Oh wow. I had to read the rest of your comment twice to understand that you were saying these seem high to you. They seemed really low to me. To put it into perspective, you need a 10-20% deposit in Belgium (depending on various factors) and there's a 6% tax for an old house (10% up until very recently) or 21% for a new house. It's basically impossible to buy a house if you're young or single or come from a poor family. I feel your pain.
A 20% deposit is minimum to not have to pay a 'Mortgage insurance' which gets added to your mortgage to cover the bank if you default.
Belgium sounds like an even more painful situation, sucks for those of us who would just like to have a stable place to live and be allowed to add some personal character to (not allowed in most rentals ive lived in)
This seems such a weird condition to add. Someone who doesn't earn much but saves up over 22 years for a house has to pay stamp duty on his first house, but someone privileged who can buy a house when 30 years old doesn't?
In my country, if you're poor and if it's the first house you buy, you can ask a 0% tax loan from the government and use it to pay your stamp duty with it.
One of the major political parties here (Centre Party, the agrarian-liberal party) wants people to live outside of the cities. Finnish cities are so small that it's easy to commute from a place with plenty of cheap land and thus it's possible for most people to buy or build a house there if they want to.
Granted that Finland has a very different culture (disclaimer: I live in Sweden) and we aren't in the 50s anymore to invest heavily on a car-centric society but incentivising people to move away from city centres can have unpredictable consequences 20-50 years down the line.
Correction: I double checked and it looks like it can be added to your mortgage, which isn't as bad up front.
Thanks!
Sorry if my first comment was a bit coy and unclear. Both ancestor comments are about Australia & Belgium. Google tells me that in Australia new properties are incentivized over old:
>Grant: First home buyers can access a $10,000 grant when purchasing or constructing a new home, regardless of how much the property is worth. Stamp duty concessions: The territory government provides an up to $18,601 Territory Home Owner Discount (THOD) on stamp duty costs for first-time buyers.
My Aussie friends tell me this changes frequently, that it also differs by state, but some sort of incentive to prefer new properties have been policy for a long time.
GP says that Belgium penalizes existing houses:
>a 6% tax for an old house (10% up until very recently)
So there aren't lower taxes on older properties in either country. You get a discount on the taxes only when you purchase a new property, which is an incentive in alignment with the interests of property developers.
One (of many) big issue(s) is that the past has seen unchecked claiming of land for new projects leading to an acute shortage of land, while lots of existing houses and buildings are entirely outdated.
We are talking about houses which are 60 or 70 years old typically located in densely pouplated urban agglomerations and haven't seen little to no remodeling whatsoever during that time. These are hardly isolated, difficult to heat, are entirely outdated in terms of utilities and plumbing and so on.
The idea behind the difference is to incentivize people to buy and renovate older, existing houses and curbing the further occupation / use of free & open space with new construction and urban sprawl.
It should be noted: Belgium is also a country with an incredibly complex fiscal system. There are taxes as well as tax breaks on every aspect of life. Belgium is a complex federal nation with many levels of government. To put that in perspective: it's a country with 6 different governments. All of which turn politics and policy making, unironically, into 5D chess. The fiscal system tends to be the arena where everything comes together, generally as a compromise which is often more founded on pragmatism then necessity.
Historically, home ownership has been, and still is, massively incentivized in Belgium. But just like everywhere else, soaring housing prices and an ageing population are causing issues for younger generations who can't buy property without financial help from their parents.
And so, young people find themselves in a bind. They can't just buy any property, market dynamics and public policies push them towards buying outdated property only to face long, drawn out and expensive renovation projects just to bring everything up to date with modern, strict construction codes.
I'm in a nearby country and this accurately describes my house. I gave up, we live in it, halfway renovated, crazy plumbing, mixed masonry, hairball electric panel, dangerous corners everywhere. Contractors are too expensive and the DIY spirit only goes so far when you're working parents.