
Why younger people can’t afford a house - gabor-meszaros
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/12/house-prices-money-cheap-debt-planning
======
maxaf
I find intellectually dishonest the suggestion that not owning a house is
somehow going to remove the ability to settle down and start a family. I don't
own a house, and most likely never will, by the simple reasoning that I can
either own a house 2 hours away from work and spend 1/6 of my weekday waking
hours on public transit, or I can rent a great apartment 10 minutes from work
and enjoy a vastly greater quality of life.

None of this stops me from living the family life. On the contrary, the
shorter commute time arguably allows me to be a better father and husband than
many of my coworkers, who travel such long distances to work that they can't
afford to be home in time for dinner or their kids' bedtime.

Yes, they may have the big backyards and huge houses, but my family enjoys a
Manhattan penthouse with a rooftop, located equidistantly from Central and
Riverside parks, with easy access to everything the city has to offer.

The "American Dream" of owning a house at all costs - which also appears to be
the British dream - would be just another distraction. It's unnecessary and,
in my opinion, a waste of mindshare and money.

~~~
lhopki01
All a great and good till you do the math. In the UK you can own a house 2
hours away from work or you can rent a house 3 hours away from work. Rental
prices in the UK are well above the rate needed to service a mortgage so if
you can get a mortgage it's much cheaper. To give you an idea the 3 bedroom
flat I live in has a mortgage repayment of around 800pounds a month but a
rental income of 1700pounds a month.

~~~
maxaf
Wow, now that's the major difference from NYC. A mortgage payment for anything
decent anywhere in Manhattan is far beyond my current means, yet I afford the
rent easily enough. I wonder why the UK is so different? Are landlords simply
profiteering off a bad situation?

~~~
UVB-76
I find the inverse to be strange, i.e. the notion that the rental value of a
property should be less than the cost of a mortgage.

Not least because landlords incur overheads over and above those an owner-
occupier does.

There is a large 'buy-to-let' industry in the UK, whereby millions have taken
out mortgages to buy properties for the sole purpose of renting them out.

The rental income pays the mortgage, and usually provides some profit on top,
all while the value of the property itself continues to appreciate.

~~~
dagw
_Not least because landlords incur overheads over and above those an owner-
occupier does._

But isn't there also an economy of scales argument to be made. If you own
dozens of buildings and hundreds of flats, you should be able to keep your pr.
flat cost lower than someone who just bought one flat.

~~~
UVB-76
None of the overheads I'm thinking about lend themselves to economies of
scale.

I'm talking about things like:

* Admin costs (contracting, etc.)

* New tenant costs (marketing, agency fees, reference checks, credit checks, inventory, etc.)

* Landlords' insurance

* Extra safety checks (e.g. annual gas safety checks)

* Cost of downtime between tenants

* Cost of rectifying wear and tear (cannot recover from tenants)

There's also a difference in terms of maintenance. If I'm an owner-occupier
and something breaks, I can live with it for a while, shop around, get a few
quotes, and get it fixed at my leisure.

As a landlord, if something goes wrong with one of my properties I have an
obligation to repair it as soon as reasonably possible.

Then every now and then you get a tenant who completely trashes a property,
causing damage far in excess of any deposit, and which you're unlikely to ever
recover.

------
kdamken
So many of my peers, many of whom are up to their neck in student loan debt
and have mediocre paying jobs, seem hellbent on buying a house, usually due to
the "rent is throwing your money away bro!" argument.

Did you know you don't need to buy a house? Like it's not legally required,
even though everyone seems to think its the greatest thing you can possibly do
with your money?

Some food for thought:

Why your house is a terrible investment -
[http://jlcollinsnh.com/2013/05/29/why-your-house-is-a-
terrib...](http://jlcollinsnh.com/2013/05/29/why-your-house-is-a-terrible-
investment/)

Crunching the numbers of renting vs owning -
[http://jlcollinsnh.com/2012/02/23/rent-v-owning-your-home-
op...](http://jlcollinsnh.com/2012/02/23/rent-v-owning-your-home-opportunity-
cost-and-running-some-numbers/)

~~~
awesomerobot
On average it's still one of the best possible investments you can make with
money, especially considering making a return on any sort of savings today
isn't really a thing. These articles also neglect to mention that if you had
bought property in a city like SF, Boston, or NYC a decade ago you wouldn't
currently be worried about being priced out of the city by increasing rents
(commute distance is a huge economic burden beyond the obvious housing costs).

