid-off home frees up cash flow. It allows the owner to divert his earnings into other activities or investments or reduce the amount he has to earn monthly.
3. Real estate can be borrowed against. Try that with stocks. If you are an entrepreneur, your home is likely the asset you will use to acquire bank financing for your business.
4. With unskilled / low-skilled jobs vanishing left and right, homebuilding is one of the few markets which still relies entirely on a giant low-skilled workforce. It's one of the few sectors that can keep a lot of people productively employed. I think there are valid arguments against stimulating homebuilding to reduce unemployment among low-skill workers, but there is nevertheless a societal logic here.
5. In a time when wealth is centralizing as never before, investments in real estate distributes wealth locally. I think there are valid arguments against public policy to distribute wealth, but there is a societal logic here.
6. Finally: taxing a home is very counterproductive to the well-being of the middle class and the poor. I'm sure in Germany the interest on a mortgage isn't tax deductible as you say, but I'd also guess that steps are taken to refund the property taxes for the lower classes. Otherwise you simply tax the poor out of their homes - a form of confiscation.
I think there's a lot of sense in NOT taxing one's first home, at least not if it's below a certain reasonably high value. All things considered, home ownership is empowering. A second home or income-generating rental property is a different story, but one's domicile should be unconfiscatable by the state.
It is difficult to ski without skis. But most people don't buy skis, they rent them. Renting skis do not mean that no skis will be manufactured. There is a need for house, houses will be constructed, irrespective of whether people will over-bid on them or not.
> A paid off home is a social safety net against homelessness
Stocks and savings are equally a safety net against loss of primary income.
> Real estate can be borrowed against
Borrowing against your home to finance your business is no different than selling some stocks to invest into your business. In both cases you are using previous savings.
> I think there's a lot of sense in NOT taxing one's first home
Why? Again you are assuming that the alternative to owning a home is renting one and having no savings. The cost of housing (renting) would be much lower in a country without massive over-bidding on property. There is no reason to give a tax benefit to this particular type of investment (property) over any other types of investment.
Until you have a 2007 collapse again (predicted by some to happen again soon), where you both lose your job and a massive amount in stocks. Savings have been at extremely low rates for a long period of time in the US.
One extreme downside of thinking of your home as an investment vehicle is how poorly it is diversified. It is almost exactly directly correlated to the local job market...and to macro trends like the MBS issues we saw in 2008.
This is what I cannot understand about people who advocate buying homes in the United States for small-time investors - how can you not see this? How does it make any sense to divert almost all of your cash flow into a single, massively leveraged, illiquid investment? Miss a few payments on your mortgage and you are totally wiped out (and without a place to live!). At least stocks can bounce back and maybe you can get 30% back on bad bonds. And no one is stopping you from holding cash or TIPS.
If you are wealthy and a house is a small part of your portfolio the impact of the possible downsides is qualitatively different, but as a small-time investor tying up most of my wealth into home ownership on the hope that "house prices always go up" (which really means treating the future generation as suckers that will pay inflated prices for your home) and that the risk of mortgage default does not exist does not make sense to me.
Stocks and bonds aren't any better anymore--the bottom could drop out again anytime and leave you with half or less of what you previously had.
We're in a crap storm of epic proportions in this country, but we avoid the reality of it.
That was my experience in Ann Arbor as well.
$1200 is really the minimum for a 2 bedroom apartment here. There are a few that are maybe $100 - $200 lower, but I wouldn't want to live there.
Landlords and letting agencies can be kind-of funny beasts, they're not necessarily happy to have an unemployed guy as a tenant even if he owns a pile of shares.
Also, given the amount of labor force mobility in US now vs 30 years ago it anyways does not makes sense to force people to 'settle down'.
That's a ridiculous analogy. Renting vs. buying skis is like renting a hotel room vs. buying a condo when you spend a weekend in a different city. There's a good reason hotels are profitable businesses: no one wants to buy a home if they're going to spend 2 weeks or less in a location.
A better analogy is cars: what kind of moron would rent a car for commuting to work every day? No one, because it'd be a massive waste of money. Rental cars are for people who only need a car occasionally, or who are traveling by air and can't bring their own car with them. Otherwise, it's much cheaper to just own your own car, so you aren't paying tons of money to some company in the form of profit.
>Stocks and savings are equally a safety net against loss of primary income.
The 2008 crash disproves this, as does every stock market crash throughout history. Right at the moment you need that money the most, because the crash caused you to lose your job, your stock portfolio has tanked. This isn't the case with houses: if you own your house outright, you're safe (as long as you keep paying property tax, which is minimal in many places), and even with a mortgage, the terms of the mortgage are constant so you can budget for the payment and keep that much liquid cash on hand. Rent, OTOH, can change whenever your lease expires, or even at any time if you're on a month-to-month lease.
>The cost of housing (renting) would be much lower in a country without massive over-bidding on property.
And which country is that? Somalia? Every time I've looked at rents in Europe, they're much higher than here in the US, along with cost of living in general, even after our price inflation in the wake of the 2008 crash.
The simple fact is that, when you rent, part of your rental price goes to pay for profit for whoever owns the property. If there were no (or little) profit in it, no one would bother being a property owner. When you own something, you take the middleman out of the equation.
Do you also think it's a good idea to rent things like computers, printers, phones, furniture, appliances, clothes, cars, etc.?
Until you can't afford to pay the taxes, utilities, insurance, and maintenance. My grandma bought her house outright with my grandpa's life insurance money. No mortgage ever. It was a terrible choice because she didn't have the money or wherewithal for maintenance or utilities. 30 years later the house was literary falling apart. As you can imagine, the utility bills for a house with gaping holes in the roof were astronomical. It was a positive feedback loop. She lived with massive anxiety about shit getting old and breaking. We all really hoped her house would stay upright until she died. It did, thankfully. She would have lived a much better quality of life in an apartment.
>2. A paid-off home frees up cash flow. It allows the owner to divert his earnings into other activities or investments or reduce the amount he has to earn monthly.
Renting frees up cash flow sooner thus allowing interest to compound much more.
> Real estate can be borrowed against. Try that with stocks. If you are an entrepreneur, your home is likely the asset you will use to acquire bank financing for your business.
You can borrow against your 401(k). Then there's the people who borrow against their 401(k) to buy a home, yes, those exist... I personally know some.
Anyways, I own a home, I'm not anti-home ownership. I just can't stand the myths about home ownership.
The utilities it's what gets to you first. My parents used to be middle-class people in the late-1990s Eastern Europe until they both lost their jobs when the one big steel-factory in my home-town got closed down. In a matter of a just a couple of years they had to sell our family car and our city apartment (where we were all living), because utility bills have the nasty habit of coming in your mail-box even though you're out of a job. We only managed to got through all this because my parents still had a half-finished house in the countryside which has been their primary residence for more than 15 years now (and is still unfinished) while I got to go to college and managed to earn some financial assistance from my school for the first couple of years (and then found a job during school).
I know that the usual HN user comes from an Western country and has never had to deal with very big societal changes that can see political systems disappear over night, high-double-digit or triple-digit inflation or real-estate values collapsing to 5 or 10% of their initial value, but these will eventually happen in there, too.
It's already happened. Contrary to popular belief, Western countries are not uniformly rich and successful places where everyone drives a Ferrari and owns three houses.
