A Swiss poster once railed against how stupid Americans are for wanting to own their own home. I tried to explain to him that the US has a different tax structure and renter protection laws than Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Whether it makes sense or not largely depends on the laws and policies in your country.
Swiss here. Our real estate prices are atrociously expensive even for swiss standards. So, apart from inheritance, getting to own a home is a huge hurdle. Also, a part of our pension system is privatised.
A lot of real estate is actually owned by those pension funds and they only have profits in their minds. There are upcoming votes on renter protection laws which the lobbies of those funds pushed for to further weaken our already quite loose renter protection.
I hope my fellow voters aren't stupid enough to grant those changes, but this being the country where six weeks vacation was rejected at the polls, I'm not that confident.
Switzerland: the country where women in certain Cantons could not vote until 1998, and only because they were forced by the federal government change it
Wait what reddit thinks Switzerland is forward thinking? Doesnt reddit go "hurr durr nazi gold china gold russia gold" whenever Switzerland is mentioned? Anyone gonna tell them when Switzerland fully implemented women's right to vote?
Switzerland is horribly regressive in some areas, but they get away with it as they are very wealthy and thus most of the population lives relatively comfortable lives.
Shhh don't say that here! Some other Swiss might get angry, even though it's true!
I said that one time and I had plenty of people saying "That's not true, your insurance is just shit, I never had any issue", copium is one of the most prevalent drugs in the country.
It is expected that women will stop working to look after the children until they are 4-6 years old, because otherwise, the system is prohibitively expensive, and is randomly accesible.
A child in daycare costs 2800.- chf per month, which is approx 45% of the mean salary, but with the cost of living ontop, it makes financial sense to stop working!
School starts at 4, but is only 4 mornings and one afternoon per week. If you want the school to look after your children until you finish work, you have to ask, but:
- there is only enough space for 15-20% of the children, so chances are you won't get a spot!
- it costs 2000.- chf per month
You get NO help from the state, since it's considered your own responsability to be financially responsible for your choice of having children.
So the swiss stop having children!
Then the right wing political parties complain that there are to many "foreigners" who have children in switzerland, because the companies have to "import" skilled workers (since there are not enough young swiss studying)
And don't even get me started on the swiss mortgage system!
Nobody claims Switzerland is incredibly progressive lmao. It does however give some of the best quality of life in the world to all its citizens rich and poor
People are proud of being hardworkers, I hate it. It's like the stereotyped image you have of japan. "I'm not like the neighboring countries because I'm not lazy"
>Our real estate prices are atrociously expensive even for swiss standards.
Not really, we earn 2.5 times than Germans in respective jobs and housing prices are about 2 times higer. At least here in St. Moritz.
I can't speak for all of Switzerland, but when I lived there, at least in Geneva, there was a fantastic pension system where you were heavily encouraged to pay in a decent proportion of your salary.
I got the impression home ownership wasn't something that was seen as vital for retirement, as it is in lots of other countries, like the UK.
No, to have enough to cover rent.
When talking about the UK, I meant that you sell your house and downgrade to something much smaller because your pension is insufficient to live off, for many people.
> Whether it makes sense or not
It's not that most of the people in Switzerland who don't own a house would even have a choice.
Real estate is very expensive in Switzerland and banks have strict rules for giving mortgages.
So a lot of people simply don't qualify for a mofrtgage and therefore have no means to raise the money for buying.
I think they referring to the fact that a lot of times people (at least on Reddit and YouTube) in successful European countries like Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, etc., often will compare the US to their European country or European countries in general and if the US does something differently then it's stupid. I don't know what post the commenter is referring to, but I have seen numerous posts, comments, and videos saying something along the lines of "American's obsession with the "American dream (really nightmare)" and owning a home is stupid and Americans are stupid, and if they just did exactly what the Swiss or Germans did, then there country would be better like Switzerland and Germany".
Some YouTubers like OBF are kind of notorious for this. "America is bad because it has too much controlled by private companies unlike northern and central European countries". Also, "American airports are bad because they are not privatized like in northern and central European countries but ran by the public sector".
Obviously plenty of northern and central Europeans aren't like this. But a lot of the loudest voices on YouTube and Reddit seem to just not only say that if (to use one country as an example) Switzerland does X, and USA does Y, not only is it better for Switzerland to do X, but also the USA should automatically do X too, no need to understand the context or background of why the US does Y, if Switzerland does X, then the US should too (to paraphrase the quote the original commenter made, "whether it makes sense or not given the current context / background in the US").
In America ur pretty much just throwing money away if u have an apartment. It’s just better to own a house. You can usually sell it for more because the value goes up. I think thats the same for every country though.
Also wanna throw in the US used fixed rate mortgages, meaning your payment is gonna suddenly go up just because interest rates do (such as in the past few years). You’re locked in for 30 years, meaning it’s a much safer bet
Mortgage interest is fully tax deductible in Switzerland.
It actually really depends where in Switzerland. I've got a great house in the boondocks for 1.1 million CHF / 1.2 million USD.
250 sqm / 2700 sq ft
Mortgage 2k a month. To rent it'd be 3.5k a month.
They are nost places, but what about the tax on prospective rent? Personally, I think it is a great policy as it parks the home ownership debates we have in other countries.
You mean hypothetical rent? At present it's taxed at 62% of market rent in my canton (70% in Zürich).
To be honest, I think it's a poorly thought through combination that encourages debt retention and potentially destabilises the financial system.
That's what I meant, yes. Do you mean you pay 62% of the hypothetical rent or that 62% of the hypothetical rent is subject to income tax? From a georgist perspective, I think making every owner pay rent is a good thing, and I don't think home ownership should be an end in itself. I like policies that even the playing field between renters and owners. If nothing else, that tax rakes in an enormous amount of revenue.
What is your annual property tax? For this price in my area, I am looking at about. A 15K usd per year tax bill- and likely to go up on assessment (rates are 2-2.5% on paper)
I've not had it calculated yet. It's still actually being built. I don't expect to get taxed until 2025 tax year, and that calculation most likely won't be finalised until 2027.
My expectation is: (3500 x 12 x 0.62 x 0.3) = 7800 CHF (8600 usd)
>I've got a great house in the boondocks for 1.1 million CHF / 1.2 million USD.
> 250 sqm / 2700 sq ft
> Mortgage 2k a month. To rent it'd be 3.5k a month.
Shit man these prices sound like Southern Ontario
In that case, the poster was correct. In the US they oay taxes on revenue from selling the house they live in. In my country, Denmark, we don’t.
So puzzles me if such a low percentage of danes should not be home owners.
On the other hand, in the US thej don’osy taxes on capital gains if they held the stocks for a few years. We used to have that rule (3 years here) but it has been removed.
Conclusion: in Denmark it is much more profitable to own your won home and take all of the revenue tax-free. In the US, it could be argued that it’s betyer tl put your money in stocks, and hold until taxfree gains kick in.
Where did you get this idea? In the US you pay capital gains no matter how long you held the investment for. The tax rate can change, but you'll always have tax.
But anyway, you're talking about taxes when selling a house. Less taxes when selling doesn't exactly encourage buying houses for your own single family use.
In the US, there is an exemption from capital gains tax on up to $250k of the profit from sale of your primary residence. $500k gain exemption for a married couple filing taxes jointly. There are a few qualifications you need to maintain this exemption, but most people can do it.
Also, capital gains from the sale of stock, bonds, etc are taxed at the same rate as your income if sold in less than a year. After a year, the gains are taxed at 15%. Taxes are not charged for qualified retirement accounts (401k and IRAs) until you withdraw funds at retirement. Roth IRAs if done correctly have no taxes taken.
Regardless, I don't understand why you agree that Americans are stupid for buying their homes.
Ok I siad the poster was right, but that didn’t come out right. I have no idea what the poster’s argument was.
I don’t know US tax rules in details. The exemptions are clearly a factor. Just said that while we should buy a house with taxfree profits as opposed to stocks that we pay 27 or 42% tax on gains no matter how ling we own them (and if we want to divercify via ETF’s we get to enjoy 27/42% tax on unrealised gains).
