Regina wrote:

felltoearth wrote:It’ll never happen here, not with this provincial gov or the current Toronto Mayor. But this is awesome.

Berlin Votes on Whether to Expropriate Corporate Landlords | The Nation

When party campaign posters suddenly blanketed Germany last month, the standard half-smiles and safe slogans seemed to reflect the blandness of the upcoming federal election—described by many as a competition for who can carry on Merkel’s careful, centrist legacy. Here in Berlin, however, the unmistakable yellow-and-purple multilingual signs of a different grassroots initiative have been touting a more radical idea for months: expropriation. The campaign, Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen (Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen and Co.), wants the Berlin Senate to seize the assets of the largest private real estate companies in the city, turning hundreds of thousands of apartments over to public ownership.

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It‘s awesome if you can spare 29 to 36 billion Euros to reimburse the real estate companies in question. Seizing the assets without compensation is illegal.

Spearthrower wrote:They certainly have a fucking big overlap though, eh?

felltoearth wrote:
Sorry, not following.

Spearthrower wrote:

felltoearth wrote:
Sorry, not following.

Sorry, was in reply to the post before yours. I wrote the message, forgot to click submit until about 8 hours later!

ernadrey11 wrote:The housing market has indeed been struggling in recent years. But it's important to remember that the market for housing as an investment is not the same as the market for housing as homes.

Who Would a Housing Crash Hurt?
Probably not the people it should.

Nothing says “crisis” to our political elite like a house price crash. Margaret Thatcher’s right to buy scheme, introduced in 1980, promised private property and asset ownership to millions. And since then, rising prices have been the motor for economic growth and personal enrichment in Britain. But the storm clouds are gathering.

Around the world, housing markets are starting to creak. In Canada and Sweden, prices are down 8% since February. In New Zealand, they’ve fallen by 12% since their peak in 2021. In the US, transactions have started to slow and the pressure on prices in big cities is growing.

Britain’s not at that stage just yet. But Halifax and Nationwide are reporting that monthly house price growth has started to turn negative, and low-deposit mortgages are being rapidly withdrawn from the market. Spooked by these global headwinds, many experts are now predicting steep falls over the next year.

Experts are predicting large falls in house prices over the next 12 months: Knight Frank -5%; Rightmove -7%; HSBC -7.5%; Bloomberg -10%; John Charcol Ltd -10%; Fox Davidson -10%; Panmure Gordon -14%; Credit Suisse -15%; Capital Economics -15%.

The story behind this downturn is simple. Coronavirus-related supply chain issues and the spike in energy prices have driven double-digit inflation, provoking a cost of living crisis for millions. Central banks then responded by raising interest rates, which had sat at rock bottom since the 2007 financial crisis. And, as interest rates have gone up, so too have mortgages. This huge jump in monthly mortgage payments will mean even people who have managed to save up for a deposit won’t be able to afford a home, driving demand and prices down.

So who wins and who loses?

For renters, it’s tempting to celebrate a fall in prices. But perversely, rents are likely to keep on rising. Speaking to Novara Media, a spokesperson for the London Renters Union (LRU) said that their members were reporting that “landlords and agents are using the cost of living crisis, and now interest rate rises, as excuses to inflate rents by as much as 30%, 40% or even 70%”.

Landlords will protest that they are simply passing on increased mortgage costs, but the truth is more complicated. More than a third of landlords have no debt whatsoever– and there’s evidence that even those who do have mortgages are using the current crisis to squeeze even more profit out of the houses they own.
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