This stereotype is really annoying to those of us who suffered through the industrial collapse and saw the society of whole regions destroyed (larger than most eastern European countries.)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deindustrialisation_by_country... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_(... * etc.
The point is that "westerners," even HN readers, are not all a bunch of naive rich people who have never experienced and cannot understand large scale social change.
Reasons aside, while my monthly expenses have increased a bit (not terribly much) I've been much happier and care-free now. The hundreds that I would put away for inevitable fixups and maintenance, I can now put in stocks, index funds. I personally can't hold the hammer the right way in my hand so it's been costly.
It's not customary in Finland to take second mortgages against house so having money in stocks is vastly more easily liquidable as well.
if you're using a taxable margin account(1), your broker will almost certainly be happy to let you borrow some fraction of your stock's value as cash, without any paperwork. depending on the value of your account and the amount being borrowed, the rates might even be decent, compared to a HELOC. (after all, their risk is a lot lower, as they can liquidate your stocks on a moment's notice. much easier than foreclosing on a house. and while you're in debt to them, they can loan your stocks out to other people, which is valuable to them.)
(1): holy crap don't sign up for a margin account without fully understanding what you're doing.
I think this is a good point. Honestly, I don't know the economics of how property ownership is distributed in the US, but as a result, I can't say why we aren't all renting from a small handful of giant land owners, who can control entire cities or even regions. For this reason, though I know that the homeowner subsidy is regressive in many ways, and that home ownership isn't necessarily the most productive investment strategy, I'm hesitant to just get rid of it.
Now, you could argue those themselves have ownership distributed because they are public companies so therefore those mortgages are in fact benefiting shareholders, but banks own the majority of homes in America. And if you pay it off and don't pay taxes, the government does.
The state provides this safety net in Germany. When both my parents were unemployed, we didn't have to move out of our apartment. The unemployment benefits were enough to pay the rent.
> 2. A paid-off home frees up cash flow. It allows the owner to divert his earnings into other activities or investments or reduce the amount he has to earn monthly.
Having to pay off a home binds cash flow at first, compared to renting.
> 3. Real estate can be borrowed against. Try that with stocks. If you are an entrepreneur, your home is likely the asset you will use to acquire bank financing for your business.
Can you borrow against a house you have not paid off yet? I think you shouldn't be able to, since the house is already a security for your mortgage. If you use your money to buy a house and then borrow to start a business, that seems horribly inefficient to me.
> 4. With unskilled / low-skilled jobs vanishing left and right, homebuilding is one of the few markets which still relies entirely on a giant low-skilled workforce. It's one of the few sectors that can keep a lot of people productively employed. I think there are valid arguments against stimulating homebuilding to reduce unemployment among low-skill workers, but there is nevertheless a societal logic here.
Houses are still being built when everyone rents, they are just large apartment complexes. In Germany, the low-skilled workers you are concerned about are mostly immigrants from poorer countries in Europe, they would move somewhere else if the housing industry stopped employing them.
> 5. In a time when wealth is centralizing as never before, investments in real estate distributes wealth locally. I think there are valid arguments against public policy to distribute wealth, but there is a societal logic here.
In Germany, the state distributes wealth directly. (see 1.)
> 6. Finally: taxing a home is very counterproductive to the well-being of the middle class and the poor. I'm sure in Germany the interest on a mortgage isn't tax deductible as you say, but I'd also guess that steps are taken to refund the property taxes for the lower classes. Otherwise you simply tax the poor out of their homes - a form of confiscation.
You are assuming the poor own their homes to begin with, this is not usually the case in Germany
>> 1. A paid off home is a social safety net against homelessness for an entire family and many of their social circles. Even if all of them are unemployed, all of them have a roof over their heads.
> The state provides this safety net in Germany.
Why do you think it's a bad thing for people to be empowered to not need a state safety net to provide them with jobs?
If "most everyone" owned homes outright, then "most everyone" could be easily insulated from such a significant state burden.
My ownership of my home provides a lot of active investment activity that wouldn't happen otherwise:
Examples:
- the local nursery benefits from the plants and growing materials that we buy
- investments in home improvements generate contractor man-hours and local material purchases
- as an active participant in stakeholder in the community, I contribute to the governance of the community
- single family homes are valued at a premium to multi family, so I contribute more to local school and municipal services.
Now that I own my house, I have a 150k investment in the neighborhood/city.
Presumably if you were renting
- you would still garden and you or your landlord would still maintain the lawn
- your landlord would still maintain the house
- you would still be living in the community and therefore motivated to participate in it's government
- I don't understand this one at all. Why would a second family suddenly move in if the house was rented?
- You might not garden w/ no equitable return on house value (or at least not build a large gardening setup), and landlords feel the same way in reverse (no benefit to them to do anything beyond the minimum once it's inhabited)
- Maintain != improve...BIG difference
- Except you may be more nomadic. Also you missed the GP's use of the word "stakeholder" of which you are considerably less of if you don't own land in the community
- I too don't understand this point...but I think the GP means "multi-family" as in apartments, thereby single-family (i.e. standalone house) is higher "premium" therefore you contribute more. Again, not sure here.
Further, people really do rent the same place for 30+ years when their job and family situation is stable, which incentives similar levels of improvement.
Housing has driven US GDP growth since WW2 or earlier, so that's a pretty big leap.
Further, GDP is a very short term view of the economy. Daycare is a classic example where going from an informal to formal system nominally increases GDP much more than the net increase in value.
I do. My sister likes to garden, and when she was renting she put a lot of effort into creating a large, beautiful garden.
Then the landlord decided she needed to move her ailing mother closer and terminated my sister's lease. After that my sister didn't bother with a garden until she bought a house.
The return is the experience and joy of gardening, which occurs whether I own or rent.
> landlords feel the same way in reverse (no benefit to them to do anything beyond the minimum once it's inhabited)
I'm willing to pay more in rent for a higher quality residence. A well maintained garden (or the tools to make one) would certainly count towards quality.
> Except you may be more nomadic. Also you missed the GP's use of the word "stakeholder" of which you are considerably less of if you don't own land in the community
Even if I live in a place for a single week, I don't want to live in a shithole for that week. My experience living in a neighborhood makes me a stakeholder, even if I don't own land there.
Landlords don't maintain property to the same standard as an individual homeowner, when they do, they use more efficient service models (ie. a single crew with a single set of tools) to do so.
Tenants participate less and have much lower engagement. They have 1 year leases, and have less at stake. In my community, renters participate 60% less in terms of voting. There are 150 members of my local neighborhood association, and per a recent survey, 90% of participants are homeowners. They mostly solicit membership by dropping flyers and advertising in church bulletins. Per census figures, the population of renters is somewhere between 60-70% vs. homeowners.
The last point is that without homeownership, incentives shift to multi-family dwellings because they are cheaper and more efficient. Single family homes for rent are usually an aberration in my experience. As a homeowner in a city that is mostly rentals the per-unit taxable value of a multi-family house is significantly less than a single family.
Not true in Germany. Most leases are indefinite. As the contractual rent often increases by less than the market there is some incentive to stay put. Also keep in mind that moving in Germany is an expensive proposition as the kitchen is usually not part of the deal.
My rent in the US went up $100+ year after year, rent never goes down is the feeling you get and I've never seen or heard of it happening. You never invested anything into the property or building. Buying a home was freedom from that constant rising pressure, moving every 2-3 years to find another move in special and I can finally invest time and effort in my living space.