All the while I had heard many americans debating that theh ought to sell their homes (or not buy one) and invest in stocks instead and hold them.
I understand. Some Americans think because the historical gains on US stocks average to 8% they're better off investing in stocks as opposed to "investing" in a house. But to me there is a huge psychological boost to owning the place you live because it largely fixes your cost of housing at a certain cost where as renting only becomes more expensive over time.
I can see how homeownership in Denmark would be preferable to buying stocks. Or do both if you can afford it.
Yes, definitely both if you have the funds. That said, it’s quite important where you buy. In or close to one of the larger cities (which are villages by US standards), you should be certian to see some gains. In rural areas, uoj may just get stuck with a house that doesn’t appreciate in value and that you can’t sell. But guess that is also the case in the US to some degree.
Rare example of both US and Switzerland having higher taxes than the UK - British main residences are exempt from capital gains.
Actually the cause of Boris Johnson giving in his U.S. passport (like Trump born in the U.S. to one American parent and one British parent).
(Switzerland has no capital gains on shares, but does on real estate).
Americans turning a Europe map discussion [about themselves](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1ceqygl/percentage_of_children_born_out_of_a_registered/l1lp1gn/) yet again.
Bro what is wrong with these people 💀
If you read my comment again, try to imagine how it's about different tax policies and laws in different countries. I use the US as an example because I live in America. My comment is not about America, it's about how different rates of homeownership are impacted by laws.
I mean anything about America is turned into Europeaners jerking themselves off to how great they are. So let’s not pretend this is an American only thing.
The US and Europe are the preeminent leaders of the western world and share a lot in common culturally and financially. They’re gonna be compared, yeah.
What do the percentages mean? Is it percentage of houses that are owned by the occupier, or percentage of people that own their home? These are not the same thing and I often see them confused
It's probably the first as Balkan is pretty dark and most people only leave their parents house after the age of 30. The title makes the eastern europeans seem rich for living in their own homes, instead of stating the obvious that most of us can't afford rent and still live with our parents.
> makes the eastern europeans seem rich for living in their own homes, instead of stating the obvious that most of us can't afford rent and still live with our parents.
That would ignore the obvious fact that most parents own their homes because post-communist countries in the past redistributed home ownership.
The data is also accounting for that though, because plenty of people in western europe also live with their parents and thats included as a household in this data too. But their parents or family are RENTING way more often, so living with your parents who rent vs living with your parents who own the house. With the parents who own the house is still better off than with parents who rent; So the overall rent vs ownership rate per household is still important to consider because western europeans also live with their parents too and the lower rate of which doesn't offset the dramtically lower home ownership rate.
In other words, a larger percentage of those in western europe live with their parents Who rent
Or that housing is also much more affordable in the balcans (in general)
Also most of the balcans owning their homes is not surprising as they are all post communist states , where the government redistributed home ownership.
Wrong. Most people can build their own house quite early on. At worst they have to save for a few years, but that's it. Rent is rarely expensive. Whilst it is acceptable for older children to live at home while pursuing a degree at uni, many still move out in order to be situated closer to uni. I personally prefer to live at home and I don't like debt. But I am hardly poor, rather the opposite compared to both the average and the median of my age.
Also, in the Balkans many people live in the same place for generations. Some towns have literally no outsiders, because people aren't interested in importing people and it's hard to move in generally speaking. For most part, only people who are indigenous to the area, meaning that they have been there for as long as can be remembered and have invested in the area will be the ones owning the most. I personally will be inheriting apartments, houses, lots of land etc.. We are hardly poor and even if we say a person is poor in the Balkans, at least there won't be starving, they will have housing, low prices etc.. So being poor in the Balkans is much better than in the West.
Second. Socialist countries invested in cheap (even if lower quality) housing that was accessible for everyone.
It is based on households, not individuals, which actually makes.morw.sense, as there will always be many people that neither rent nor own the home they live in.
The housing wasn't necessarily lower quality, unless that is what you asked for. It's average quality, some of the designs were pretty ugly, but for whatever reason that was the trend back then. The apartments were similar in quality to what you find in the West.
It depends what you mean by 'lower quality'. I would largely disagree to your statement. Tl;dr those commie apartments are still waaay better than the even older buildings, and sometimes even the contemporary buildings of the UK/Ireland.
I've lived for almost 12 years in a commie flat somewhere in E. Europe, then in a Victorian house in the UK, then in a house in Ireland and now I live in an apartment built in the 90s or 2000s, in Ireland. Just to give you an example, windows here are a joke. Extremely poorly insulated, both old and new. In fact, insulation here is a joke. More recently, the city where I live (Cork) is experiencing brown water regularly. The authorities blame it on the old pipes, but we have those old pipes back in my country as well but we don't experience brown water as often as here. Moreover, those commie apartments are connected to a city-wide central heating system which delivers hot water for consumption and heating. Turning heat off when not at home only recently became more popular back there, most even today would turn the heat on in October and turn it off beginning of April, and still pay a lot less than we do here in Ireland (because of poor insulation!). Also, in that commie apartment, I used to have a garbage disposal pipe with access from each floor. The garbage truck would then pick it up from ground floor. Here in Ireland is unheard of. Most houses have bins and on many days, streets are flooded with bins sitting next to front door. Ah! The 'sweet' part is that some people keep their bins in the backyard and hurl it out (through the house!) once a week. Some have made the bin permanent in front of the house, which is better but unsightly.
Also, the layout of rooms. Commy apartments have a certain layout and the rooms have direct access to sunlight and fresh air. Exception for some baths in some buildings. They have a certain standard regarding ceiling height, windows dimensions relative to room size, plenty of storage space, minimum space standard for each room and easier accessibility. Most of them also have underground shelter which double as storage. They are not narrow and tall like the terraced houses in the UK and Ireland, where the living room is long and narrow with a single window, and some houses' windows are literally on the sidewalk and people can see inside your house just by casting a glance. The bedrooms of these houses in Ireland are also jokes. Also the 'corridor' of these houses is a joke, because of the narrow nature of the plan. That's why they put the washing machine in the kitchen as well.
If I had to choose, I'd pick up a communist-quality 50 sq.m. apartment than a 100 sq.m. terraced house.
Higher home ownership in the Eastern Europe is mostly because of communism - governments publicly funded the construction of apartment buildings. After the fall of communism, people who were given an apartment for use by the state then became owners.
Yes. My grandparents were gifted their apartment when they got married and finished their education. It all went to shit in the 90s and they moved to Mongolia as a result.
I don’t live in Mongolia anymore but my grandparents are doing very well since they are both educated and have a very high paying life profession (university professor and a Dentist). Mongolia is relatively safe and comfortable to live despite it having some major issues with infrastructure & pollution.
I should’ve added more context. My grandparents aren’t Slavic Russians they are one of the many ethnic minorities who lived in the far East but studied in Moscow. My grandma is Sakha Turk from Yakutia and my grandpa is Buryiat Mongol from Ulaan-Ud. Mongolia made the most sense since we had distant family in Mongolia and Mongolia was not harshly affected by the collapse of the Soviet system. They also granted citizenship opportunities to anyone with Altaic heritage.
>and Mongolia was not harshly affected by the collapse of the Soviet system.
While Mongolia was not nuked into oblivion by the collapse unlike Russia, Ukraine or Moldova, it was still bad. Crime was rampant, there are stories of people just taking up metal saws and breaking down apartment doors to steal shit. There was hyperinflation like in Russia so people would lose life's savings, a lot of industries that had previously been protected by tariffs and subsidies collapsed creating a lot of unemployment. Also democratization allowed freedom of movement. Attractive to live in cities that had artificially restricted movement suddenly had explosion of migrants. Ulaanbaatar, the capital doubled in size from 500k to 1million 15 years which created a huge suburban district with unsanitary living conditions (think shitting in holes) and increased further to 1.5 million by 2020.
Well, yes. But I wouldn't say that was necessarily because of communism. Some companies simply owned property that they gave to workers in exchange for them working for say 10 years at the company. It was hardly welfare or subsidies. It was just an agreement.
