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Comment by _0o6v | Hacker News Reader

Whilst this is no doubt innovative, everything that is abysmally wrong with property ownership in the UK stems from complicated ownership structures like that being proposed here. Just look at the leasehold scandal (and upcoming reform), the push for commonhold, and the things that go wrong (such as the cladding scandal following Grenfell).

Homes are not investment vehicles to make people wealthy - they are a fundamental human right that many people are priced out of, or subject to unscrupulous landlords and freeholders exploiting what is still essentially a feudal system.

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Homes are not investment vehicles to make people wealthy..

A huge number of people use the equity from investing in a house as a retirement fund. They very literally are investment vehicles. You can argue that they shouldn't be, or that there should be a class of housing that isn't treated like an asset, but that would be very hard to achieve without some serious market manipulation.

>or that there should be a class of housing that isn't treated like an asset

No need to talk in hypotheticals, this was once the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_the_United_K...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_Act_1980

> that would be very hard to achieve without some serious market manipulation.

Note that the housing market's already heavily manipulated, in an effort to keep the Ponzi scheme going a bit longer (e.g. Help to Buy, etc.)

Isn't Help to Buy only for first time buyers, so it biases against Buy to Lets?

Yes but I imagine the argument would be that it leads to a reduction in supply & increased demand meaning fewer houses available to compete over which results in a higher over all price which can be applied to all houses, inflating the price beyond a houses intrinsic value.

There's a very large difference between an individual using a house as a home, then selling and realising any increase in value, vs. a commercial company owning a property as an investment vehicle (in the literal sense - people can invest in the company!) and then letting the property out (or selling a time-based lease to a leaseholder).

We should try and stop this thinking. This is going to hurt a lot of people (my parents included) who are in their 50s and 60s now when they soon try and sell their homes to retire.

Any asset that can maintain or increase its value over time can be an investment vehicle and thus in practice is an investment vehicle.

It is not a human right to own property. Having a roof over your head and owning that roof outright are not the same thing.

If the rent is disconnected from the property value, then there is a speculative bubble.

If the rent goes up faster than wages, people become homeless.

It's hard to see how rent can be disconnected from the property value because if the achievable rent for a property skyrockets that will pull the property's value up.

If rent goes up faster than wages, which cannot go on forever, it means an imbalance between supply and demand. The best way to address this is to rebalance supply with demand, not to be tempted to control prices or whatnot that do not resolve the root cause.

It must also be accepted that the most sought-after areas will be the most expensive and probably out of the reach of many.

Edit: So much for mature discussions, I see...

> It's hard to see how rent can be disconnected from the property value because if the achievable rent for a property skyrockets that will pull the property's value up.

In a free market (the UK is about as free a market as you get in relation to property ownership and rental), this might be true. But it does depend on how regulated the market is, in terms of rent controls etc. I'm not sure this would hold for an older, or bigger, or more difficult to maintain property in an area with a high percentage of renter competition in some European countries, for example (e.g. Germany).

Rent controls do not solve any issues. They certainly don't make it easier to find a home. They only tend to restrict supply and to discourage people from moving.

They solve predatory rent increases.

> It's hard to see how rent can be disconnected from the property value because if the achievable rent for a property skyrockets that will pull the property's value up.

It's the other way around that disconnects happen: rents stay the same and property prices go up.

But that's not why you got downvoted, no. You misunderstand price controls. It doesn't mean that everybody should have access to a nice apartment in a sought-after area. It means that I should have access to a nice apartment in a sought-after area.

> It means that I should have access to a nice apartment in a sought-after area.

Yes, that sums it nicely.

> Having a roof over your head and owning that roof outright are not the same thing.

But they are two sides of the same coin.

By the market pricing you out of being able to own your property (whether it be through foreign investment into buy-to-let, poor supply of affordable housing stock, inherited money passed down between generations further entrenching the difference between those that have and those that do not etc. etc.), people remain an asset to be sweated at the benefit of the property owners. That, as I said, is simply a regulated feudal system.

It's completely different.

Mass ownership only started in the 1960s/1970s. Before that most people were tenants. In the UK there were large scale council housing so people had moderate rent and security of tenure but they were still only tenants.

Again there is no human right to own property and that would not make much sense unless you want to create another scandal down the line of shoddy, worthless properties that were built in order to be affordable to people who can only afford £15,000 over 25 years...

Read again. I said the right to a home is a human right, not the right to home ownership.

I'm not sure how innovative this is. https://www.propertypartner.co has been going since 2015 doing essentially the same thing.

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