That's because homeownership is a norm for long-term residents here in the USA. If long term renting were as much (or more) of a norm, an average renter would experience the same incentive to keep the place in an aesthetically pleasing state as an average owner, and landlords would have to make their properties much more attractive in order to have tenants.
Every office I've ever worked in the continental U.S. was on a long term lease. The organizations I worked for spent large amounts of money to customize work spaces. It is very possible that software firms don't represent commercial tenants, so please give me more information so I can update my viewpoint.
Sometimes I wonder how such layouts are created. Presumably by people who don't have to live there. Or live a very different life (eating out vs. cooking, maybe). That's one thing you can do better when building a house, although when buying one you could probably change it at great expenses as well.
Why is property unproductive? It produces accommodation, doesn't it?
Investing in manufacturing companies makes more factories.
A very efficient tax is the land value tax: by untaxing the improvements on land and taxing the land values more heavily, you incentivize efficiency.
If you want to create value, you should make sure that housing prices (both renting and buying) stay low. This way not only wealth can go to other investments, but more people can take the risk to start a business if they don't have the risk to be unable to pay their rent or mortgage.
Try telling that to a landlord. Being one is a job in itself - or you have to pay someone else a good chunk of money to do the work for you.
I was a landlord for a while during the realty boom. It really did suck. However, it varied wildly by tenant: some tenants took good care of the place, others didn't. So when a tenant left and I had to get a house ready to re-rent, some were a relative cakewalk, while others required a ton of work (like one idiot who drilled a bunch of giant holes in the walls for cables for their A/V equipment).
The worst part about it was being on the hook for major repairs, and having them happen at unpredictable times.
Bad tenants are probably over represented in the rental pool since they're looking for a new place all the time.
It's also hard to feel bad for home owners renting half of the property they live in to cover their mortgage while their property values increase 10% a year. Apartment residents meanwhile are building zero equity and eroding their chances of ever owning property.
Real estate is a hugely profitable business due to the perpetual license granted by the government to extract infinite rent from the property.
I have friends who just pay professional management companies to do billing, maintenance, and lease management for their properties. All they do is write a check to the management company and they get to keep all the profits. No, I don't think what they're doing is a real job, they just happened to have enough money to afford a few down payments on houses, and now they're getting something for nothing.
Wrong reasoning. It's tax deductable in Switzerland and they rent even way more than the germans
Of course then the capital gains tax treatment would be rather different.
Interestingly, us Germans do not like those much either - mostly because of the associated risks and the Notion that "the small guy" cannot win that lind of game.
There was ... some enthusiasm about the stockmarket in the 1990s, but after the Dotcom-Crash and many people who invested in "save, large, local businesses" like the postal service or the Telekom losing a lot of money, that has waned.
I think you are measuring with unequal yardsticks here.
For me, the motivation for owning a house isn't so much an investment as it is that renting and owning cost virtually the same, given that one has the means to get on the ladder.
I bought my first house (I'm 30) in north Germany about 18 months ago, we paid 515k and it was recently valued at 700k due to large improvements to the area, and the renovation of an old hospital site which is now luxury flats and houses, the mortgage (2.5% fixed-for-25-years) costs us about the same as renting a flat (100sqm) in the city, and we now have 200sqm of living space and 250 of garden to ourselves, we also now own, rather than rent a parking space (which always annoyed me more than it perhaps should have)
The capital gains tax is an interesting point, given the rent we were previously paying at 1800/month (warm == includes some bills) we'd have been over 20k/year out of pocket just by maintaining the renting status-quo. My wife and I discussed whether it was the perfect house for us, whether we wanted to take a risk on living 20min north (metro) of the city, rather than 5 minutes to the west, and whether waiting 2/3 years was justifiable, we poured about 70k of our savings into legal fees, ground-tax and the deposit for the property, we figured that sitting on our hands for 2-3 years could cost us essentially the same.
Naturally one can't write-off the convenience of renting and being able to terminate a contract and simply move, but I have almost the same freedom to rent out my house should I choose not to live there anymore, although the rental market for houses ~20 min north of the city will make it tricky to cover the cost, then keeping the house turns into a question of eating the capital gains tax, or paying out of pocket a few hundred euros per month to make the difference. I also don't have to pay €4k for a "Markler" to help me find a flat, and fax me a contract, a rather shameful act that persists in Germany, even if you do all the work yourself, the Marker can still get their commission, legally speaking, they often do deals to prevent you pushing the issue to the courts.
Given the duration of my mortgage, the low (fixed) rate, I can look forward to the last 15 years of my useful working career being rent and mortgage free, which might be a bit too late to build a nest-egg, but it's certainly better than being at the mercy of ever-increasing rental rates in an ever-expanding city. (in my opinion)
I think it might be fair to close by saying that Germans are typically fiscally risk-averse, and huge debt, variable rate mortgages, and the uncertainness about maintenance and insurance might be as big a driver as anything else. There's also the cultural shift away from generational houses (think "Home Alone") where many generations live together longer term, I think this is significant.
Germany has one of the lowest adoption rates of credit products such as the humble credit card out of nearly all Western nations.
Debt is not liked.
Edit: From the same site, the linked article at the bottom has the answer: http://qz.com/262595/why-germans-pay-cash-for-almost-everyth...
A better link: http://www.businessinsider.com/you-have-to-understand-german...
Not surprised that those countries suffer from government shutdowns over how much the debt ceiling is raised.
On the other hand: The government shutdown because of the debt ceiling seems just like "Stop hitting yourself" on the playground.
And Germany's budget is far from balanced.
The article speaks of consumer debt, I spoke of consumer debt.
Government debt is a different thing, and a government without any debt doesn't sound like a wise thing if it is even possible in such a highly integrated and globalised world.
Hmm?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-17/germany-pl...
"Germany recorded a Government Budget surplus equal to 0.70 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product in 2015. "
While it's true that the budget is not balanced, a 0.7%/GDP surplus is pretty darn close.
However the fact that the government jumps through all sorts of hoops to be able to say the budget is balanced is at least an interesting indicator that it does seem to matter to enough people.
Otherwise even the US would have a balanced budget and no debts. (Ignoring the fact that the US is the main force behind trying to change the account rules to make them look less bad.)
The difference is that parties that try to pull that in Germany not only loose elections, but are punished so hard by voters that they can't even get over the necessary 5% requirement in the next election.
Have a look what happened to the FDP after they pushed through lower taxes for hotels.
Signing into some unnecessary additional financial product with comically obsolete interest rates, just to manually repay it in the random timeframe in which the (still unnecessary) credit is free sounds like a bad idea.
It's probably only there to nudge people into paying interest on money they already have.
Are you talking about the 0% APR period, or the monthly revolving cycle? The latter is absolutely predictable, and if you dislike manual payments you can always set up automatic ones.
Handling debt responsibly is a different skill from handling cash responsibly. When it comes time to buy a home, for example, which 99% of people will need credit to do, the banks want to see that you can handle debt responsibly, since that's what you're taking on.
Edit: Also, see my reply to GP comment that explains some of the other benefits of using a credit card.
If I'm going to loan you $1,000 I'd like to get references, talk to all the other people you've borrowed money from and ask them if you paid it back to show you are able to handle debt. You get other people to vouch for you that you are good on that $1,000. If you have nobody to vouch for you I'd be more hesitant to loan you money. Or ask you for a higher interest rate.