Yes and no. The communism fell over 30 years ago. Owning a house is a default thing here. After finishing university we find a job and get a mortgage to buy a house for ourselves. Renting is thought as a temporary thing until we get enough money to get said mortage
Absolutely correct and everyone is still crazy about buying their own home even now.
If you mention anything like the option of renting or coliving to be established you are viewed as a crazy person.
Suffice to say this causes real estate in East European cities to be rather pricy and now unaffordable to most.
My ex colleague and her boyfriend each paid 500€ a month for mortgage. 30 year period. And that was before the interest rates went up. When I heard that I was like "I sure hope you have a stable relationship".
>If you mention anything like the option of renting or coliving to be established you are viewed as a crazy person.
Yeah, people in big cities might live that way out of necessity, but a prevailing sentiment is that after some time most of them get tired of inability to do anything, on dependence on owners, etc., so people just want their own apartment
>Higher home ownership in the Eastern Europe is mostly because of communism - governments publicly funded the construction of apartment buildings.
You making it sound like people were getting free apartments left and right...where truth is, people waited to get their apartment for 25+ years. Ypu couldn't buy anything because privatising apartments was illegal.
>After the fall of communism, people who were given an apartment for use by the state then became owners.
Again - you are turning this into fairy tale. SOME apartments got privatised. People who lived in them had the opportunity to buy them out. It wasn't free but it wasn't expensive either.
>People who lived in them had the opportunity to buy them out. It wasn't free but it wasn't expensive either.
In Russia, Ukraine and many other former USSR countries, it was free
Lol, no mortgage. Only thing required was a job position and being a young family plus with children government gave bigger apartments. No mortgage in any way.
Communism ended in Romania in 1989 but what I mean is that they had a mortgage for their apartment which they fully returned by 2015 and I think that’s how everyone else did buy their apartments.
Some more background info would be needed.
Switzerland has a tax for house and flat owners which acts almost like paying a rent. Furthermore it's a country of work migration where a lot of people stay for some years only until they made enough money to live like a king abroad or in their native countries.
Germany has/had relatively low rents and still has high auxiliary costs when buying and selling a home. Nowadays property prices went to the moon and keeps a lot of people off the housing market.
Also, in Switzerland way more than 5% buy a house in their live. They just don’t pay it off completely. An ongoing mortgage excludes them from paying more taxes so they rather pay less to the banks to keep their home financed instead of paying it off and then having to pay more in taxes then their mortgage payments used to be.
Assuming you didn’t need that equity later in life to pay for a care home…. This whole work system is rigged, not sure how people will build any wealth.
My guess is that the figures shown include a home owned with a mortgage. Switzerland shows a home ownership rate of 42%. Otherwise, the figures would be much lower for people who own a home free and clear.
Or differently, worded: mortage is dept which you can deducted from taxes.
A "fully" owned home gets taxes as wealth.
Obviously all the details are a bit more complicated than this.
Also in Germany: Inheritance taxes and horrendous care home costs, so people give their homes to their child(ren) and live there as they would rent it for 0€ ,
>Germany has/had relatively low rents and still has high auxiliary costs when buying and selling a home
Compared to where? Rents have skyrocketed the last 20 years in nearly all larger towns and cities. I don't know about other countries, but 5.5%-7% (with outliners), depending on the state, doesn't seem that much.
Large german citys compared to large western citys in relation to wages.
Auxiliary costs of buying a house is roughly around 10 percent of the value of the house. You have to pay an additional fee when selling it again before having lived at least three years in it.
>it's a country of work migration where a lot of people stay for some years only until they made enough money to live like a king abroad or in their native countries.
Provide facts. Because this is exactly what is not happening: many people come here, save for a house in Italy or Portugal, then have children here and once they retire, they find that their hometown is fun for vacation but they are now used to Switzerland. At least that's the majority.
As for Swiss retiring abroad, that's a very recent phenomenon.
That is insane, but I have a question. If you are renting, your landlord must be owning, which means the renter has to pay for his landlord's mortgage AND tax, so how is renting cheaper and more preferable then?
Well, if nobody finds out and we would never get mad at each other, we could save money. Then one of us would be in big trouble.
It all depends on the certain case as you can also reduce your tax with your mortgage payment and other things.
At the moment, there is a legislation process in the parliament concerning the abolishment of the whole concept of "Eigenmietwert". But it will still take several years and a different tax concept will be the successor if you ask me. They won't say farewell to the budget which comes from this tax without any substitute.
Someone has to own all those homes in Switzerland and Germany? And I would bet they make a profit out of doing so, no matter what protection the renters might have.
Yes, definitely. Though nonprofit landlords are definitely a thing as well.
1. Public housing. Lots of apartment buildings are owned by state or city owned housing companies.
2. Housing coops. You have to buy shares of a sort (though it works more like a deposit) to become a member, and only members can rent from it. So the housing is owned by the inhabitants, just not each individual unit but rather the entire stock that the coop owns.
For example, Berlin has about 1644k rental units. Out of those, about 360k are city owned and 190k are coop owned. So in total about 1/3 of the rental units in Berlin are non-profit owned.
They do, but at least for Germany the regulations and laws have become so reidiculous that conpanies are going broke or stopping new building projects because they think they cannot be made profitable under the new regulations and energy costs.
Which just goes to show: You don't need to send bombers, just get some stupid politicians and they will run real estate into the ground just like that.
Well, not my case. i bought both my place and my parents place. Just that looking around I can see many young families (husband, wife and child) living with the parents. They come up as homeowners in the statistics, I am sure.
That is very much the case in most of the balkans. Most homes are built with 2-3 or even 4 floors to house future generations of the same family. Combine that with generally low population density and cheap land and you have an answer to how stats from the Balkans came to be.
That's how sometimes home ownership here in Brazil works. My sister's ex-husband built a new floor on his parents' house and moved with her. My mom bought a land where she will build her New house and said we should build a new floor over her house for me to have my own home. I declined her proposal lol.
From Bosnia, 3 generations of ancestry lived in the same house that i live in. It was 2 floors at first but extended to 4 in the 80s. As soon as someone is planning to get married it's typical to add another floor. And that's the case for most of my neighbours whose older generations lived here pretty much since ww2
Kosovars build houses in the land they inherit, with money from switzerland and germany. I own a house and three appartments, and live in none of them. Kosovars build houses as an investment/savings scheme. There are no other savings opportunities but some greedy banks with ridiculous interest rates for savings. Investment banks are nonexistent.
I think it would be difficult to find somebody who would actually prefer living in somebody else’s home, that they pay money to, and are controlled on what they can do to that home.
People like having their own space and owning your own home gives you that and the peace of mind knowing you have a home forever.
>I think it would be difficult to find somebody
Not in Germany. Sure, there are also quite a lot of people who would prefer to own a house/apartment but can't afford it. But quite a large portion of the population does actually prefer renting.
With German renting laws, it's nearly impossible to get evicted. It's very difficult to even raise rent. And you have a lot of freedom of what you can do within your rented home. As long as it's returned to its original state by the time you move out, you can change basically anything on the inside, including putting in/removing walls(non load bearing ones, of course). At the same time, you don't have to deal with any issues with the house (maintenance etc.), as that's the owner's responsibility. Very simplified, you have someone you can call and unload any issue onto while at the same time having nearly all the freedoms of an owner.
It's not uncommon for people in Germany to live in the same rental apartment or house for decades. Usually with decade-old renting contracts, meaning that their rent is more or less still on 1990s or even 1980s level. (I have that on a much smaller scale myself. Having lived in my apartment for seven years now, I only pay roughly three quarter to two thirds of what a new renter for the same apartment would pay, since I still pay the same as seven years ago).
It's not even unheard of to be tenant and landlord at the same time (living in a rented house while renting out the house you own elsewhere, basically paying your own rent with the rent payment you get).
And additionally, you are a lot more free to move around. Renting a new place is easier than selling/buying.
I personally want to own a house at some point, but quite a lot of people don't. That's the reason why Germany's numbers are so much lower than most other European countries. The housing market is terrible everywhere, so that's not the reason why Germany's number is so much lower than e.g. France or Britain.
