Not everything is a purely financial decision. A home is primarily a place to live, not an investment opportunity.
Property tax isn’t voluntary and as exogenous as a landlord. (Also eminent domain, to say nothing of most peoples’ mortgages.)
> Not everything is a purely financial decision
Making the largest leveraged purchase of your life for an emotional comfort object is irrational. That doesn’t make it wrong. But it ceases to be a policy concern. (I might feel secure having a Fabergé egg in my possession, that doesn’t mean the public needs to give a shit about it.)
The reason home ownership is a public priority is various and I agree with it as a goal. But it’s a bad financial decision for many people, and there is legitimacy to questioning if we can duplicate the forced-saving and civic engagement benefits more simply.
Anywhere that gives a delinquent property owner years also tends to have strong tenant protections.
No you don't. Property taxes are not incident on renters.
Extreme example in California
https://prop13.wtf/2023/05/06/prop13-is-not-passed-on-to-ren...
Wants are infinite.
Home ownership is effectively enshrined as a value in most economies. The emotion is part of society’s design. Conforming to this incentive or belief is not unusually irrational,
Agree. But if that feeling of security is all it’s about, it’s still irrational. Even if it’s conditioned and thus common.
If you’re buying a home to feel good about yourself, you’re making a financially ruinous decision.
I live in the UK. I have to pay the same rate of council tax for the property whether I own it or rent it.
However that’s completely beside the point: my council tax isn’t suddenly going to double overnight because a single person decided they can extract more money.
> Making the largest leveraged purchase of your life for an emotional comfort object is irrational
You are completely missing the point. A place to live that is truly your own is not like buying some luxury good.
I could buy your argument were it about buying a mansion vs a small family home, but the article is about people being unable to buy any home.
Yes, the housing association absolutely can tell you not to remodel your bathroom. Unless you literally own a house rather than an appartment, you really don't have a lot more rights than a renter would have.
I am speaking as a Finnish homeowner.
Firstly I am legitimately surprised that Finland has HOAs. I had always assumed they were a largely American construct (I’m British).
Secondly I was absolutely talking about owning a house rather than an apartment. I feel an apartment is a slightly different situation by virtue of being an inherently shared space.
That said, I still it baffling that someone would try to exert control over what you do with the inside of your own home.
The Finnish HOAs are a uniquely Finnish construct. They are in many ways different from the American HOAs, even though the name is the same.
> That said, I still it baffling that someone would try to exert control over what you do with the inside of your own home.
In the Finnish system, as a "homeowner" in a HOA, you actually don't own things such as... the walls inside your apartment. The HOA owns the walls. You own a piece of the HOA and the right to live inside the walls. But if you want to fix damage inside the walls, for example, you need the HOA to do that, because they own the walls.
I am always shocked at how many people simply don't understand this.
For example: no matter how many index funds I buy, I will still have to find a landlord who allows pets in their home if the current landlord decides to kick me out for a better tenant (whatever that means for them).
I don't have to deal with that in my own home. My home, my rules. And this is worth more to me than knowing I optimized my investment portfolio.
Human dignity has value. Shelter security has value. Knowing that you won't be moving in the next few months has value. But the value of these things cannot be measured in dollars.
One of happiest countries in the world - Switzerland, has minimal home ownership, people simply focus on more important matters in life (and rules and their actual enforcement are on next 10 levels compared to general US, yet nobody does biggest financial move in their lives based on those).
In this thread, I mostly see young folks frustrated that their easy investment chance evaporated, although it was never actually easy but people owned and desired to own radically less in the past. A bit of greed, a bit of FOMO, a bit of emotions described above. And an intense sense that a big, well-located house (not an apartment, hell no) is not everybody's right, but their basic human right enforced by some Geneva convention and UN forces. They will happily accept brutal communism with whatever else it brings just that they can get it too.
Or its one of those few topics where HN really isn't the best place to look for balanced opinions. I get it, I would maybe feel the same if I was in such situation bound with such mindset.
I always wanted to build a home gym and have a workshop, I have these things now, I never could before, I'm happier now than I was before, it was something I really wanted to do with my life, rent doesn't allow you to do those things, most of the time anyway.