This gives you an incentive to borrow money and always pay it back. In fact just having an open line of credit you aren't using makes you look better. "I have the opportunity to max out my cards but I am not."
Its perverse but it does make logical sense. Its a different kind of responsible.
The other reason people use cards is many cards, as an incentive to get you to use them, give you perks. For example, airline miles, hotel points, cash back, warranty extension, price protection, purchase protection, rental car insurance, etc, etc.
In practical terms, because in the US the handling of debit card fraud and credit card fraud is vastly different.
In the case of debit card fraud the money is gone from your account and you then spend some months trying to get it back. In the meantime, you don't have that money.
In the case of credit card fraud, you contact the credit card company, they reverse the charges, and then it's their problem after that point, not yours.
Assuming you have any self-discipline at all, a credit card is a _much_ better idea than a debit card in the US.
> Isn't the best credit history one where you never need credit in the first place?
The best credit history, if being used for the sane "will this person make timely payments on this loan?" reason, would consist of a history of timely payments on exactly this type of loan, with no debt outstanding right now.
Never needing credit before may mean you always had lots of money, or that you simply never tried to do anything that involved any large amounts of money and now you want to do such a thing....
Similar cards carry similar benefits, I'm sure. All you have to do to reap them is get the card, use it instead of your debit, then pay it off appropriately.
And in the event that your card is stolen, a credit card is always better than a debit card, because then money isn't stolen from your own personal bank accounts.
Obviously it shouldn't be this way, it should be possible to save and buy these things outright. But since it effectively isn't (for many people, in many places) I wouldn't fault people for taking on debt to do things like put a roof over their head or get to work on time reliably.
Of course using your overdraft is totally fine, but using the evil credit cards even when paying in full is just like declaring bankruptcy. Doesn't help payment services in Germany that Visa/MasterCard is always considered an evil credit card and debit brands aren't too common.
The reason they are "evil" is that they charge the dealer the by far largest fees. Cache: no fee. EC card: small fee. Credit card: large fee. And of course I can't ask the customer to pay for it, I must have one price for all. It was something like 1% vs. 3% (approximately(!), just to give an idea of magnitude).
It's not even any more convenient. Except for a few places like car rentals, where the credit card serves an insurance function (the rental deposit), there is exactly zero reason to point to convenience. Just use an EC card or a bank card that's attached to the major payment processing networks, everybody has one.
On the other hand, most credit cards cost a yearly fee of 20-70 Euros or so. The only reason I grudgingly pay for one is because I rent a car occasionally.
I rent cars quite frequently with the boring free VISA debit card from my normal checking account. I never knew that there are restrictions on which cards can be used for renting.
For example, I rented twice this year - I don't own a car and usually use the train - and the first time they wanted my to enter the PIN for the credit card, which I didn't know. A big hassle, they took (real!) money off of my EC card (which I got back afterwards).
The second time I didn't need a PIN (different car rental company), but they helped themselves to almost 800 Euros in alleged damages from my credit card (good thing I had used an online service and opted into the "we pay the deductible", which was 1,000 Euros, on the full insurance I had also selected to get).
Technical limitation of the German debit card scheme, which doesn't support blocking amounts for security, but requires refunds...
Because it just magically transfers from your register to your bank account? :)
>It was something like 1% vs. 3% (approximately(!), just to give an idea of magnitude).
I know, but by now it is down to 0.9% for most retailers so not accepting credit cards is always an interesting decision.
>most credit cards cost a yearly fee of 20-70 Euros or so
When you get a card to collect airline miles or get the card from your bank. Most other banks (Advanzia, Barclaycard, LBB) charge nothing for it, but make up by charging high interest rates. Still most have an interest-free period, which can be beneficial for consumers.
> zero reason to point to convenience.
Regular cards still don't support contactless. Just tapping your card is vastly better than entering your PIN or signing. A lot of retailers in Germany support it.
> Because it just magically transfers from your register to your bank account? :)
> Regular cards still don't support contactless
Well, there usually is a fee. At least here in the US, business bank accounts get cash handling for free up to a certain amount per month. After that you're charged a small fee (as a percentage) on the amount of cash deposited, because the bank sure as hell isn't counting your cash for free.
I thought there is a machine for that? Also, isn't it possible just to use an ATM?
This is for business accounts, which have vastly different fee structures than consumer accounts, because businesses have more money, and also because it costs them money (either in employee time, or having machinery available). Do you let your customers use your time and stuff for free? No? Then why should the bank? Hence why they charge.
Visa/MasterCard debits are extremely rare in Germany.
Oh, I realy miss this. In my country it is impossible to find a normal card, all are contactless by default. Even if you'd like to get a normal one for security reasons you can't - banks don't offer them.
As a near-annual visitor to Germany, it drives me nuts that I can't use my Australian credit card everywhere (especially at Saturn). I would LOVE to have an EC card, but it seems there's no way easy way for a visitor to Germany to get one. Seems you need a bank account, and there doesn't seem to be a way to get one without a residency permit. It's not like Australia where a visitor can at least buy a pre-paid reloadable Visa Debit card in any post office.
[If I'm wrong about the EC Cards and bank accounts, please let me know, I'd love to use an EC Card like a proper German whenever I visit.]
0.23% EC
0.5% Maestro/VPay/MasterCard Debit/Visa Debit
0.8% MasterCard Credit/Visa Credit
2.5% Amex
But of course that depends on the size and the negotiation skills of the retailer. I'm always envy when visiting the Netherlands, "PINNEN ja graag" signs everywhere :)
However, I am not sure if this also applies to Australia or only to other European countries. But if you're really interested it might be worth checking it out. (Also, I think their website is only available in German, so you would need to understand / find someone who understands some German to sign up.)
Debit cards, that's another story. Most people pay with their debit cards instead of cash. It's convenient, even more so since the introduction of contactless bank cards.
Except if you live in some rural area...
That said there are definitely credit cards, usually linked to big retailers (Auchan, etc.), but are they that popular?
Average credit card spending per French annually is $300 -- so quite insignificant compared to Americans (which would be almost half their annual salary if not more).
Yes it is called "carte de crédit" i.e. credit card but when you think about it, it is not actually credit.
In Canada, paying with VISA/Mastercard is considered as credit i.e. debt. You can pay with VISA even if at the present moment, you do not have the cash in your bank account. Banks, VISA and others like this because they will then be able to charge you 25 to 35% of the amount at the end of the month if you do not pay in time.
It does not matter then to compare average spending or number of transactions since it's two different meanings.
Strictly speaking a credit card is a "carte de credit", however between the simple translation with english, the similarities between the form factor etc, A LOT of French (especially not used to the US credit card) will call their debit card 'carte de crédit'
Their is a lot of confusion on this, but most of the time french people use debit card. In fact I think banks almost don't advertise credit card, only companies offer this (airlines/supermarket)
On the technical side, there is no difference most people have visa/mastercard
[1] https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/market-studies/ms14-6-2-c...)
So the card says "Visa", the transaction runs through Visa and the money comes directly out of the bank account. It's also common to use a different payment network (debit) and to have a card that pays for the purchase on credit. Annual rates are currently 13%-23%, so the monthly interest is 1%-2%.