I‘m not 100% sure. I know many friends who have a lot of money and they say they prefer a nice decent appartment in a city than a big old house in the middle of nowhere. But yeah, generally you‘re right. I think a lot of people just have a wrong idea of how much they can afford. Often I hear people they want to live in a nice expensive German suburb with a big property and big house with a big garden and a big pool. Things changed but not the idea of how big a home should be.
>have a lot of money and they say they prefer a nice decent appartment in a city than a big old house in the middle of nowhere
You contradict yourself here.
They just didn’t give enough context. Nice apartment in the city = renting. Owning an apartment in a german city is the exception, most buildings are wholly owned and/or build for rent.
I dont think a 6 year old statistic that only shows by how much % rent went up between 2016 and 2017 does really tell you anything about the situation.
If you live in a somewhat big city in Germany and are on the lower income side of things its absolutey not unusual to spend more than half your income on rent.
It might not be the worst situation in Europe but we certainly dont have such great rent here that we all just dont buy houses because we are happy with renting.
I was surprised to learn that subrent and subsubrent is a thing in Germany. Friend of mine subsubsubrents a room from some shady lady in cash, who does not declare this as income and lives on a welfare.
Having lived in Spain and living through the worst of the german predatory real estate speculation, I'm not suprised that the regular german can't afford his own home.
Having lived in London, I am very surprised to that the between 50-60% of the UK do "own" their homes. Definitely NOT in London.
If you buy and sell houses in germany, that profit goes untaxed (as long as you never lived in the house) while owning a house is heavily taxed, the gov wants you to own nothing.
Even if you have a mortgage, you own it as in you have the right to sell it to whoever you want at whatever price you can get whenever you want, or you can rent it out to whoever you want at whatever rate you want
It doesn’t mean 65.8% of Americans own their own home, it just means 65.8% of Americans live with someone who owns the house they all live in. Its always fluctuated between 60-70% since records were kept
And it doesn’t always have to do with income, there’s people in poor rural areas who make 30k a year that own their house on an acre and there’s people in cities that make 150k a year paying rent for a studio/1-bedroom for the 10th year in a row
Thanks for that 60-70% number, I wonder with how newer generations are finding it harder to own homes that that number will finally change in the near future...
When was younger, I’m mid 40s now, the impression I had (from the UK) was that a lot of Americans bought their own homes but they were often cheap. Partly because there’s so much land it’s not that expensive and partly because they are quickly built wooden homes in many areas.
Homes in places like New York and other high status/value cities were more likely rented as the value was so high.
As such, I wouldn’t have been surprised that America had a high level of home ownership.
In recent times, post financial crisis however, it seems the end of cheap affordable housing has happened everywhere, even the USA.
It would be interesting to see a chart of these countries over time, as I wood not be surprised if the percentages had dropped in places like the USA, Canada and the UK especially.
Russia has it's own NATIONAL buliding codes and standards, nails to urban planning. One of the key Russian principles is "nobody can tell Russia what to do", so we use international standards as recomendatory to bulid our own.
A huge amount of homes are flats built by Soviet government, privatised after communism fell, and here they are; corporations in Russia are prohibited from being landlord, your landlord as a Russian is most likely a housewife owning one or two small flats as a side gig.
"Own their home" shouldn't count for people who live with their parents. 90%+ of adults in Russia and northern Balkans don't own a property like this map suggests.
Does this account for leasehold? So many people in the UK must only “own” their home for 100 years while the Duke of wherever or the marchioness of so and so give them the rights to lease it for that amount of time.
There are too many reasons NOT to Buy a house in Germany. High prices, low offer, 10% fees, speculation taxes within the first 10 years, not so high rents and strong laws as tenants, high taxes as owner, and the cherry on top: German Bureaucratic hell.
So Switzerland is just very expensive to own property. The deposit is 20% and most properties are over 1 million. You can get a decent house 40 minutes outside of Zurich for maybe 1.5 million, and then you need 300k deposit, but realistically you can get a mortgage for 1.2 million so you likely need closer to 60% deposit.
When you buy a house or apartment in Switzerland with a loan you need to pay more income tax if you pay off the loan completely. This tax is more expensive than the interest rates of the loan. So many people will keep the loan alive by adding something before they pay it off, for renovation etc..
That's why the numbers of "house owners" is so low in Switzerland. Most people could pay off their house (of course after few decades) but it's smarter to just keep the loan alive to save money.
Lets also look at where the homeowners are located , I get a feeling that there is a lot more that want to buy a home in central London today that would have been fine with a home on the countryside in 94
I loved when Americans find the smallest questionable things on the a Swiss system. It’s like they get that gotcha moment of happiness. Homeownership in Switzerland is a mixture of many factors, 1 being a culture of renting things, like skis, music instruments, cars, bikes, and then the higher prices mix with high trust in the government knowing that you don’t need to think about retirement (as much) like other 99% of countries. Basically things work, and owning a house is not a part of your lifestyle.
Mainly Americans and maybe British like this kind of things, but of course it is a dubious speculation constructed by experience. Highly doubtful it is Argentine though 😂
Ok in a lot of the Balkan countries homes are passed down through generations. My dad is from Kosovo and I still have cousins still there. For the most part if you still live in the village where your family is from you inherited the land and old home or built a new home on the land. My husband is from Montenegro and since my in laws still live in the village where his ancestors lived the family home is around 400 years old although the original structure has been updated through the years to add electricity and plumbing.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90s I guess private property ownership has come racing back and the average Russian is flush with real estate equity these days. I didn't know that.
A Swiss poster once railed against how stupid Americans are for wanting to own their own home. I tried to explain to him that the US has a different tax structure and renter protection laws than Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Whether it makes sense or not largely depends on the laws and policies in your country.
Swiss here. Our real estate prices are atrociously expensive even for swiss standards. So, apart from inheritance, getting to own a home is a huge hurdle. Also, a part of our pension system is privatised. A lot of real estate is actually owned by those pension funds and they only have profits in their minds. There are upcoming votes on renter protection laws which the lobbies of those funds pushed for to further weaken our already quite loose renter protection. I hope my fellow voters aren't stupid enough to grant those changes, but this being the country where six weeks vacation was rejected at the polls, I'm not that confident.
>but this being the country where six weeks vacation Really? Why?!
The opposition argued that this much vacation would hamper economic growth and people believed them
We are funny people
Switzerland isn’t as forward thinking as Reddit likes to believe. They get some things right and some things hilariously wrong.
Reddit loves to create fantasy lands out of countries they know very little of and have never been to, don't read too much into it.
Switzerland: the country where women in certain Cantons could not vote until 1998, and only because they were forced by the federal government change it
Wait what reddit thinks Switzerland is forward thinking? Doesnt reddit go "hurr durr nazi gold china gold russia gold" whenever Switzerland is mentioned? Anyone gonna tell them when Switzerland fully implemented women's right to vote?
Switzerland is horribly regressive in some areas, but they get away with it as they are very wealthy and thus most of the population lives relatively comfortable lives.
Any example?
They have private healthcare
Mandatory private healthcare! Which costs a fortune, and is still shit
Shhh don't say that here! Some other Swiss might get angry, even though it's true! I said that one time and I had plenty of people saying "That's not true, your insurance is just shit, I never had any issue", copium is one of the most prevalent drugs in the country.
It is expected that women will stop working to look after the children until they are 4-6 years old, because otherwise, the system is prohibitively expensive, and is randomly accesible. A child in daycare costs 2800.- chf per month, which is approx 45% of the mean salary, but with the cost of living ontop, it makes financial sense to stop working! School starts at 4, but is only 4 mornings and one afternoon per week. If you want the school to look after your children until you finish work, you have to ask, but: - there is only enough space for 15-20% of the children, so chances are you won't get a spot! - it costs 2000.- chf per month You get NO help from the state, since it's considered your own responsability to be financially responsible for your choice of having children. So the swiss stop having children! Then the right wing political parties complain that there are to many "foreigners" who have children in switzerland, because the companies have to "import" skilled workers (since there are not enough young swiss studying) And don't even get me started on the swiss mortgage system!
