Housing Crisis

[Goodspeed]

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Don't buy housing, it's risky and tax inefficient. Invest in stonks instead.

The money you save from avoiding high rent costs easily makes up for that, at least here (and mortgage interest here seems similar to the UK). For us it's about a 10k a year difference, and we needed to "invest" about 5k to be able to buy. If I buy 5k worth of stonks, I wouldn't get 200% yearly ROI unless I went for meme stonks and got lucky. Seems more risky than buying a house ngl

You are still paying for your house even if you own it and have no mortgage. The equity in your home could be invested in something else. You could earn a 10% yield if you bought and held QYLD. Is that better than what you would save on rent from owning your own home? I'm not familiar with rental yields in the Netherlands but in London they are nowhere close to that high.

Well, yeah, using all of your savings to pay off the mortgage isn't worth it. But owning a house in general is, because you're avoiding the insane rental costs.

Liquid capital needed for buying a house was about 5000 at the time we bought which was in 2018 (it was 8000, but 3000 of that we got back from tax deductions so it cancels out). Investing that 5000 in stonks, going with 10% yearly ROI, would've yielded 500 in the first year.

Mortgage interest payments are about 350 a month. In NL, you are required by law to pay off some of your mortgage every month as well, coming to a total of about 650 per month in mortgage payments.
Renting a similar space would cost about 1200 a month.

By avoiding rental costs, we are saving 1200 - 350 = 850 a month, which is 10200 per year. Now, yes, about half of that we are forced to use to pay off the mortgage, so your opportunity cost argument applies. But the other 5k could be invested into stonks, which would yield 500 in the first year again, coming to a total of 10700 of savings per year, compared to renting.

That's where the 200% figure in my previous post came from. That's about the yearly ROI we would've needed in the stonk market for it to have been worth it to invest that initial 5000 into stonks rather than a house.

What's your LTV? What would your return have been if you applied equivalent leverage to stonks?

3000 of tax deductions is generous, we don't really get that here.

LTV was 100% at the time of buying. Right now it's about 60%. Applying that leverage (so, x1.6 then?) to any stonk buys would've yielded 800 instead of 500 which barely makes a dent considering the numbers above. But how does this work? Does applying LTV leverage to stonks somehow equalize the risk factor?

The core concept here is that yes, you're losing money paying off a loan, but alternatively you're losing much more money renting. Even if the LTV ends up at 150% because the market takes a dive, you're STILL saving money because rental costs would still be higher than mortgage interest.
Besides, if the housing market takes that much of a dive, I don't think stonks would be doing particularly great. Your leveraged buys aren't looking good either at that point.

All of this isn't even considering that if we went back to renting now, we would've made about a 1200% profit on the initial investment. In 3 years. But sure, that's not really normal. Housing has historically been a pretty safe bet though, and is certainly not more risky than your average stonk. Especially in a place like the Netherlands, where housing scarcity is pretty much guaranteed for the near future.

Yeah I mean the highest LTV I could get here is 80%, on a decent flat worth 500k my downpayment would be 100k. Then I would pay 12.5k stamp duty (15k from October 2021) and probably ~5k in transaction fees, so the upfront cash requirement would be up to 120k. I would also be taking on incremental monthly fees - building service charges, home insurance etc. So in total I'd be saving ~1k per month on rent, which is pretty miserable given 5x leverage. Plus pretty much all newbuild flats here are leasehold so I will need to pay ~10k-20k at some point to renew the lease term.

Conceptually your Rental Yield - Mortgage Interest is the amount you save from owning vs renting, but your opportunity cost needs to be based on an alternative which is like-for-like on leverage and risk. I could buy a 2x leveraged ETF on the S&P 500 and make an average of ~20k per year on my 120k investment. I'm currently selling spreads on RUT and making 5-10% per month. Sure these investment strategies would fuck me in the event of a recession but if the housing market were to take a dip the value of the equity in my home would also be wiped. The value of my house would only need to fall 20% for the equity in my home to drop to zero. This would be disastrous for me if I was forced to sell in the event that I also lost my job and couldn't meet the interest payments.

Liquidity is also a problem here, I could sell my entire investment portfolio today if I needed the cash, but selling my home and finding a new place to live could take months.

