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Comment by tannhaeuser | Hacker News Reader

Investment is a basic aspect of life; housing has been traditionally an investment to earn a living when you retire, whether individually or as part of a pension funds. The problem appears to be the monetary policies of central banks and rampant public debt, and the low interest rates, inflation, and lack of alternative investments that go with it.

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This isn’t true. Investment properties were nowhere near what they are today compared to the 70s in the US.

I don’t know what traditionally means to you, but this is not a historical norm if you went back 50 years.

You got it exactly backwards. Speculation on housing beats productive work so interest rates have to be dropped lower and lower until productive work beats speculation and then speculation dies instantly in a crash.

The obvious answer is to just have 100% capital gains taxes on land and let people deduct inflation.

> housing has been traditionally an investment to earn a living when you retire, whether individually …

Do you mean that people are expected to buy additional houses to make money from, after retirement? I don’t think that’s ever been the case.

I think he means rental income.

Yes, but you can’t rent out the house you live in. So that means you need to buy multiple houses…

You can rent out rooms in the house you live in, but that is less of a thing now than in the past. In the 1800s/1900s widows, spinsters, old women, that had property would often get by by renting out rooms/beds, essentially being a "mother" to young men or women. Men/women came to the city to work, or school, or whatever and they would rent a room and the landlady would serve meals, do laundry, etc.

Do any of you have some data to back it up or just some anecdotes and stories? The poster claimed this was a tradition and the goal of owning property, so surely there’s some documentation of this being a global phenomenon?

Recently, in large parts of the Greater Toronto Area, it has not been legal to rent out rooms in your house. It was and is legal in the original city of Toronto and other municipalities that were later incorporated into the megacity. There is a proposal before city council to legalize it across the city, but so far no decision has been made.

Or selling the deeds keeping the rigths to live in

Treated as an investment, but nothing guaranteed. It’s only beating inflation if the cost of housing is going up. Which it has, but now we’re seeing the problems with that.

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