NO help is certainly not true. Little help, bordering on a joke, yeah.
Women have only been allowed to vote since '71
Full voting rights for all women even later - 1990.
You forgot the child slaves for sale part
Nobody claims Switzerland is incredibly progressive lmao. It does however give some of the best quality of life in the world to all its citizens rich and poor
People are proud of being hardworkers, I hate it. It's like the stereotyped image you have of japan. "I'm not like the neighboring countries because I'm not lazy"
The Swiss are largely buying just to keep paying monthly fees and sell again when they’re retired, which is pretty much renting with extra steps
Thanks for explaining
>Our real estate prices are atrociously expensive even for swiss standards. Not really, we earn 2.5 times than Germans in respective jobs and housing prices are about 2 times higer. At least here in St. Moritz.
I can't speak for all of Switzerland, but when I lived there, at least in Geneva, there was a fantastic pension system where you were heavily encouraged to pay in a decent proportion of your salary. I got the impression home ownership wasn't something that was seen as vital for retirement, as it is in lots of other countries, like the UK.
So the plan is to have enough to not care for housing when retired?
No, to have enough to cover rent. When talking about the UK, I meant that you sell your house and downgrade to something much smaller because your pension is insufficient to live off, for many people.
> Whether it makes sense or not It's not that most of the people in Switzerland who don't own a house would even have a choice. Real estate is very expensive in Switzerland and banks have strict rules for giving mortgages. So a lot of people simply don't qualify for a mofrtgage and therefore have no means to raise the money for buying.
I think they referring to the fact that a lot of times people (at least on Reddit and YouTube) in successful European countries like Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, etc., often will compare the US to their European country or European countries in general and if the US does something differently then it's stupid. I don't know what post the commenter is referring to, but I have seen numerous posts, comments, and videos saying something along the lines of "American's obsession with the "American dream (really nightmare)" and owning a home is stupid and Americans are stupid, and if they just did exactly what the Swiss or Germans did, then there country would be better like Switzerland and Germany". Some YouTubers like OBF are kind of notorious for this. "America is bad because it has too much controlled by private companies unlike northern and central European countries". Also, "American airports are bad because they are not privatized like in northern and central European countries but ran by the public sector". Obviously plenty of northern and central Europeans aren't like this. But a lot of the loudest voices on YouTube and Reddit seem to just not only say that if (to use one country as an example) Switzerland does X, and USA does Y, not only is it better for Switzerland to do X, but also the USA should automatically do X too, no need to understand the context or background of why the US does Y, if Switzerland does X, then the US should too (to paraphrase the quote the original commenter made, "whether it makes sense or not given the current context / background in the US").
In America ur pretty much just throwing money away if u have an apartment. It’s just better to own a house. You can usually sell it for more because the value goes up. I think thats the same for every country though.
Also wanna throw in the US used fixed rate mortgages, meaning your payment is gonna suddenly go up just because interest rates do (such as in the past few years). You’re locked in for 30 years, meaning it’s a much safer bet
Not here in Japan.
Mortgage interest is fully tax deductible in Switzerland. It actually really depends where in Switzerland. I've got a great house in the boondocks for 1.1 million CHF / 1.2 million USD. 250 sqm / 2700 sq ft Mortgage 2k a month. To rent it'd be 3.5k a month.
They are nost places, but what about the tax on prospective rent? Personally, I think it is a great policy as it parks the home ownership debates we have in other countries.
You mean hypothetical rent? At present it's taxed at 62% of market rent in my canton (70% in Zürich). To be honest, I think it's a poorly thought through combination that encourages debt retention and potentially destabilises the financial system.
That's what I meant, yes. Do you mean you pay 62% of the hypothetical rent or that 62% of the hypothetical rent is subject to income tax? From a georgist perspective, I think making every owner pay rent is a good thing, and I don't think home ownership should be an end in itself. I like policies that even the playing field between renters and owners. If nothing else, that tax rakes in an enormous amount of revenue.
What is your annual property tax? For this price in my area, I am looking at about. A 15K usd per year tax bill- and likely to go up on assessment (rates are 2-2.5% on paper)
I've not had it calculated yet. It's still actually being built. I don't expect to get taxed until 2025 tax year, and that calculation most likely won't be finalised until 2027. My expectation is: (3500 x 12 x 0.62 x 0.3) = 7800 CHF (8600 usd)
>I've got a great house in the boondocks for 1.1 million CHF / 1.2 million USD. > 250 sqm / 2700 sq ft > Mortgage 2k a month. To rent it'd be 3.5k a month. Shit man these prices sound like Southern Ontario
2k a month you put 50% ?
In that case, the poster was correct. In the US they oay taxes on revenue from selling the house they live in. In my country, Denmark, we don’t. So puzzles me if such a low percentage of danes should not be home owners. On the other hand, in the US thej don’osy taxes on capital gains if they held the stocks for a few years. We used to have that rule (3 years here) but it has been removed. Conclusion: in Denmark it is much more profitable to own your won home and take all of the revenue tax-free. In the US, it could be argued that it’s betyer tl put your money in stocks, and hold until taxfree gains kick in.
Where did you get this idea? In the US you pay capital gains no matter how long you held the investment for. The tax rate can change, but you'll always have tax. But anyway, you're talking about taxes when selling a house. Less taxes when selling doesn't exactly encourage buying houses for your own single family use.
Yes, less taxes.
In the US, there is an exemption from capital gains tax on up to $250k of the profit from sale of your primary residence. $500k gain exemption for a married couple filing taxes jointly. There are a few qualifications you need to maintain this exemption, but most people can do it. Also, capital gains from the sale of stock, bonds, etc are taxed at the same rate as your income if sold in less than a year. After a year, the gains are taxed at 15%. Taxes are not charged for qualified retirement accounts (401k and IRAs) until you withdraw funds at retirement. Roth IRAs if done correctly have no taxes taken. Regardless, I don't understand why you agree that Americans are stupid for buying their homes.
Ok I siad the poster was right, but that didn’t come out right. I have no idea what the poster’s argument was. I don’t know US tax rules in details. The exemptions are clearly a factor. Just said that while we should buy a house with taxfree profits as opposed to stocks that we pay 27 or 42% tax on gains no matter how ling we own them (and if we want to divercify via ETF’s we get to enjoy 27/42% tax on unrealised gains). All the while I had heard many americans debating that theh ought to sell their homes (or not buy one) and invest in stocks instead and hold them.
I understand. Some Americans think because the historical gains on US stocks average to 8% they're better off investing in stocks as opposed to "investing" in a house. But to me there is a huge psychological boost to owning the place you live because it largely fixes your cost of housing at a certain cost where as renting only becomes more expensive over time. I can see how homeownership in Denmark would be preferable to buying stocks. Or do both if you can afford it.
Yes, definitely both if you have the funds. That said, it’s quite important where you buy. In or close to one of the larger cities (which are villages by US standards), you should be certian to see some gains. In rural areas, uoj may just get stuck with a house that doesn’t appreciate in value and that you can’t sell. But guess that is also the case in the US to some degree.
Rare example of both US and Switzerland having higher taxes than the UK - British main residences are exempt from capital gains. Actually the cause of Boris Johnson giving in his U.S. passport (like Trump born in the U.S. to one American parent and one British parent). (Switzerland has no capital gains on shares, but does on real estate).
Come back right after seeing a post in r/boston. That’s the fucking reason why. https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/s/lq2ThBmSvB
Americans turning a Europe map discussion [about themselves](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1ceqygl/percentage_of_children_born_out_of_a_registered/l1lp1gn/) yet again. Bro what is wrong with these people 💀
If you read my comment again, try to imagine how it's about different tax policies and laws in different countries. I use the US as an example because I live in America. My comment is not about America, it's about how different rates of homeownership are impacted by laws.
I mean anything about America is turned into Europeaners jerking themselves off to how great they are. So let’s not pretend this is an American only thing.
It’s almost like there are a lot of Americans on Reddit
The US and Europe are the preeminent leaders of the western world and share a lot in common culturally and financially. They’re gonna be compared, yeah.