That's actually a fair point if you can't get a 100% LTV in the UK. That is possible here. If 80% was the max, we wouldn't (and couldn't) have bought a house. And yeah, obviously the numbers change if you can't get 100% LTV.
How does any young person buy a house in the UK unless they're rich? Wtf

TBF you could get a 95% LTV mortgage and access some government housing support schemes but these only apply to properties below a certain value so it's pretty much irrelevant for London

Is there a huge problem then, in the UK, of young people not being able to buy homes? Because it's a problem here, even with 100% LTV being perfectly possible and even standard at the time of buying.

[SoldieR]

Why shouldn't investing in property be profitable? I guess that depends more on the location. You guys may be talking about just the bare minimum to live, yes everyone should be able to afford that. If you're talking nicer areas where you pay for that location, why shouldn't that be profitable?

[Horsemen]

Show hidden quotes

Don't buy housing, it's risky and tax inefficient. Invest in stonks instead.

The money you save from avoiding high rent costs easily makes up for that, at least here (and mortgage interest here seems similar to the UK). For us it's about a 10k a year difference, and we needed to "invest" about 5k to be able to buy. If I buy 5k worth of stonks, I wouldn't get 200% yearly ROI unless I went for meme stonks and got lucky. Seems more risky than buying a house ngl

You are still paying for your house even if you own it and have no mortgage. The equity in your home could be invested in something else. You could earn a 10% yield if you bought and held QYLD. Is that better than what you would save on rent from owning your own home? I'm not familiar with rental yields in the Netherlands but in London they are nowhere close to that high.

Well, yeah, using all of your savings to pay off the mortgage isn't worth it. But owning a house in general is, because you're avoiding the insane rental costs.

Liquid capital needed for buying a house was about 5000 at the time we bought which was in 2018 (it was 8000, but 3000 of that we got back from tax deductions so it cancels out). Investing that 5000 in stonks, going with 10% yearly ROI, would've yielded 500 in the first year.

Mortgage interest payments are about 350 a month. In NL, you are required by law to pay off some of your mortgage every month as well, coming to a total of about 650 per month in mortgage payments.
Renting a similar space would cost about 1200 a month.

By avoiding rental costs, we are saving 1200 - 350 = 850 a month, which is 10200 per year. Now, yes, about half of that we are forced to use to pay off the mortgage, so your opportunity cost argument applies. But the other 5k could be invested into stonks, which would yield 500 in the first year again, coming to a total of 10700 of savings per year, compared to renting.

That's where the 200% figure in my previous post came from. That's about the yearly ROI we would've needed in the stonk market for it to have been worth it to invest that initial 5000 into stonks rather than a house.

What's your LTV? What would your return have been if you applied equivalent leverage to stonks?

3000 of tax deductions is generous, we don't really get that here.

LTV was 100% at the time of buying. Right now it's about 60%. Applying that leverage (so, x1.6 then?) to any stonk buys would've yielded 800 instead of 500 which barely makes a dent considering the numbers above. But how does this work? Does applying LTV leverage to stonks somehow equalize the risk factor?

The core concept here is that yes, you're losing money paying off a loan, but alternatively you're losing much more money renting. Even if the LTV ends up at 150% because the market takes a dive, you're STILL saving money because rental costs would still be higher than mortgage interest.
Besides, if the housing market takes that much of a dive, I don't think stonks would be doing particularly great. Your leveraged buys aren't looking good either at that point.

All of this isn't even considering that if we went back to renting now, we would've made about a 1200% profit on the initial investment. In 3 years. But sure, that's not really normal. Housing has historically been a pretty safe bet though, and is certainly not more risky than your average stonk. Especially in a place like the Netherlands, where housing scarcity is pretty much guaranteed for the near future.

Yeah I mean the highest LTV I could get here is 80%, on a decent flat worth 500k my downpayment would be 100k. Then I would pay 12.5k stamp duty (15k from October 2021) and probably ~5k in transaction fees, so the upfront cash requirement would be up to 120k. I would also be taking on incremental monthly fees - building service charges, home insurance etc. So in total I'd be saving ~1k per month on rent, which is pretty miserable given 5x leverage. Plus pretty much all newbuild flats here are leasehold so I will need to pay ~10k-20k at some point to renew the lease term.