It's still not something that's a "sure thing" or you can do hastily. It also
takes more of your time than renting, so if you're trying to optimize "free
time" then it's likely a bad investment in that regard.

There's no simple answer one way or another, but if you're trying to justify
your inability to buy as a "good decision" you'd still be wrong more often
than right. An increased market of affordable housing to purchase is better on
the whole for wealth equality than controlling rents.

~~~
kdamken
If you think it's one of the best possible investments, besides the article I
poseted above I'd also recommend checking out -
[http://affordanything.com/2015/11/24/is-renting-better-
than-...](http://affordanything.com/2015/11/24/is-renting-better-than-buying-
should-i-rent-or-buy/)

You mention cities that are booming. What about if you bought property in an
area that got worse?

~~~
awesomerobot
Well sure, that's an example of a bad investment. Renting is choosing to not
invest. Zero risk, zero reward.

------
speeder
I am from Brazil.

We are having a similar problem for a long time now, and it is obvious how the
situation also creates a huge amount of wealth inequality:

In São Paulo, several times in the last 15 years, rent managed to be more
expensive than several first world cities (like Stockholm).

Housing prices are ludicrous, and the mayor office estimated they have a
shortage of 200.000 homes right now, with 200.000 families (not 200.000
people!) living on the streets.

When I lived there, I spent 80% of my income in rent, I ended getting in debt
after some hiccups with a contract, and got kicked out, I am still in debt to
pay the rent, and I still have rents to pay too! (ie: defaulted rents).

The interesting thing is: THE BUILDING where I lived, not just the apartment,
the ENTIRE BUILDING was owned by a single guy. I found out that guy owns
SEVERAL buildings, and that he is NOT one of the city top10 richest, it is
"normal" for the city "onepercenters" to own 50+ housing units, many of them
own hundreds, or even thousands of housing units, many that are empty, because
noone can afford the crazy rent, neither the crazy price to buy something.

One of the investors of my startup is a foreigner, and bought a apartment and
a house in Brazil, he later told me he was surprised, by how much lucrative it
was, the apartment value DOUBLED in 1 year.

~~~
imtringued
Reminds me of my previous physician. That person owned literally all the
housing units on the same street where she set up shop.

------
skywhopper
This article makes some good points. Primarily that there's too much money
floating around being poorly used (ie, in the hands of the superrich who's
primary motivation is to generate high returns for themselves).

The solution is not cheaper homes or higher interest rates, but higher wages
and less student debt. The easiest way to do that (in the US) is to raise
taxes (particularly capital gains, but also upper-bracket income and corporate
taxes) to subsidize low-price higher education, fund infrastructure projects
(national power grid, offshore wind and tide power generation, a real high-
speed rail network, local transit, local utility upgrades (water and sewer
systems are dangerously decrepit throughout the country, and we ought to be
laying fiber to every home in the US), research into battery technology,
diabetes and cancer prevention and treatment advances) that will pay decades
of massive benefits to rich and poor alike, and to raise the minimum wage,
which will generate inflationary pressure on other wages and prices in
general.

Further the Fed needs to let inflation rates balance out by running at 4-8%
for a few years. We've had a sustained period of outrageously low inflation,
which means that mortgages and student debt are far heavier burdens today than
they were for previous generations, because inflation reduces the effective
principal.

We have plenty of tools to address this problem, but no political will to even
try.

------
madaxe_again
"Because they are lazy and feckless", if you listen to anyone over 40.

Younger people can't afford a house because empathy is dead, and property in
the UK is no longer a thing in which you live, it's an investment instrument -
and unfortunately as it's a rather profitable investment instrument large and
wealthy entities engage with said investments, pushing smaller investors (i.e.
human beings who wish to own the roof over their head) out of the market.

We've successfully gone back to landed aristocracy.

~~~
talmand
Don't generalize, I'm over 40 and don't agree with that statement.

~~~
madaxe_again
Sure, sorry, "anyone" isn't quite right - but this does seem to hold true for
a significant majority. If I had a penny for every time I get a "when I was
your age" I'd be able to live in a house made of them!

~~~
talmand
No worries, when I was your age I complained about the older crowd as well
when they did something I didn't like.