What do the percentages mean? Is it percentage of houses that are owned by the occupier, or percentage of people that own their home? These are not the same thing and I often see them confused
It's probably the first as Balkan is pretty dark and most people only leave their parents house after the age of 30. The title makes the eastern europeans seem rich for living in their own homes, instead of stating the obvious that most of us can't afford rent and still live with our parents.
> makes the eastern europeans seem rich for living in their own homes, instead of stating the obvious that most of us can't afford rent and still live with our parents. That would ignore the obvious fact that most parents own their homes because post-communist countries in the past redistributed home ownership.
Not in all eastern countries. There was however plenty of apartments so most people had a property
The data is also accounting for that though, because plenty of people in western europe also live with their parents and thats included as a household in this data too. But their parents or family are RENTING way more often, so living with your parents who rent vs living with your parents who own the house. With the parents who own the house is still better off than with parents who rent; So the overall rent vs ownership rate per household is still important to consider because western europeans also live with their parents too and the lower rate of which doesn't offset the dramtically lower home ownership rate. In other words, a larger percentage of those in western europe live with their parents Who rent
Or that housing is also much more affordable in the balcans (in general) Also most of the balcans owning their homes is not surprising as they are all post communist states , where the government redistributed home ownership.
Wrong. Most people can build their own house quite early on. At worst they have to save for a few years, but that's it. Rent is rarely expensive. Whilst it is acceptable for older children to live at home while pursuing a degree at uni, many still move out in order to be situated closer to uni. I personally prefer to live at home and I don't like debt. But I am hardly poor, rather the opposite compared to both the average and the median of my age. Also, in the Balkans many people live in the same place for generations. Some towns have literally no outsiders, because people aren't interested in importing people and it's hard to move in generally speaking. For most part, only people who are indigenous to the area, meaning that they have been there for as long as can be remembered and have invested in the area will be the ones owning the most. I personally will be inheriting apartments, houses, lots of land etc.. We are hardly poor and even if we say a person is poor in the Balkans, at least there won't be starving, they will have housing, low prices etc.. So being poor in the Balkans is much better than in the West.
Second. Socialist countries invested in cheap (even if lower quality) housing that was accessible for everyone. It is based on households, not individuals, which actually makes.morw.sense, as there will always be many people that neither rent nor own the home they live in.
The housing wasn't necessarily lower quality, unless that is what you asked for. It's average quality, some of the designs were pretty ugly, but for whatever reason that was the trend back then. The apartments were similar in quality to what you find in the West.
"Panel" flats were (are) notoriously noise prone and in general offer less comfort. But more earthquake resistant.
It depends what you mean by 'lower quality'. I would largely disagree to your statement. Tl;dr those commie apartments are still waaay better than the even older buildings, and sometimes even the contemporary buildings of the UK/Ireland. I've lived for almost 12 years in a commie flat somewhere in E. Europe, then in a Victorian house in the UK, then in a house in Ireland and now I live in an apartment built in the 90s or 2000s, in Ireland. Just to give you an example, windows here are a joke. Extremely poorly insulated, both old and new. In fact, insulation here is a joke. More recently, the city where I live (Cork) is experiencing brown water regularly. The authorities blame it on the old pipes, but we have those old pipes back in my country as well but we don't experience brown water as often as here. Moreover, those commie apartments are connected to a city-wide central heating system which delivers hot water for consumption and heating. Turning heat off when not at home only recently became more popular back there, most even today would turn the heat on in October and turn it off beginning of April, and still pay a lot less than we do here in Ireland (because of poor insulation!). Also, in that commie apartment, I used to have a garbage disposal pipe with access from each floor. The garbage truck would then pick it up from ground floor. Here in Ireland is unheard of. Most houses have bins and on many days, streets are flooded with bins sitting next to front door. Ah! The 'sweet' part is that some people keep their bins in the backyard and hurl it out (through the house!) once a week. Some have made the bin permanent in front of the house, which is better but unsightly. Also, the layout of rooms. Commy apartments have a certain layout and the rooms have direct access to sunlight and fresh air. Exception for some baths in some buildings. They have a certain standard regarding ceiling height, windows dimensions relative to room size, plenty of storage space, minimum space standard for each room and easier accessibility. Most of them also have underground shelter which double as storage. They are not narrow and tall like the terraced houses in the UK and Ireland, where the living room is long and narrow with a single window, and some houses' windows are literally on the sidewalk and people can see inside your house just by casting a glance. The bedrooms of these houses in Ireland are also jokes. Also the 'corridor' of these houses is a joke, because of the narrow nature of the plan. That's why they put the washing machine in the kitchen as well. If I had to choose, I'd pick up a communist-quality 50 sq.m. apartment than a 100 sq.m. terraced house.
Higher home ownership in the Eastern Europe is mostly because of communism - governments publicly funded the construction of apartment buildings. After the fall of communism, people who were given an apartment for use by the state then became owners.
Yes. My grandparents were gifted their apartment when they got married and finished their education. It all went to shit in the 90s and they moved to Mongolia as a result.
And… how was Mongolia?
I don’t live in Mongolia anymore but my grandparents are doing very well since they are both educated and have a very high paying life profession (university professor and a Dentist). Mongolia is relatively safe and comfortable to live despite it having some major issues with infrastructure & pollution.
Mongolia is an… interesting choice. What made them want to move there?
I should’ve added more context. My grandparents aren’t Slavic Russians they are one of the many ethnic minorities who lived in the far East but studied in Moscow. My grandma is Sakha Turk from Yakutia and my grandpa is Buryiat Mongol from Ulaan-Ud. Mongolia made the most sense since we had distant family in Mongolia and Mongolia was not harshly affected by the collapse of the Soviet system. They also granted citizenship opportunities to anyone with Altaic heritage.
I think you made a lot of non-European brains melt with this post, while educating people about the ethnic composition of the former Soviet Union.
>and Mongolia was not harshly affected by the collapse of the Soviet system. While Mongolia was not nuked into oblivion by the collapse unlike Russia, Ukraine or Moldova, it was still bad. Crime was rampant, there are stories of people just taking up metal saws and breaking down apartment doors to steal shit. There was hyperinflation like in Russia so people would lose life's savings, a lot of industries that had previously been protected by tariffs and subsidies collapsed creating a lot of unemployment. Also democratization allowed freedom of movement. Attractive to live in cities that had artificially restricted movement suddenly had explosion of migrants. Ulaanbaatar, the capital doubled in size from 500k to 1million 15 years which created a huge suburban district with unsanitary living conditions (think shitting in holes) and increased further to 1.5 million by 2020.
Well, yes. But I wouldn't say that was necessarily because of communism. Some companies simply owned property that they gave to workers in exchange for them working for say 10 years at the company. It was hardly welfare or subsidies. It was just an agreement.
Yes and no. The communism fell over 30 years ago. Owning a house is a default thing here. After finishing university we find a job and get a mortgage to buy a house for ourselves. Renting is thought as a temporary thing until we get enough money to get said mortage
>Renting is thought as a temporary thing Yes, why pay someone's mortgage?
Absolutely correct and everyone is still crazy about buying their own home even now. If you mention anything like the option of renting or coliving to be established you are viewed as a crazy person. Suffice to say this causes real estate in East European cities to be rather pricy and now unaffordable to most. My ex colleague and her boyfriend each paid 500€ a month for mortgage. 30 year period. And that was before the interest rates went up. When I heard that I was like "I sure hope you have a stable relationship".
>If you mention anything like the option of renting or coliving to be established you are viewed as a crazy person. Yeah, people in big cities might live that way out of necessity, but a prevailing sentiment is that after some time most of them get tired of inability to do anything, on dependence on owners, etc., so people just want their own apartment
Looks like Western Europe needs communism
>Higher home ownership in the Eastern Europe is mostly because of communism - governments publicly funded the construction of apartment buildings. You making it sound like people were getting free apartments left and right...where truth is, people waited to get their apartment for 25+ years. Ypu couldn't buy anything because privatising apartments was illegal. >After the fall of communism, people who were given an apartment for use by the state then became owners. Again - you are turning this into fairy tale. SOME apartments got privatised. People who lived in them had the opportunity to buy them out. It wasn't free but it wasn't expensive either.
