Hacker News Reader

Comment by Omniusaspirer | Hacker News Reader

It's basically inevitable though that in demand property will rise in price, especially with regulation constraining building height/form factor. Home cost in urban areas is much more about location than it's about any real cost to building the residence. Lots of people buy large houses for very little a few miles out of town where land is abundant and demand is more reasonable.

I guess I'm just having trouble really feeling sorry for anyone who decides that living within a select few square miles is worth paying an obscene percentage of their income towards that pursuit. It's a housing market and prices will rise to meet demand until buyers finally split off to other nearby locales.

As to your last line; There's a reason that most people don't want to admit that 2008 was the housing bubble popping and instead insist that homes are "finally returning to their true value".

View on HN

It is somewhat inevitable, but the problem we see here, I believe, is about the magnitude of this rise. I don't believe housing should be a _completely_ free market : investors should be regulated out of the tense areas (except of course for new developments).

Investment in older buildings in tense areas, combined with wealthy buyers who neither live in nor rent their property, are pushing prices way beyond acceptable ranges. I don't know about London, but in Paris for instance, 20 to 30% of the flats in the center districts are empty.

When young professionals and less fortunate people are struggling to find housing and putting more than 40% of their income into the rent, I believe those 30% of empty flats are unacceptable and the owners should be taxed out of them.

There are plenty of legitimate vehicles for investment, but already-built real estate is definitely not one of them. Such investment is not productive for the economy as a whole and is not much more than generational ransoming.

"There's a reason that most people don't want to admit that 2008 was the housing bubble popping and instead insist that homes are "finally returning to their true value"."

It may have burst in the US, but certainly nowhere else

With the current prices just with a gun pointing to my head, I would agree to buy a house in Australia as investment.

With the money needed to buy a crappy flat, you can buy a luxury house in a lot of places around the world. Prices are crazy.

Well, picking a shorter commute is a reasonable choice to make. Longer commutes don't take time from work, they take time from family, and are associated with higher divorce rates, at least amongst Swedes.

In a city like Melbourne, where I live, there's a lot of development which could still be done to reach a reasonable medium-density of 3-4 story apartment buildings in the suburbs immediately circling the CBD. It is being done, but not to such an extent that housing prices will stop rising. I really wonder what this city will look like in another 20 years, as people are pushed further and further out but the work is still centralised.

My personal opinion is that the need to physically be at your job will only diminish in the future. I honestly believe that VR will eventually offer a lot of potential for virtual office spaces that give you the illusion of being there but let you sit comfortably at home.

Of course I may just be a dreamer and we'll continue to see housing prices skyrocket as we try to cram 10's of millions of people into small geographical areas- I'm certainly not dismissing that possibility.

We were promised paperless offices decades ago and we're still nowhere close. Right now we can barely get video-conferencing done properly. Hence, I doubt VR will help us anytime soon.

I don't think it was a promise, more like a prediction. And it is becoming true, I think. At least in my line of work (engineering, software, telecoms, security) shuffling papers has decreased a lot over the past 15 years.

National legislation sometimes slows this development, e.g. by insisting on having a paper with a signature and possibly even a stamp.

As usual, we tend to overestimate how quickly the changed happens in short-term (hence "the broken promise"), but we also underestimate the social impact this change has (we don't just replace paper with electronic forms, we change the way we work and it changes businesses profoundly.)

I agree with you about virtual offices, but I think social lives will still mean that people want to live near their family or friends. In an office with desk jobs, physical contact is almost never required, and so virtual spaces will be realistic far sooner. When it comes to friends and family where there is far more nuance in our interactions, I think it will take longer.

>I guess I'm just having trouble really feeling sorry for anyone who decides that living within a select few square miles is worth paying an obscene percentage of their income towards that pursuit.

There have been studies showing a negative correlation between long commute times and happiness.

I don't have a family, so I am happy to pay for a relatively small apartment in the city centre. If I lived in the suburbs I would get a lot more house for my money, but then I would have to spend and extra couple of hours every day commuting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com