I thought chip-and-PIN was the standard over there?
I've had the exact opposite in the US, getting asked if I'm sure I'm okay with entering my PIN having presented a chip-and-PIN card, seemingly expecting me not to know my PIN.
And it still does. I still don't know what would have been the point to make a loan to buy a bag of potatoes, but well... Cultural differences.
That in the past Germany was not so sensible about its budget.
To explain cultural difference:
- In the US you are considered financially stable if you are always paying your debt/credit on time.
- In the germanic countries you are considered financially stable if you have none.
My US Bank clerk needed a few meetings to convince me that it is good to build go into monthly credits (creditcard) to support my credit score.
Getting a home loan is difficult. I don't have any bad credit at all but not much installment loan history.
Uhmm, can't a bank see your salaries? Because in Turkey they want to see your salaries. You enter to www.turkiye.gov.tr and print out your last 12 months salaries with a validation number and then hand it to your bank. Or you ask from your employer, he ask it from Social Security, travels back to you and you hand it to your bank.
Then they check wheter you had missed to pay back your credit (even to another bank, because they share data). And they check wheter if you were rejected by an another bank (because they share data).
Basically, your score is high if your salary is high.
It's stupid.
It would obviously be better if we judged creditworthiness by your bank balance history. But this is apparently hard/impossible to show.
Happened to me too -- I was working at my first job for 18 months but had never gotten a credit card. I had never had debts and was asking for a mortgage less than 2x my salary while making 3x the median income for the area and at its largest employer; still classified as subprime.
What's worse is that I could go to the annual credit report services and get my score, which would show it as 740, but then any actual lender I went to wouldn't see the 740; they'd see "no data", which puts you in the subprime bucket.
I would be auto-rejected even for $500-limit store credit cards.
(It's been since resolved and I've had a credit card for a while but still, very screwy.)
I get warnings for not having more credit cards.
In the case of "formally a company car", leasing is not perceived as personal debt at all but just as a car that is much nicer than what you would buy on your own and that you happen to loose when you quit your job.
Privately held new cars are the realm of those who can easily afford to pay up front (e.g. a large fraction of those are bought by are retirees in burn those savings as long as you can mode) and those who are at the same time in the top percentiles of both madness for cars and willingness to go into debt (these people certainly do exist, just in slightly but noticeably lower numbers than elsewhere).
Oh, and a fun anecdote further illustrating the craziness of it all: there's an organization now that sued for eligibility of all kinds of vehicles, so if my employer had such a programme I could get my next fancy bicycle through them! (But as an inner city renter, my bike ownership is limited by storage anyways, and pretty much maxed out already)
On the flipside, 1% of the car's list price as well as 0.03% for every km distance between your residence and place of employment is taxed per month. So for 20km distance, it would be 1.6% of the car's list price. That is added as income onto your monthly salary for tax calculation, and those taxes then deducted from your actual cash salary.
To readers that might think otherwise: while this certainly is a powerful setup to give Tesla a hard time in the market (if you only paid personally relative to initial cost, nothing at all for consumables, would you still want to go electric?), it clearly predates them. I have personally (and legally, I was told) burnt company fuel in "daddies car" (which he did not own) back in the 90ies.
My grandmother taught it to me this way: credit is for necessities; for everything else you save. Also: low quality products are more expensive than high quality products in the long run (because you have to replace them more often).
So as an example, if you're in a tight spot and an expensive household appliance (or your car that you need for your job) breaks, it's okay to take out a loan or financing. But if you're already good and it's just a quality of life thing (e.g. a bigger TV when you already have a working one) you save money until you can afford it.
That said, in recent decades a lot of young people have started getting financing for things like bigger TVs or mail order products. This is generally seen as a lower-class problem and has been prominently featured on TV programmes about indebted teenagers and such (a decade earlier when TV was more relevant).
I'd say lifestyle financing is a thing these days, but it's still frowned upon by most people because it's not considered sustainable and basically a form of delayed personal bankruptcy.
(A note on "lower class": the term probably has different connotations in different cultures (and even in different parts of society); I'm specifically talking about people from a low educational background who make minimum wage in low prestige jobs or rely on social welfare.)
"Unterschicht" (=lower class) is pretty similar in meaning to "trailer-park white trash" in American English.
I think the big distinction is that -- unlike nearly anything else you might buy on credit -- houses don't really depreciate. Even without the overall rising house prices, relatively few people value a 20 year old house at a meaningful premium over a similarly-sized 40 year old house. So it's comparatively easy to justify as an asset counter-balancing the debt.
We live in a small to medium size flat for 380€/month, including some running costs. Buying it would cost roughly 250k. That just doesn't pay off. Most medium sized houses are about 700k€ in the region, with typical software developer wages at 2-4k€/month before taxes. So 1.5-2.5k€ after taxes. Now go figure how long you will be in debt...
And of course, people are older nowadays when they start to earn. For example, my parents started working with 16. I visited a technical school up to age 19, had to do a year of civil/military service, then worked 2 years to save some money, then did a CS bachelor. A bachelor alone is "no real degree" here, so also doing an MSc. Working while studying to afford the studying prolonged the studies a bit.. and in the end I started with my first real OKish earnings at age 28 when I started with my PhD. So... yeah. At the bank they laughed at my income when asking for a loan for a flat.
But this can also happen if you own a house, because there are running expenses for municipal taxes, validating the plumbing every X years, renewal of the boiler system before every winter starts, cleaning the snow or paying someone to do it....
There was a comment I read here recently about how a mortgage is in some ways a vehicle for forced savings. Not enough to retire on alone of course, but a big check if you ever need it.
In France major cities outside Paris, I'd expect a 150-250k flat to be 600-800 euros/month in rent.
If you pay only 380€ per month for rent, it's really not worth buying.
Wow that's a pretty insane rent to purchase price ratio, seems not that dissimilar to Vancouver which is a gong show.
it's an old rent contracts and the newly-rent-value would be around 600
"My fault" -> "Meine Schuld"
"My debt" -> "Meine Schulden"
I think both also behave as mass nouns, so there's rarely any ambiguity.
My rather simple (and completely argumentative) explanation is that Germans generally are less enthusiastic about taking on debt to finance things. Psychologically I'd say it's rooted in the fact that the results of hyperinflation are very much in the minds of people and there's a tendency of "don't borrow if you can save for it". Since the only realistic option for buying houses is taking on debt, less people do it. I feel this mindset is slowly going away though. Another point in favor of this "theory": credit cards are relatively uncommon compared to other countries (that's also changing imo).
I feel like home ownership is even less of a useful concept these days with ever shifting jobs so I think we accidentally stumbled upon the right strategy.
Edit: There's also quite a few buildings that are owned by a "Wohnungsbaugenossenschaften" (basically a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative for housing)
People are still buying and building houses here, especial in rural areas. It's mostly the cities where things simply have become unaffordable for most people.
Like with many things, the devil is in the details. I'd say a 1 to 5% inflation rate is preferable, a 5 to 10% inflation is livable rate, 10 to 20% is starting to get tense, more than 20% and then everything is suddenly more expensive and you risk don't having money to get you through the month. Yes, some of your nominal debt might go down, but, then again, you still probably have to buy gas every couple of days (which is most probably imported, so its price has gone up), with more expensive gas comes more expensive merchandise (things like food, clothes and the like) because carrying stuff around consumes gas, your heating and electricity bills will also probably double of triple in value in a matter of a couple of years, and so on and so forth (not to say that you can forget about more-than-basic stuff like having a vacation abroad).