------
design-of-homes
A major factor in the rise of property prices in the UK is the enormous growth
of the buy-to-let market. It's not the sole factor affecting property prices,
but a substantial one, particularly in London.

Incredibly, buy-to-let landlords have enjoyed better tax advantages than
first-time buyers. Some of those tax advantages have only recently been
curtailed by the current government, but it's too little, too late.

I wrote a blog post about the damaging effects of buy-to-let in 2009. That's
six years ago, and hardly anything has changed. It's immensely depressing:

[http://designofhomes.co.uk/016-damaging-effects-of-buy-to-
le...](http://designofhomes.co.uk/016-damaging-effects-of-buy-to-let.html)

~~~
retube
Actually growth of BTL is not the reason for increasing house prices -
although it is a result of the actual cause - low interest rates - which has
meant that both buy-to-live and buy-to-let have been able to borrow ever great
sums for the same monthly cost as mortgage rates have come down - from 5% or
6% to 1% over the last 5 - 10 years.

~~~
collyw
I am sure it a combination of factors. Some will say immigration is the cause.
Its not the only cause, but it will affect the market.

I have to agree that 'emergency' low interest rates are propping the market up
since it was ready to crash in 2007. BTL landlords benefit from low interest
rates, so again that is a factor.

------
wyldfire
> The solution to the housing crisis is lower prices ... many people’s wealth
> is dependent on the value of their home

This 30-minute video [1] describes the factors in the economy in simple terms.
I understand fractional reserve 'n all that but the interesting part I learned
was about the long/short term debt cycles. If we're entering a transition on
the long term debt cycle, it would be marked by unrest/wars.

[1] [http://www.economicprinciples.org/](http://www.economicprinciples.org/)

~~~
HappyTypist
Thanks for sharing, this is a great video. It packs a lot.

What has happened in the last 8 years is that central banks have attempted to
stimulate asset prices at all costs. Real deleveraging is painful and there is
no way around it. It has to happen.

Central banks have short circuited the natural process and cut the
deleveraging cycle early. In doing so, it has caused the economy to limp on in
a heavily burdened, leveraged state without real growth. This is why we still
have near zero interest rates, and why Europe and Japan are still on negative
rates -- LOWER than the GFC!

Take a look at this chart of mortgage debt:
[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MDOAH](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MDOAH)

You can see that the natural deleveraging cycle has been short circuited by
insane injections of money. There is still too much debt to income, and
deleveraging is going to happen again.

~~~
wyldfire
Does it make sense to normalize that graph against population or productivity
growth (maybe a larger economy can support a larger debt)? Even still I doubt
growth since 1950 has anywhere near the slope of that graph.

~~~
HappyTypist
It absolutely does make sense to adjust for real GDP, but even so you can see
the deleveraging process was short circuited.

------
Graham24
"Between 1997 and 2007 the housing stock grew by 10%, but the population only
grew by 5%".

I find this hard to believe, the town I live in has not grown by 10% in a
decade.

"The Bank of England says inflation is 0.3%. Really? With house prices up by
10% last year?"

I think that inflation rate specifically excludes housing costs and always has
done.

IMO it is supply and demand, the millions of new East Europeans moving to the
UK and caused a spike in the population and they have to live some where, thus
pushing prices up, this combined with buy-to-let means there are fewer places
up for sale as money can be made on renting especially with interest rates low
and mortgages available.

rent prices are set to screw the maximum out of tenants, and have nothing to
do with the landlord's costs, this means that tenants find it harder to save
deposits.

I'm glad I bought in 2008.

~~~
imtringued
On average housing prices in germany are growing slower than inflation but in
cities they are growing at a rapid pace.

------
noir_lord
The situation is fucked and people are starting to get angry.

Over the mid\long term this bodes badly for the people benefitting.

Cynically the push for more state control of peoples privacy looks a lot like
they are planning for civil unrest.

If you want to see why secure comms are vital look up Operation Vula.

