{"id":233,"date":"2007-10-11T12:25:32","date_gmt":"2007-10-11T19:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2007\/10\/11\/owning-homes\/"},"modified":"2007-10-11T12:25:32","modified_gmt":"2007-10-11T19:25:32","slug":"owning-homes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2007\/10\/owning-homes\/","title":{"rendered":"Owning Homes"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the midst of the U.S. hous\u00ading crisis, Paul Ked\u00adrosky asks, quite reas\u00adon\u00adably, Why Do We Want People to Own Homes?<\/a> I\u2019ve been won\u00adder\u00ading that myself. Is it because people think houses are a good invest\u00adment? Because they have sen\u00adti\u00adment\u00adal attach\u00adments to the idea of own\u00ading the roof over their head? Because they want to be sure no-one can toss them out of their home? Because every\u00adone else does?<\/p>\n

I remem\u00adber years ago in Aus\u00adtralia (where almost every\u00adone also wants to own their own home) talk\u00ading to a Ger\u00adman immig\u00adrant who com\u00adplained bit\u00adterly that he could\u00adn\u2019t rent any\u00adwhere nice to live and so he had to buy a house. He would have been much hap\u00adpi\u00ader rent\u00ading, as people com\u00admonly do in Ger\u00admany. Maybe the rent\u00adal prop\u00ader\u00adties are bet\u00adter in Ger\u00admany because so many people rent, or maybe part of it is because in Ger\u00admany it\u2019s com\u00admon to make modi\u00adfic\u00ada\u00adtions to an apart\u00adment you rent, for example by renov\u00adat\u00ading the kit\u00adchen (you own the appli\u00adances, the cab\u00adin\u00adets, etc, and take them with you if you move). People often rent the same apart\u00adment for 20 years or more, which is longer than many people in North Amer\u00adica stay in houses they buy, so it\u2019s worth their time and effort to make it a nice place to live.<\/p>\n

Dif\u00adfer\u00adent coun\u00adtries, dif\u00adfer\u00adent ideas. For us ten years ago, there were a couple of reas\u00adons to buy rather than rent. We saw it as a reas\u00adon\u00adable invest\u00adment, we wanted to live in a house with a garden, and I wanted a couple of cats. So buy\u00ading made sense (many land\u00adlords don\u2019t like pets).<\/p>\n

As house prices climb to the extent that it\u2019s ques\u00adtion\u00adable how good an invest\u00adment they are (how high can they keep going?), it\u2019ll be inter\u00adest\u00ading to see what hap\u00adpens. Here in Van\u00adcouver house prices have been rising to the extent that many land\u00adlords are selling the rent\u00adal houses to people who ren\u00adov\u00adate and move in them\u00adselves, rather than rent\u00ading them out. For fam\u00adil\u00adies with chil\u00addren in loc\u00adal schools, hav\u00ading the land\u00adlord sell the house out from under them is extremely dis\u00adrupt\u00adive, espe\u00adcially when they can afford to rent, but can\u00ad\u2019t afford to buy, in the area they\u2019re liv\u00ading in. From the land\u00adlord\u2019s per\u00adspect\u00adive, they\u2019re cash\u00ading in on the cap\u00adit\u00adal gains rather than tak\u00ading a rent that just can\u00ad\u2019t com\u00adpare as a return on their invest\u00adment. Either the house prices will have to come down, or the rents will have to go up, unless people are will\u00ading to con\u00adtin\u00adue to gamble on mak\u00ading their money from cap\u00adit\u00adal gains.<\/p>\n

And in the U.S., own\u00ading the house does\u00adn\u2019t mean someone can\u00ad\u2019t turf you out if you default on a pay\u00adment or two. The Eco\u00adnom\u00adist<\/cite> has an art\u00adicle in this week\u2019s magazine about the U.S. hous\u00ading crisis<\/a>, point\u00ading out that fore\u00adclos\u00adure pro\u00adceed\u00adings can take months in some states, but less than a month in Texas. Which makes me won\u00adder even more why people buy\u00ading houses they could\u00adn\u2019t afford did\u00adn\u2019t rent instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the midst of the U.S. hous\u00ading crisis, Paul Ked\u00adrosky asks, quite reas\u00adon\u00adably, Why Do We Want People to Own Homes? I\u2019ve been won\u00adder\u00ading that myself. Is it because people think houses are a good invest\u00adment? Because they have sen\u00adti\u00adment\u00adal attach\u00adments to the idea of own\u00ading the roof over their head? Because they want to \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cOwn\u00ading Homes\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}