Housing is a constant expense. If you rent practically speaking you are in debt to your landlord every month. In the US and many other countries on the list where home ownership is prevalent although you are in debt to the bank you are also paying yourself in a round about way in the form of equity(principal) that you have in the house. So you are actually saving rather than spending which is generally financially conservative.
As the poster above you mentioned Germany doesn't incentivize home ownership via tax breaks and I think thats the key difference.
However home ownership is also considered a luxury. Not only is there not as much of a tax incentive as in the US and not only does it require you to take on life-long debt, but there are also a lot of expenses the landlord would have to pay for but a homeowner has to pay out of their own pocket.
The obvious example are routine maintenance like roofing and plumbing, but also drainage or the cost of public works: if the house sits on a street corner and both streets get modernized, you may end up having to pay for both.
The expenses when renting on the other hand are much more predictable: you just pay the rent and utilities and whatever one-off costs come up have to be spread out via an increase in the utilities bill or swallowed by the landlord.
So if you want to build or buy a house, you're expected to save money for paying for these fun surprises as well -- because having to take out a loan is a sign of poor planning, if the bank even grants you one on top of the financing for the house itself. Add everything together and home ownership becomes nothing more than a luxury.
Serious question: Why is it not very popular in other countries?
Of course it is 'wasteful' and expensive to take up a whole housing unit to yourself, but some (most?) people (especially strangers) in the US do not make considerate room mates. Actually probably long term only family members learn to live together in harmony (probably because they have to).
Very popular at least in London due to high rent prices.
I think what i want to say is that for most living in a shared apartment is not a thing out of necessity anymore, but out of choice
Why the assumption that all roommates everywhere are partying?
For me that is by far my dream scenario after a day at work.
Because some countries have much, much worse tenants rights.
I moved from Ireland to Germany and in Ireland:
* There is basically no protection for rent increases, some people are being told their rent is increasing by 50%
* Can't change your apartment. Not allowed to paint the walls, nearly all come with furniture, better make sure you don't damage any of it.
* Oh the landlord/landlord's relative wants to live in the apartment. Eviction time for you.
* You give your landlord your deposit. Let's hope they can find it again if you move out.
* By default, no pets allowed. And many landlords will say no.
* Did I mention about the rent increases?
I lived in a shared flat in Germany which got a rent increase and other than all the young families in the building we really barely noticed it.
It can still be a massive impact, because the increase can be split between all tenants. So you might have budgeted €800 per month, and now it's going up to €1,000. You've still had a 20% increase.
http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/renting_a_home/...
The landlord's relatives issue is however the easiest way to get someone out of a property and increase rent.
Yep that's a new law and step in the right direction. But it doesn't really limit the amount. So landlords can just batch up 2 years of increase in one go.
And even so tenants can sue against rent increases and occasionally win, resulting in no increase or a lower increase. There's even a Renter's Association that can provide legal aide to its members when there are disputes between tenants and landlords.
- Rent increase limits
- Larger changes need landlord's approval (changing walls and stuff). A lot of smaller stuff can be done on your own and doesn't require asking the landlords. (Many landlords are happy if you want to paint the walls etc., though.)
- Only smaller apartments (often intended for students) come usually with furniture
- The deposit has to be put on a special, locked bank account. The money can only been withdrawn if both sides tell the bank in writing that the rent contract is over
- Depends on the size of the pet
- Temporary leases for residential properties are only allowed in very special circumstances
- For the landlord termination is almost impossible
Tenancy law is very one-sided in Germany which leads to a high vacancy rate for residential properties (around 5% [1]). That doesn't mean that there is no housing shortage at the same time.
[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/258767/umfrag...
Terminating a contract can be done if the tenant is behind at least two monthly rents in payments, or if the landlord has personal interest in the property (Eigenbedarf), which is also rather strictly regulated, though (also won't ever happen when your landlord is a company). I'm sure they could terminate your contract if the tenant actually destroys the place. However, they first have to be aware of it (it's not typical of landlords coming to visit, and if neighbours don't complain things can go unnoticed). So usually they won't notice until they move out, although they're liable for the damages caused. The security deposit won't usually be enough to cover extensive damage, though, as it's in the order of two or three monthly rents.
Elderly people who are renting out a spare unit usually can't afford large amounts of damages or court fees. Also if your mortgaged backed it can be fairly financially ruinous while your waiting for repairs to be done and you have no rental income. People who also ruin places tend to be judgement proof too.
I'm guessing Germany is more civilized than SF, so these worries are not as high, but I suspect it's part of the reason why places like berlin have supply issue despite a %5 vacancy rate in some buildings.
There used to be a requirement for tenants to renovate the apartment (i.e. thorough cleaning, new wallpaper and white paint) before moving out but that requirement has been reduced to "besenrein" (literally "broom clean", i.e. no rubbish or dirt). Damage to windows and existing fittings etc is deducted from the deposit but tenants have the right to a formal inspection with a signed report to avoid dubious claims.
The "Kautionskonto" (the special bank account) is widespread but not universal. However there are also co-operatives that invest your deposit and actually pass on the interest to you when you move out (these apartments are rare though).
Some specifics on pets: fish and caged pets (e.g. rodents) are generally allowed within normal quantities. Cats require approval but disapproval is practically impossible unless there are very good reasons. Dogs always require approval and disapproval is more likely. Many contracts explicitly allow specific pets (including dogs). If another tenant was given permission for a dog, it's hard or impossible to make a case for forbidding a similar dog. "Kampfhunde" (attack dogs) may be more problematic.
This is not optional. It is required by law. Interest from deposits belong to the renter.
Skip a single CappuFrappeGingerPumpkinLatte (or what people buy in cafes in SF) and you just got more money than any investment on the deposit can ever make.
Many landlords scam tenants into "refreshing" costs of the apartment. The cost of the lawyer to litigate is accidentally of the same order of magnitude as the cost of the "refreshing" so many tenants just give up (unless their daddy is a lawyer).
> The deposit has to be put on a special, locked bank account. The money can only been withdrawn if both sides tell the bank in writing that the rent contract is over
Not in high demand areas i.e. any major city including Berlin.
This is the part I hate most about renting. Either leave the apartment empty, or at least give me furniture that isn't broken IKEA shit.
Also, 1 almost never paid rent. Thanks to him knowing the laws better than me, there was effectively nothing I could do. We couldn't afford this at the time so we forced him out of his room and at least got another person in there for a while. Money is a huge concern for me thanks to student debt. So, when your roommate is screwing around and on the verge of getting fired it stresses me out. Right now I have another roommate who was fired and doesn't seem to care much about finding another job. They're paying rent but the landlord is pretty upset about them being chronically late and only paying $10 here and there.
Every year, "due to market forces" they try to raise my rent by $100 per month, $1,200 a year. So I've been forced to move basically every year because why should I pay more when, magically, getting the exact same (but different) apartment in the same building is cheaper...
Thank god this is my last roommate. I'm buying a house and I can finally sit in one spot for more than 365 days.
Nudity is frowned upon but everyone will be half-naked or naked at home. Hard to share a living space.