Put another way and I forget who said it "there is nothing more dangerous than
a man who has nothing to lose", you can't dispossess an entire generation and
not expect blow back.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSOTVfNe54A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSOTVfNe54A)

[1] [https://youtu.be/Q4hIvL8vtCw?t=21s](https://youtu.be/Q4hIvL8vtCw?t=21s)
[Good fast overview, rest of the talk is interesting as well]

~~~
Natanael_L
[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/12/operation_vul...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/12/operation_vula.html)

------
doc_holliday
It's a great article to see in the mainstream press and something that needs
to be discussed.

When it comes to UK housing most people tend to blame immigration / lack of
building. Which certainly haven't made the situation any better. They both can
distort the supply / demand equation.

The main thing though that effects the demand however tends to be looser
monetary policy. This makes more people have more money chasing the same
properties. It's an absurd situation and all we have done is essentially
devalue money in terms of property. We are no richer.

An even more interesting point to the UK market is places like Scotland.
Scotland's population actually dipped from the 80s into the 90s, and is only
just above where it was in the 80s now... and yet in that time real property
values have doubled and above in most places.

During this time they never stopped building...

We should all be angry at monetary policy of the last decade or so.

------
dharma1
Several trends responsible for this.

Loose monetary policy - many asset prices have risen - stock markets, property
prices in major cities.

In the case of London, it's seen as a safe haven so foreign investors park
their money in property here, banks willing to lend large mortgages, influx of
people moving London.. And not enough new housing (aside from high end
property development in Central London, which several hedge funds are now
shorting incidentally).

Other factors will change but the population growth trend isn't going to slow
down any time soon in London. I think remote work could be incentivised on a
larger scale so people can choose where to work from.

------
csrm123
The article seems to suggest that low interest rates are the cause of high
house prices: it argues that house price inflation is out-of-control, but
could be brought under control with higher rates.

This would certainly deter buy-to-let landlords. But, given that the world
generally is doing quantitative-easing and 0% rates or lower, this would be a
very contrary position for the UK to adopt.

What would be the implications of that policy? I can't believe it hasn't
already be considered. So why has it been dismissed?

~~~
pjc50
Indeed. Interest rates affect (a) asset prices and (b) business investment.

Low rates are supposed to affect the economy to increase inflation through
(b): businesses buying inventory, building factories, developing new products,
etc. This "transmission mechanism" is now broken because there is a shortage
of suitable demand. Businesses do not want to borrow to expand because there
is no good prospect of a return on the expansion. So we can't push on that
rope.

Low rates caused a property boom which resulted in a _temporary_ economic
boost to several European countries (especially Spain and Ireland): the cheap
money ended up in the pockets of construction workers, who spent it.

We need some means of diverting the cheap money from (a) to (b). Possibly a
tax on leverage, if that's feasible.

In the short term, the UK should get a proper property tax and apply punitive
rates to property owned by non-EU individuals or companies.

------
ssharp
> Ignoring land prices for the moment, houses do not cost a lot of money to
> build – a quick search online shows you can buy the materials for a three-
> bed timber-framed house for less than £30,000; in China a 3D printer can
> build a basic home for less than £3,000 – and the building cost of the
> houses we already have has long since been paid.

Wait...what?

Ignore the cost of land, ignore the cost of labor and houses sure are cheap to
build!

~~~
amazon_not
I feel it's a rather salient point that it's the land that is expensive, not
the house.

~~~
ssharp
Is that what the author intended to convey?

I also question the quality of materials you're getting for that price, as
well as the architecture of the house. In the same area, I've seen 4000 sq ft.
houses sell for $150,000 and 4000 sq ft. houses sell for over a million in the
same area. All materials and building plans are not equal, so it's still more
than just land.

I also wonder how much house flipping (or people having to update their own
house before selling) has pushed prices up.

------
Htsthbjig
What is happening in the UK today is what happened in Spain 10 years ago, or
what happened in Japan before Spain: A bubble created by easy money.

In Spain it was money coming from France, UK, and Germany. In UK it is money
coming from Chinese and central banks, and people worrying about the stock
market.

The big problem in developed countries is that they are old democracies. For
the first time, most of the population of a country is not young, but old.

In the past, with pyramids of population, the younger population decided for
their country, now it it old people who is majority.

This means young people could be sacrificed without consequences: taxes are
being raised on the young and working populations to support elderly pensions.
House prices are artificially sustained so old people does not lose their
investments. Working benefits are cut on newcomers to support veterans.

------
patrick_99
Houses are many baby boomers' retirement savings. Governments are stuck
because if they pop the bubble to make housing more affordable, they'll be
pissing off a lot of people about to retire who are counting on the value of
their house.