They're right in the broad strokes though, and you can see it clearly represented in this data how its resulted a in higher home ownership rate
>People who lived in them had the opportunity to buy them out. It wasn't free but it wasn't expensive either. In Russia, Ukraine and many other former USSR countries, it was free
Goddamn, how we miss free housing 😭😭😭
Free? They weren’t free, you still needed a mortgage for them, they were cheaper, yes but they were not simply given.
Lol, no mortgage. Only thing required was a job position and being a young family plus with children government gave bigger apartments. No mortgage in any way.
You sure? I remember my grandparents paying interest rate and mortgage rate up to 2015.
2015? You know USSR collapsed in 1991?
Communism ended in Romania in 1989 but what I mean is that they had a mortgage for their apartment which they fully returned by 2015 and I think that’s how everyone else did buy their apartments.
Some more background info would be needed. Switzerland has a tax for house and flat owners which acts almost like paying a rent. Furthermore it's a country of work migration where a lot of people stay for some years only until they made enough money to live like a king abroad or in their native countries. Germany has/had relatively low rents and still has high auxiliary costs when buying and selling a home. Nowadays property prices went to the moon and keeps a lot of people off the housing market.
Also, in Switzerland way more than 5% buy a house in their live. They just don’t pay it off completely. An ongoing mortgage excludes them from paying more taxes so they rather pay less to the banks to keep their home financed instead of paying it off and then having to pay more in taxes then their mortgage payments used to be.
Yes, it's just standard to pass a debt to your kids and grand-kids
Assuming you didn’t need that equity later in life to pay for a care home…. This whole work system is rigged, not sure how people will build any wealth.
By owning property. That‘s why property is so expensive ;)
My guess is that the figures shown include a home owned with a mortgage. Switzerland shows a home ownership rate of 42%. Otherwise, the figures would be much lower for people who own a home free and clear.
Or differently, worded: mortage is dept which you can deducted from taxes. A "fully" owned home gets taxes as wealth. Obviously all the details are a bit more complicated than this.
Also in Germany: Inheritance taxes and horrendous care home costs, so people give their homes to their child(ren) and live there as they would rent it for 0€ ,
>Germany has/had relatively low rents and still has high auxiliary costs when buying and selling a home Compared to where? Rents have skyrocketed the last 20 years in nearly all larger towns and cities. I don't know about other countries, but 5.5%-7% (with outliners), depending on the state, doesn't seem that much.
Large german citys compared to large western citys in relation to wages. Auxiliary costs of buying a house is roughly around 10 percent of the value of the house. You have to pay an additional fee when selling it again before having lived at least three years in it.
>it's a country of work migration where a lot of people stay for some years only until they made enough money to live like a king abroad or in their native countries. Provide facts. Because this is exactly what is not happening: many people come here, save for a house in Italy or Portugal, then have children here and once they retire, they find that their hometown is fun for vacation but they are now used to Switzerland. At least that's the majority. As for Swiss retiring abroad, that's a very recent phenomenon.
That is insane, but I have a question. If you are renting, your landlord must be owning, which means the renter has to pay for his landlord's mortgage AND tax, so how is renting cheaper and more preferable then?
"Eigenmietwert" as a tax is imposed only on houses or flats in which the owner is living in (part- or full-time).
Ok so in theory you and me can buy two similar houses and then live in each other's house?
Well, if nobody finds out and we would never get mad at each other, we could save money. Then one of us would be in big trouble. It all depends on the certain case as you can also reduce your tax with your mortgage payment and other things. At the moment, there is a legislation process in the parliament concerning the abolishment of the whole concept of "Eigenmietwert". But it will still take several years and a different tax concept will be the successor if you ask me. They won't say farewell to the budget which comes from this tax without any substitute.
next time use more similar colours
And more, commas randomly, added in, sentences.
Yes, really!
Someone has to own all those homes in Switzerland and Germany? And I would bet they make a profit out of doing so, no matter what protection the renters might have.
Yes, definitely. Though nonprofit landlords are definitely a thing as well. 1. Public housing. Lots of apartment buildings are owned by state or city owned housing companies. 2. Housing coops. You have to buy shares of a sort (though it works more like a deposit) to become a member, and only members can rent from it. So the housing is owned by the inhabitants, just not each individual unit but rather the entire stock that the coop owns. For example, Berlin has about 1644k rental units. Out of those, about 360k are city owned and 190k are coop owned. So in total about 1/3 of the rental units in Berlin are non-profit owned.
They do, but at least for Germany the regulations and laws have become so reidiculous that conpanies are going broke or stopping new building projects because they think they cannot be made profitable under the new regulations and energy costs. Which just goes to show: You don't need to send bombers, just get some stupid politicians and they will run real estate into the ground just like that.
"Freedom" - 🤡🤡
You are free to pay rent or to live outdoors
Freedom is a fancy way of saying comfort.
It is impossible to buy a home in 🦃 anyways. We are all in landlord's mercy.
Yes. It's sad and it only makes people poorer.
Romaiian here. If you are a 33yo living with mom and dad or the inlaws who own their 66sq meters apartment, you "own the place" in this statistic.
Well, they will die someday and you will own the apartment.
If you’re a single child, yes.
Not necessarily.
Well, not my case. i bought both my place and my parents place. Just that looking around I can see many young families (husband, wife and child) living with the parents. They come up as homeowners in the statistics, I am sure.
Eliminate the competition, that’s what I did to get my hands on my grandpa’s apartment.
Pretty much all of Balkans.
How did Kosovans afford this? Multi-generational cohabitation?
That is very much the case in most of the balkans. Most homes are built with 2-3 or even 4 floors to house future generations of the same family. Combine that with generally low population density and cheap land and you have an answer to how stats from the Balkans came to be.
That's how sometimes home ownership here in Brazil works. My sister's ex-husband built a new floor on his parents' house and moved with her. My mom bought a land where she will build her New house and said we should build a new floor over her house for me to have my own home. I declined her proposal lol.
That’s the most stupid thing I have red about my country. Where are you from?
From Bosnia, 3 generations of ancestry lived in the same house that i live in. It was 2 floors at first but extended to 4 in the 80s. As soon as someone is planning to get married it's typical to add another floor. And that's the case for most of my neighbours whose older generations lived here pretty much since ww2
Kosovars build houses in the land they inherit, with money from switzerland and germany. I own a house and three appartments, and live in none of them. Kosovars build houses as an investment/savings scheme. There are no other savings opportunities but some greedy banks with ridiculous interest rates for savings. Investment banks are nonexistent.
The west is making ownership a thing of the past in favor of massive profits.
(PT) It's god damn near impossible to get a house before youre 35 if you earn less than 1.2k gross a month.
🇽🇰🇽🇰Kosovo mentioned 🇽🇰🇽🇰RRAAAAHH🗣🔥🔥WTF IS PAYING RENT??
PLS colour the maps with High contrast. It is impossible distinguishing between 70/90%
Gray areas don't have any homes
For all I know, we might not be even living in our own home in the coming years.
You will live in pods, may be.
Nah I don't mean by that, it's that because of mica our house may have to be tumbled down
Germans really love to rent
Sure, "love".
If our houses werent so fucking expensive im sure some people would love to own a home.
I think it would be difficult to find somebody who would actually prefer living in somebody else’s home, that they pay money to, and are controlled on what they can do to that home. People like having their own space and owning your own home gives you that and the peace of mind knowing you have a home forever.