1) The vast majority of your assets becoming concentrated in a single plot of land, in a single neighborhood, in a single city
2) Your future mobility to pursue jobs in other cities, becoming significantly constrained
If you want to invest your savings, then invest them in the stock/bond markets. If you really love real estate investments for some reason, invest in a REIT fund where your assets will be diversified across thousands of properties, and fully managed by others on your behalf. Pursuing a national policy of home-ownership makes little sense.
Perhaps the idea of people who haven't adopted this is that, unless they like doing so, humans should not have to live like nomads moving here and there to pursue this or that financial opportunity, but instead should be allowed to grow roots in some place, help shape it and improve it, connect with their neighbors, etc.
Why? It's a choice best left to each person, telling somebody what they should do and how to live their lives is patronizing at least.
People aren't allowed to demand that the economy provide them with all the means they might wish for to do these things in any arbitrarily selected location.
Well, their landlord may disagree.
That is, if they are renting... what is what this discussion is about.
The stay having an short deadline means the cultivation will be cut short too.
Heck, in 6 months most people haven't even fully unpacked their things or made new friends -- so it's not like they'll have grown roots in a year -- especially since they know that they'll be leaving in a year anyway.
2) Again, this is OK if you want a "home".
Your recommendations are based on assumptions that people want to maximize their money. Most people I talk to (most people over 30, at least) are willing to have less money in exchange for a better overall life.
How to balance money with intangibles is a personal choice. But the "financial planning perspective" is just one piece of the puzzle, not the big picture.
Not necessarily. I can always rent out my flat for about the same monthly fee I pay for mortgage and rent a flat myself in other city/country in case of a good job opportunity. Sure, being in a debt for few decades has many drawbacks, but restricted mobility is not one of them.
Having to rebuild one's social circle from scratch every few years can be a very valuable and beneficial skill for a child.
Imagine if large public companies owned most of the housing stock and rather than buying a house you invested in these companies. Instead of bearing all the location and liquidity risk of owning a house, you would spread that risk over large numbers of markets. In fact being stuck owning a house in an unfavorable market can keep someone from moving, which reduces labor mobility.
Not to knock your choice, but many people including myself would never consider living there.
The reason I say it is "fake-subsidized" is straightforward: say you make $100K per year. A reasonable expense on housing is 25% of your income -- 25K per year or about 2K/month. Luckily for you, you can use the full 25K because you won't be paying income tax on the money when you buy the house. So you can buy more house...except all other buyers making 100K can do the same. If you had to pay after-tax dollars you could only pay, say, $1500/month -- but so would everyone else you're competing with. In essence the tax subsidy only helps real estate agents and those who want to live off the appreciation of their house...which is a risk (yes the long term trend is upwards, but not necessarily where you live, and not necessarily when you plan to retire).
And let's not forget that almost all the mortgages are held by the US government. It's a highly distorted market, and while I believe it developed with good intentions, it's not at all clear it's good for the majority of citizens.
On that note, supposedly the idea of homeownership was in part pushed because homeowners do not riot. After all, they can't as easily up and move afterwards.
Buying a house can be a net loss over the years, if you're not located in a major city. Especially in East Germany, house prices are declining. See this graphic [1]. Everything yellow basically doesn't yield any returns. Housing prices in orange and red areas decline over the years.
But even in green areas, there are so many knobs you can turn to make buying or renting more feasible than the other. It boils down to lifestyle decision: Do you want to live in your own house or not? If you prefer to rent: Are you willing to save money by other means? Because buying a house works for many people simply because they're forced to "save" a certain percentage of their income every month.
I prefer renting, because of the flexibility. I put quite a bit of money in stocks instead.
[1]: http://cdn3.spiegel.de/images/image-726182-galleryV9-uttw-72...
Exactly.
My philosophy is, to a first approximation, forget the financial aspect. Yes, depending upon tax policies, rent/buy ratios, etc. it may make more or less sense to rent vs. buy in a given location. But, for me, it really comes down to flexibility on the one hand and stability/ability to modify things to your liking on the other. Neither is the "right" approach but IMO it's what most people should be focusing on rather than whether it's a good investment or whether they're "throwing money away" on rentals.
People change to small towns because they want stress free life and a better/larger home for the same price of a small apartment in big cities. Living in cities brings also disadvantages!
But most people are not investors, they want a home to raise their kids and be a place they belong. That's the disconnect
Of course, what renting gives you is the flexibility to live in a smaller place and avoid overpaying for extra space that you might want to use at a later time. Still, the savings from renting a smaller place have to be greater than the tax expenses that I get charged for renting out.
When compared with big housing companies, private landlords require bigger profit margins, leading to low quality maintenance of existing houses and ex-orbital rents. Especially in crowded cities, rent regulation is non existent and its a sellers market, inflated by wealthy students that rent expensive micro-flats during university.
You or your parents don’t own houses, and are self sufficient on a regular job? Well, you are shit out of luck then. As much as 70% of your income will go towards your rent, effectively financing the better-off and the further expansion of their inefficient renting businesses.
Aside from that it takes liberties right left and centre. I cannot structure my house and life as I want from painting and shelving through pets and kitchen appliances.
I cannot fix something without causing a hassle and days off work.
I cannot register a business here.
I am at the whim of my landlord.
Renting in the UK is a pain in the arse. I do to see renting as particularly positive for the individual.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatlife/11417359/Germany-...
On my current street, opposite the flats further up, there is regular fly tipping and various illegal activities. The fly tipping can take weeks to be dealt with as nobody rings the council (I've started emailing the council when I notice it, but I don't walk that way often).
Renters just don't have enough skin in the game to maintain the communities.
Even within the same city, it's really nice to move near your new job and not have a commute.
Sure its more complex than simply giving notice and leaving but it isn't hard.
All of which is to say that optimal housing strategy depends _very_ strongly on the realities of the local market. Buying a house for $200k on a $50k salary is quite different from buying a house for $1.2 million on a $200k salary...
Also, recently, I've been looking at housing market in Munich and it's very very expensive. Renting is ~20% more expensive than in Brussels and acquisition is +100% more expensive. So, although I admit I do not know rest of Germany housing market, I have some troubles thinking why Munich would be more expensive than Brussels. And I certainly miss, from that perspective, why German system would be more interesting.
A guaranteed zero ROI is better than a negative ROI which you can get with buying a house (e.g. the house you can resell it drops due to the market and you can't afford the mortgage for some reason...)
But I should have said renting is a sunk cost. There is no investment component at all in renting.
The question is how do you invest the extra leftover money: in home equity tied to the property with running costs, or in other investments (stocks, bonds, your own business)?
I would say low cost index funds are a much lower risk investment than a mortgage. They also have the advantage of being very liquid in the case of actually needing your money. Rent is not a sunk cost, this is a common misconception.
There are many good reasons to buy a home, but do not think of it as an "investment". Compared to other investment options, it's a pretty terrible one.
I highly recommend reading this article to learn more - http://jlcollinsnh.com/2013/05/29/why-your-house-is-a-terrib...
If rent < mortgage interest + other housing sunk costs and you invest the delta, renting can have a substantially higher ROI than buying.
Additionally, even if the house is paid off, you're still on the hook for all repairs, maintenance, etc. And if your neighborhood starts to go down the tubes, your house value can quickly decline as well.
I think property taxes in US already vary a lot from state to state. It certainly vary also from country to country. It's something you need to be aware to take a decision on whether it's a good investment or not.