------
lucaspiller
> The standard solution is: “we need to build more”

One thing that really put me off buying a new home in the UK is how small they
are. The total floor area of this two bedroom house is 50m2 (540 sq. feet) for
£188,000. It's in a new development on greenfield land, so it's not like space
was limited.

[http://www.zoopla.co.uk/new-
homes/details/39983656#VvUd83HXP...](http://www.zoopla.co.uk/new-
homes/details/39983656#VvUd83HXPWvl3197.97)

~~~
adwf
It's because planning regulations are such a pain in the arse. When they get
the initial planning outline for a plot of land, that is a huge multi-year
hurdle they've overcome. It can cost hundreds of thousands, even millions,
just to get to that point. So naturally they then decide to cram as many
houses as possible onto the plot.

There are also really annoying regulations about having to give a certain
percentage of the houses to the council (on the cheap), if the total build is
more than about 12-13 houses. So when you're choosing between 200 or 300
houses on the plot, why would you want to give away some really nice houses at
cost, when you could just build a ton of small terraces?

------
BenoitEssiambre
Blaming cheap money is wrong and upside down basic macro.

Lowering property prices by raising interest rates, makes it more difficult to
afford houses and implies killing the economy and putting people out of work.
Home prices usually end up going down only because people are made not to be
able to afford them. This is incredibly destructive and it only allows more
people to live in the same area when they are forced to move in with their
parents.

I used to think rising house prices were a bad situation for us millennials
but now I believe this to be a best case scenario.

It is impossible to keep adding people to the same space while giving
everybody much room for their money. The problem is trying to cram a
generation of millennials into the same area as a wealthy cohort of boomers
and rich immigrants predictably makes home prices go up.

Increasing supply or nudging the new generation to go in areas with more
potential for spacial growth not only allows the new community to be built to
the image of its own people but building and growing the infrastructure of a
new neighborhood or revitalizing a dying town creates jobs for the people that
go there.

The best thing governments could do to help with this situation would be to
encourage some of the institutions and jobs relevant to new generations to
move out of overpriced, overcrowded centers. They could foster jobs creation
in centers with more low cost space and less chance of spacial overload. They
could maybe move some public jobs there to help jump start the migration. This
would also put some downward pressure on the prices in overcrowded places
until we reach some kind of equilibrium.

I say stop trying to cram everyone in the same volume. Let the older rich
generation keep the expensive quarters they've spent their life building and
allow new generations to create our own communities, in our own space, from
choices guided guided our own tastes.

~~~
tostitos1979
I don't think you are correct. Lets take Toronto as an example. This city
built condo projects by the dozens. The GTA (greater toronto area) is so
sprawled out, I recall a statistic that it was 1/4 the size of England. The
transportation infrastructure cannot take it ... major roads like the DVP and
401 are always clogged. Farmland in some of the far away areas is being
converted to houses. The problem here is the price of land is so highly
inflated, you now have no choice but to pay a million buckeros for a modest
detached house. Condos in areas near the subway and restaurants are also
priced stupid ... one of the areas we considered was priced at $680 a square
foot (in an area called North York). The problem is cheap, free money. People
who got in on it early own 2-3 condos.

~~~
Htsthbjig
Agreed. I lived in Canada like 5 months or so with some friends. The country
is so big that we used private airplanes to move around, which was very normal
there.

The prices on Toronto smells Bubble so much that feels dangerous to be near
that when it does pop.

~~~
BenoitEssiambre
>The prices on Toronto smells Bubble so much that feels dangerous to be near
that when it does pop.

There may be a bubble, but you could also argue from basic supply and demand
that until prices cause people to stay away from there and build new
communities in less dense regions, they are still not high enough.

------
tmd
> But – and here is the great sleight of hand – the Bank has seen fit not to
> include house prices in its measures of inflation. So, throughout the 90s
> and 00s, they could then “prove” inflation was low or moderate and interest
> rates meandered lower.

Aren't rents included in the CPI? I would be surprised if they weren't since
it's a pretty huge part of most people's monthly expenses.

