• @Evil_Shrubbery
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    -22 months ago

    The issue is (the normal and accepted practice of) charging people “market” rates for something that is a necessity.

    Like healthcare, housing market isn’t free because the demand part of the market isn’t free.

    People tend to mistake choice (the amount of available products that do the same - eg 100 colors of the same 100× overpriced cornflakes) with free market.

    You are not going to go live in another country to work there and be homeless. And, if you could buy the place instead of renting, ofc you would want to do that. Even if you dont have the full nominal amount of moneys, as long as your credit payments (eg bank financing) would be lower than rent (well, actually just if the interests payments are lower than rent), you are just losing money paying rent. Even in case of like a really long loan, if you decide to sell the real estate after a year, every penny that you paid to you borrowed nominal is now “yours again” since the loan diminished by that amount and the selling price is within that margin/about the same-ish.

    The profit incentive of current owners (ie the ones that just happened to have the opportunity to buy that real estate before you did, or were even born) is the main driver for hiking prices/rents.

    And all of the free actors on the market, which are owners that control the supply part of the market, have exactly aligned interest of charging higher rents (that consequently/additionally result in higher real estate prices bought as investments) … guess where the market is headed. Not only at higher market prices, but also supporting other hurdles to buying real estate.

    • @NotAtWork@startrek.website
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      fedilink
      52 months ago

      I worked in another country for a few years, renting was defiantly the better choice at the time. I wasn’t going to be there long enough to break even when I sold, and the headache of buying a property in a country that you don’t have citizenship, trying to get financing, ect. just wasn’t worth it.

      • @Evil_Shrubbery
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        22 months ago

        Oh, that’s true, especially if countries dont have any bilateral agreements. But these are unnecessary complications that should be resolved (like, I can buy stock on basically any open market in seconds with very clear and registered ownership).