Ultimately, all these costs are also embedded into renting price.
There, saved you a click.
[1] freedom from capital gains tax, RTB, HTB equity loan, HTB mortgage guarantee, HTB ISA, Forces HTB, NewBuy, AFHOS, Shared Ownership Scheme, Key Worker Scheme, Home Ownership Scheme for Cripples, and that is just off the top of my head
[2] rent floors through LHA, tax deductability, ability to flip residence between first and second homes for zero cap gains tax, freedom from inheritance tax beyond the usual limit...
[3] state bailouts for all major banks, gurantees, QE, QE2, QE3, liquidity schemes, credit purchase schemes etc etc
Those countries will have policies that lcaim help poor people buy houses, but the effect is to just inflate prices and increase financial risk -- as the world has already seen. The one thing that would really help -- increased supply is blocked by a powerful home-owners lobby damanding zoning rules and other restrictions.
In Germany the bloc is powerful, and probably gets more goodies than it should. But at least here they are constant building new housing.
Of course, some people choose to invest into property, but there are lots of other options with varying flexibility and payoffs. In general, even if you don't do anything towards your retirement (apart from working your working life), you still have some security as you age. But such provisions are probably one very major difference between the US and Germany.
Historically a very poor one.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/05/...
>"Capital gains have not even been positive. From 1890 to 1990, real inflation-corrected home prices were virtually unchanged."
>From 1890 -- just three decades after the Civil War -- through 2012, home prices adjusted for inflation literally went nowhere. Not a single dime of real growth. For comparison, the S&P 500 increased more than 2,000-fold during that period, adjusted for inflation. And from 1890 to through 1980, real home prices actually declined by about 10%.
Not to say that a house is a bad thing. A house can be great! It provides shelter, stability, and can provide a vast amount of joy and pride. Its a very poor investment vehicle. Its a very bad idea to have 100% of your wealth tied up in your primary residence.
Diversification is a key to financial stability everywhere.
Yes, but what does that mean for money invested in houses? The reason this is not the same question is that money invested in houses is leveraged, at least in the short term.
Simple example of how this can work: You buy a house at 20% down and an interest-only mortgage with a fixed interest rate of 4%. Inflation averages 3% and your house's price grows at exactly inflation. You live there for 40 years and then sell. To make our numbers simple, let's say the initial price was $100k.
So you put $20k down and take out a $80k loan. Each year you pay $3.2k in mortgage interest.
The price of your house after 40 years is, in then dollars, $326k. You sell, pay off the $80k loan, and have $246k left.
Let's consider the alternate situation: you rented for those 40 years. How much did you pay for rent? Chances are, it's no less than the interest on your loan (if only because a landlord would have that interest _and_ other expenses). In practice it probably went up over time, unlike your payments, but let's pretend it didn't. You invested your $20k downpayment in the stock market. What nominal return do you need to get to end up with $246k at the end of 40 years? The answer is about 6.5%. If inflation really averaged 3%, then that's a pretty decent stock market return, and that's all assuming that the capital gains treatment of the house and the stocks is the same (it's _not_ in the US; houses are exempt from capital gains tax to a large extent).
Obviously if you actually pay off your house all this goes out the window. ;) Likewise, if the house goes _down_ in price the leverage acts against you.
Realistically, houses are an awesome investment if you buy at a time of low-ish interest rates, and then before you've really paid off a large fraction of the house inflation spikes. If house prices simply keep up with inflation in that situation, you can really win out. People who bought in the US in the 60s and sold in the 80s or 90s did quite well, on average.
Typical family houses are spread across two storeys with bedrooms on the upper floor and the living room and kitchen on the lower floor. This necessitates stairs. Also, the house was probably sized to have enough space for children, who at that point have long moved out. And even if you find different uses for that space it still needs to be cleaned and maintained (and you need to clean and maintain the rest of the house anyway).
So depending on how affluent you are, how close your children are and how much care you need, either you struggle living in an oversized house, you move into a single-storey "Bungalow", you move into an apartment or you move into a retirement home.
Another option depending on how the house is built is to split the house into two apartments and have one of your kids live in the other apartment.
By the time the cold war made it apparent that 20s style economy destroying reparations would not be paid, renting was already baked into the cake.
Residential real estate is non-productive and post WW2 Germany had not use for a capital drain if anything they needed capital along the lines of the Marshall Plan so its not like anyone was interested in wasting capital in a modern USA style housing bubble.
So why did we buy? My (German) husband's fear of inflation finally surpassed his fear of debt to accommodate my Anglo-American need for my own pied a terre :) Rents are going up around here, and even though there's the 15% over 3 year limit, that's still a lot over the long term.
It was nice not to feel like we had to buy a house, though. That gave us time to save up, to know what we really wanted in a house and to be really certain that we wanted to stay in this region.
"Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent."
Yes. Because they can't fucking afford a house. Riddle solved. Move on.
You only trust the statistic you created yourself. That is not a true statement.
> Germany also loosened regulation of rental caps sooner than many other countries,
Does that mean the amount of rent control was deregulated? I thought the rent control here in Germany was pretty strict -- at least in the sense that the landlord can't increase the rent during an existing tenancy.
So it seems to work fine
Also there are many houses which have two or three appartments. The owner will live in one appartment, and either have a different generation of their family in the other ones, or else rent it for money.
Or worse: They will try to fix/repair things themselves, instead of hiring an actual professional for the job. My landlord, a brain surgeon, won't hire anybody for anything. Instead, he will come over himself and try to fix things he clearly has no clue about. Last time he cut himself trying to fix the parquet floor, ended up bleeding all over the place. I had to repaint some of the walls and the floor is still in a shoddy state.
In the city the apartment I live in as well as most buildings nearby are owned by a stock company that owns 42,000 apartments and is mostly (88%) owned by the city.
In the town the apartment is part of a building owned by an elderly couple living a few blocks away.
Compared with the company, dealing with the private landlord is a hassle. He's not very mobile, so every interaction basically takes place in his living room. He's also of course not doing this full-time, so he's not always up to date on all legal aspects or all of the necessary paperwork.
It's nice to see private individuals owning land and houses in principle, but from a pragmatic point of view the company is far easier to deal with. Their scale allows them to have offices with actual business hours and problems can be handled as routine whereas with an individual every little thing is of course special.
Because the company is mostly owned by the city, they also invest in long-term projects and community building -- which a private individual naturally can't do as easily.
So far I haven't had any problems with either of the two, but I'm fairly certain that having an actual conflict with the private couple would be a far greater issue than taking the company to court -- not in the least because in a small town everybody would hear about it and because they're private individuals it would be seen as personal.
In my case (Brno, Czech rep.) the city is by far largest landlord, holding double digits of available housing. Most of those places have very low rent, but it is hard to get the place.
An exception are (formerly) communal companies, companies that have been spun out of "company town" arrangements and of course those that operate formerly "people's owned" buildings in the east. But all those are not really into expanding.
Edit: and one thing I forgot: some units are actually owned by renters. Liking the solidity of a real estate investment and liking the flexibility of living in a rented property that you can easily swap for a different one are not mutually exclusive. For example it ie not terribly uncommon for occupant owners who need to move or scale up or down to keep their property and rent both ways (e.g. when they know that their new demand is not permanent or when their new demand does not match their investment volume).