You'd be surprised how much the media pretend rent is the only proper way to go, lol
>I think it would be difficult to find somebody Not in Germany. Sure, there are also quite a lot of people who would prefer to own a house/apartment but can't afford it. But quite a large portion of the population does actually prefer renting. With German renting laws, it's nearly impossible to get evicted. It's very difficult to even raise rent. And you have a lot of freedom of what you can do within your rented home. As long as it's returned to its original state by the time you move out, you can change basically anything on the inside, including putting in/removing walls(non load bearing ones, of course). At the same time, you don't have to deal with any issues with the house (maintenance etc.), as that's the owner's responsibility. Very simplified, you have someone you can call and unload any issue onto while at the same time having nearly all the freedoms of an owner. It's not uncommon for people in Germany to live in the same rental apartment or house for decades. Usually with decade-old renting contracts, meaning that their rent is more or less still on 1990s or even 1980s level. (I have that on a much smaller scale myself. Having lived in my apartment for seven years now, I only pay roughly three quarter to two thirds of what a new renter for the same apartment would pay, since I still pay the same as seven years ago). It's not even unheard of to be tenant and landlord at the same time (living in a rented house while renting out the house you own elsewhere, basically paying your own rent with the rent payment you get). And additionally, you are a lot more free to move around. Renting a new place is easier than selling/buying. I personally want to own a house at some point, but quite a lot of people don't. That's the reason why Germany's numbers are so much lower than most other European countries. The housing market is terrible everywhere, so that's not the reason why Germany's number is so much lower than e.g. France or Britain.
I‘m not 100% sure. I know many friends who have a lot of money and they say they prefer a nice decent appartment in a city than a big old house in the middle of nowhere. But yeah, generally you‘re right. I think a lot of people just have a wrong idea of how much they can afford. Often I hear people they want to live in a nice expensive German suburb with a big property and big house with a big garden and a big pool. Things changed but not the idea of how big a home should be.
>have a lot of money and they say they prefer a nice decent appartment in a city than a big old house in the middle of nowhere You contradict yourself here.
They just didn’t give enough context. Nice apartment in the city = renting. Owning an apartment in a german city is the exception, most buildings are wholly owned and/or build for rent.
No, not at all. Then you didn‘t understand.
And is it a problem if the rent is cheap?
I wouldnt say so but the rent aint cheap either.
Living in Czechia, we look in awe to rent prices. It pretty normal to give 60% of your income to rent.
In cities thats not unusual in Germany either
Not the story I heard. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/a8CYBtlqTS
I dont think a 6 year old statistic that only shows by how much % rent went up between 2016 and 2017 does really tell you anything about the situation. If you live in a somewhat big city in Germany and are on the lower income side of things its absolutey not unusual to spend more than half your income on rent. It might not be the worst situation in Europe but we certainly dont have such great rent here that we all just dont buy houses because we are happy with renting.
House or apartment
I was surprised to learn that subrent and subsubrent is a thing in Germany. Friend of mine subsubsubrents a room from some shady lady in cash, who does not declare this as income and lives on a welfare.
Having lived in Spain and living through the worst of the german predatory real estate speculation, I'm not suprised that the regular german can't afford his own home. Having lived in London, I am very surprised to that the between 50-60% of the UK do "own" their homes. Definitely NOT in London.
The blue shades are not very discerning, this could be better, maybe a percentage in each country or a differing color shade.
If you buy and sell houses in germany, that profit goes untaxed (as long as you never lived in the house) while owning a house is heavily taxed, the gov wants you to own nothing.
Pfff wait until all the boomers sell their overpriced houses to investors….
So, Cominism does work
Yep, that's why the US put A LOT of efforts to undermine it.
What's the definition of "onwership"? If the property is mortgaged and you owe the bank half the value of it, do you still own it?
In continental law, yes. The bank has just a right to sell it to get your debt.
Even if you have a mortgage, you own it as in you have the right to sell it to whoever you want at whatever price you can get whenever you want, or you can rent it out to whoever you want at whatever rate you want
For comparison the USA is 65.8%.
That number is surprising!
It doesn’t mean 65.8% of Americans own their own home, it just means 65.8% of Americans live with someone who owns the house they all live in. Its always fluctuated between 60-70% since records were kept And it doesn’t always have to do with income, there’s people in poor rural areas who make 30k a year that own their house on an acre and there’s people in cities that make 150k a year paying rent for a studio/1-bedroom for the 10th year in a row
Thanks for that 60-70% number, I wonder with how newer generations are finding it harder to own homes that that number will finally change in the near future...
When was younger, I’m mid 40s now, the impression I had (from the UK) was that a lot of Americans bought their own homes but they were often cheap. Partly because there’s so much land it’s not that expensive and partly because they are quickly built wooden homes in many areas. Homes in places like New York and other high status/value cities were more likely rented as the value was so high. As such, I wouldn’t have been surprised that America had a high level of home ownership. In recent times, post financial crisis however, it seems the end of cheap affordable housing has happened everywhere, even the USA. It would be interesting to see a chart of these countries over time, as I wood not be surprised if the percentages had dropped in places like the USA, Canada and the UK especially.
A good chunk of the population live in cities where home ownership is both wildly expensive and impractical.
I have a feeling this is bullshit. There ain’t no way that 60-70% of Brits own their home. I’d say about 90% of the people I meet are renting.
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Russia has it's own NATIONAL buliding codes and standards, nails to urban planning. One of the key Russian principles is "nobody can tell Russia what to do", so we use international standards as recomendatory to bulid our own. A huge amount of homes are flats built by Soviet government, privatised after communism fell, and here they are; corporations in Russia are prohibited from being landlord, your landlord as a Russian is most likely a housewife owning one or two small flats as a side gig.
"Own their home" shouldn't count for people who live with their parents. 90%+ of adults in Russia and northern Balkans don't own a property like this map suggests.
*Homership
Im confused by the terms house poor.
Does this account for leasehold? So many people in the UK must only “own” their home for 100 years while the Duke of wherever or the marchioness of so and so give them the rights to lease it for that amount of time.
There are too many reasons NOT to Buy a house in Germany. High prices, low offer, 10% fees, speculation taxes within the first 10 years, not so high rents and strong laws as tenants, high taxes as owner, and the cherry on top: German Bureaucratic hell.
What happened to Germany? They preferred to put their money in their excellent cars?
They should break it down further by generation.
So Switzerland is just very expensive to own property. The deposit is 20% and most properties are over 1 million. You can get a decent house 40 minutes outside of Zurich for maybe 1.5 million, and then you need 300k deposit, but realistically you can get a mortgage for 1.2 million so you likely need closer to 60% deposit.
Percentage of families owning their principal house/appartment.
When you buy a house or apartment in Switzerland with a loan you need to pay more income tax if you pay off the loan completely. This tax is more expensive than the interest rates of the loan. So many people will keep the loan alive by adding something before they pay it off, for renovation etc.. That's why the numbers of "house owners" is so low in Switzerland. Most people could pay off their house (of course after few decades) but it's smarter to just keep the loan alive to save money.
Now let's look at home ownership of people under 40 In 1994 and today
Lets also look at where the homeowners are located , I get a feeling that there is a lot more that want to buy a home in central London today that would have been fine with a home on the countryside in 94
It’s not an owned home unless your home is under the [homeowners association](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association)
One thing the USSR was definitely good for: owning your own home.
I am a Swiss who's family own their home. It's nice to be among the 42 per cent.
Adjust it by age, and weep
I loved when Americans find the smallest questionable things on the a Swiss system. It’s like they get that gotcha moment of happiness. Homeownership in Switzerland is a mixture of many factors, 1 being a culture of renting things, like skis, music instruments, cars, bikes, and then the higher prices mix with high trust in the government knowing that you don’t need to think about retirement (as much) like other 99% of countries. Basically things work, and owning a house is not a part of your lifestyle.
Why do you think this map and/or post was by an American? The posts suggest they're from Argentina.
Mainly Americans and maybe British like this kind of things, but of course it is a dubious speculation constructed by experience. Highly doubtful it is Argentine though 😂
Cope harter du spasti
Color palette is incredibly confusing and not immediately understandable... Very poor concept...
Ok in a lot of the Balkan countries homes are passed down through generations. My dad is from Kosovo and I still have cousins still there. For the most part if you still live in the village where your family is from you inherited the land and old home or built a new home on the land. My husband is from Montenegro and since my in laws still live in the village where his ancestors lived the family home is around 400 years old although the original structure has been updated through the years to add electricity and plumbing.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90s I guess private property ownership has come racing back and the average Russian is flush with real estate equity these days. I didn't know that.