Then it would either mean that the rents rose along with the house prices (in
which case this effect is included in the inflation figures) or that the
actual housing costs didn't increase -- it's just less profitable to buy and
more to rent.

~~~
rory
You are correct, per according to Consumer Price Indices: a brief guide by the
Office for National Statistics (directly indexed pdf, so google the name to
find), here are some selected examples of UK CPI factors and their weights.

Class: Weight

Food: 93

Alcoholic beverages: 20

Clothing: 59

Actual rentals for housing: 62

Electricity, gas and other fuels: 48

Purchase of vehicles: 38

Other recreational items, gardens and pets: 32

Education: 21

Restaurants and cafes: 88

These weights feel intuitively off to me, but I imagine costs like rent and
education look low because only a subset of the population is paying for them,
even if they are huge cost to members that cohort.

------
Overtonwindow
I think young people are not buying homes not from some money issue, but
rather a desire to not be tied to a single location. They want freedom of
movement, and I think a general desire to live in more urban/cosmopolitan
neighborhoods. Places where houses cost more than most people of any age group
can afford.

As for me for those who care: I'm 33 and bought my first home last year. I did
so not to start a family, but because I was finally able to get myself out
from under the thumb of crappy apartment corporations, their always-increasing
rents, rules, and the general nature of living with people all around me.

------
tdaltonc
There is something very simple that the government could do, that would
instantly transform the housing market (and it will never happen). The
government should stop securing >10 year mortgages. Banks wouldn't make these
loans if they weren't backed by the feds. And they inflate property prices.
The government has been slowly increasing the term length of mortgages that
they will securitize, pumping value in to homes, enabling people to lend
against that increased "equity". If the government stopped securing these
loans, residential land would get a lot cheaper.

~~~
JonFish85
The reason it would never happen is that, at least in the US, the government
has been in the business of trying to make owning a house accessible to people
who probably can't actually afford it. As much as people like to cast
aspersions on "the banks" for the housing bubble, the government deserves a
lot of blame as well for actively promoting the ideas that everyone should be
able to own their own home.

If they were to do what you propose, that would lead to some uncomfortable
circumstances: the only people who can afford a home are the people who come
from the middle class and up, which might not represent minorities in an
appropriate way. And in such a case this does not bode well for politicians
who are looking for votes.

------
jdlyga
In China, most young professionals end up buying apartments in these wonderful
apartment complex communities with beautiful gardens and plenty of shared
outdoor space. You don't see a lot of home ownership. So there is another way
of living that's good for families :)

------
carsongross
One thing I rarely see mentioned is that, with increasing uncertainty around
employment, and the likelyhood that I might be forced to move increasing, the
real interest rate on home purchases is much higher than the headline rate.

I have read that the average american moves every five years. Assuming they
are on a 30 year loan of $100,000 at, say, 3%, they have paid $14,202.61
interest on $11,093.64 of principal, for an effective interest rate of 120%.
120%, and that's at 3%!

This is due to the fact that mortgages are structured as constant payments,
which means early on they are mostly interest and only later is the principal
being paid down. If someone moves and rolls right into another 30 year loan,
they start the process all over again.

Our financial system appears to be an elaborate mechanism for moving people
into debt slavery. If you read "n The Law of Civilization and Decay" you can
see the same dynamics at work in the late Roman empire.

~~~
cpncrunch
Your calculations don't make sense. You're calculating interest on the % of
principal paid off, instead of the total principal.

Also, if you move to another house, there's nothing to say you have to get
another 30 year loan. You could get a 20 year loan instead. You could also
refinance your house with a new 30-year loan after 10 years.

~~~
carsongross
You can shorten the duration of loans, which is a great idea, but typically
only in big jumps: 15 or 10 year loans. You can also pay down the loan faster
or put up bigger down payments. Again, great stuff.

However, many people don't do this and end up spending a lifetime in the early
parts of a fixed-payment amortization schedule, where the realized interest
rates are very, very high.

~~~
maxerickson
The number you use for principle doesn't make any sense. People are buying
housing with a mortgage, not just the house (that is, living in a house for 5
years is worth more than $0).

It's very true that mortgages are expensive and it's unfortunate that we have
priced our housing market to 30 years of payments.

------
known
[http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2016/04/minimalism-brought-
free...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2016/04/minimalism-brought-freedom-joy/)

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xcasex
this is interesting, a house in sweden, even rural sweden runs at the cheapest
just shy of 1mil sek. that is to say, the lower end bracket of the middle
class can forget about owning a house.

