Comment by aes256 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aes256 | Hacker News Reader

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> The end result of all this is that NIMBYism creates scarcity (due to transportation inefficiency and by retarding new development) that makes houses expensive, and that causes people to be economically extremely sensitive to real estate changes (which are out of their control) which causes more NIMBYism. It's also yet another generational fuck-over of which we're on the losing side, the assholes pulled the ladder up behind them.

This is so unbelievably true of the UK at the moment. In fact, we have the problem even worse given the higher population density (almost ten times that of the US).

Here the baby boomer generation got rich by sitting on the property ladder. Now we have a generation who simply can't afford to get on the ladder. Average prices are 20 times average wages in parts of the country.

Existing homeowners are paying down their mortgages with record low interest rates, while there are no mortgages available for first-time buyers, so the wealth gap is just getting larger.

Oh well. Here's to a lifetime of living with the parents while we cruise towards a pensions disaster...

Edit: By way of example, this is what £90,000 ($145,000) gets you in London these days: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2210436/

It is an amazingly intractable catch-22 - if the government increase housing supply then a whole generation who are just about to retire lose almost all of their wealth; If they don't increase supply, a whole generation are unable to afford a home in which to raise a family. Whatever happens, it is almost inevitable that hundreds of billions of pounds will be funneled towards the baby boomers from the young or the yet-unborn.

You know things are seriously broken when a senior Tory minister writes a book entitled "The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children's Future – And Why They Should Give It Back.".

No, the solution sounds obvious to me: build more housing stock. Otherwise, the established real-estate values of the Baby Boom owners can never be realized as sales. A commodity that's too pricey won't sell, and the prospective seller will go broke. Only way is to lower the prices.

I realistically believe in this solution but also this is where our current market model would stop stare at the solution... and turn around (the price is hardly going down), imagine being the guy trying to sell the property for some company, would the company acknowledge this solution or wait it out to sell at next buyer, in summary this is where it stags probably being the right solution.

It's a fascinating issue, and one that I think will come to dominate political discourse in the next 10-20 years.

NIMBYism has a lot to do with this, but the whole system is rigged against the young. We have a generation of teenagers, many of whom have a more mature understanding of issues such as student loans than older generations, but are not allowed to have a say.

BRB: Setting up a political party to represent Generation Y. Abolish the minimum voting age, massive housing expansion, force older generations to retrospectively pay tuition fees, reform drug policy, abolish copyright protection, appoint Cheryl Cole as the Queen, etc.

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