Conceptually your Rental Yield - Mortgage Interest is the amount you save from owning vs renting, but your opportunity cost needs to be based on an alternative which is like-for-like on leverage and risk. I could buy a 2x leveraged ETF on the S&P 500 and make an average of ~20k per year on my 120k investment. I'm currently selling spreads on RUT and making 5-10% per month. Sure these investment strategies would fuck me in the event of a recession but if the housing market were to take a dip the value of the equity in my home would also be wiped. The value of my house would only need to fall 20% for the equity in my home to drop to zero. This would be disastrous for me if I was forced to sell in the event that I also lost my job and couldn't meet the interest payments.

Liquidity is also a problem here, I could sell my entire investment portfolio today if I needed the cash, but selling my home and finding a new place to live could take months.

That's actually a fair point if you can't get a 100% LTV in the UK. That is possible here. If 80% was the max, we wouldn't (and couldn't) have bought a house. And yeah, obviously the numbers change if you can't get 100% LTV.
How does any young person buy a house in the UK unless they're rich? Wtf

TBF you could get a 95% LTV mortgage and access some government housing support schemes but these only apply to properties below a certain value so it's pretty much irrelevant for London

Is there a huge problem then, in the UK, of young people not being able to buy homes? Because it's a problem here, even with 100% LTV being perfectly possible and even standard.

It's a 'problem' if you think young people are entitled to own homes.

[Riotcoke]

It actually seems like houses are even a good investment if you just rent them, the difference between mortgage and rent is so large that its profitable to do so.

You can't really buy a house to rent if it's your only property, at least in the UK. Banks just won't give you a buy-to-let mortgage if you don't have a house already.

Yeah also BTL properties in the UK are subject to higher dividends tax, higher capital gains tax and higher stamp duty compared to stocks and shares. You can't count on your property being occupied 100% of the time and as the landlord you are required to oversee and pay for all of the maintenance. Then there's talk of jacking up taxes on BTLs even further. It's pretty miserable and not worth the capital risk.

Yea I just stick £12k a year in my ISAs on some index instead of any of the government isas too.

[Goodspeed]

Why shouldn't investing in property be profitable?

The problem is that housing is necessary for everyone and with speculators buying up properties, prices increase for non-speculators as well.

Just buy mortgage bonds

[SoldieR]

Also the interest on long term loans is criminal (or should be)

[SoldieR]

Why shouldn't investing in property be profitable?

The problem is that housing is necessary for everyone and with speculators buying up properties, prices increase for non-speculators as well.

Just buy mortgage bonds

Ah so then you act as the bank and earn the interest on the mortgage? Is that how that works? Can anyone do that?

[RefluxSemantic]

@Horsemen going over the numbers you posted, doesnt that end up being a 100k investment with 10% ROI? That seems pretty decent, no?

No because I borrowed 400k on a 125k initial cash payment to make 10%.

I could invest 100k in QYLD and borrow 0 and still make 10%.

If the housing market fell 20% I would be fked, if QYLD fell 20% I would be fine.

If the housing market falls you'll lose more. But we're now completely ignoring the fact that you're also paying off that loan (that's a conservative 10k per year) and that historically the housing prices have increased continuously over longer periods of time.

Let's say you're taking 40 years to pay off that mortgage (that's pretty reasonable right?), and the housing market falls 20% after 10 years. You'll already have paid off 1/4th of your original loan, so a 20% drop in housing prices would be completely fine. We'd have a house worth 400k and a loan worth 300k, so we'd still have 100k cash. If after 10 years QYLD fell 20% you'd have 100k left.

[RefluxSemantic]

Why shouldn't investing in property be profitable? I guess that depends more on the location. You guys may be talking about just the bare minimum to live, yes everyone should be able to afford that. If you're talking nicer areas where you pay for that location, why shouldn't that be profitable?

What does it add to society? Profit at the expense of poor people, with no other tangible benefit, why is that acceptable in your eyes?

It's not very different from theft really. You take money out of the pockets of poor people and that's all you do. Why should theft not be profitable?

[SoldieR]

What poor people? I paid rent for 8 years, I was not poor, it was by choice. Why should anyone pay cheap rent to live near others that had to spend a lot to purchase in the same neighborhood?

[harcha]

Why shouldn't investing in property be profitable? I guess that depends more on the location. You guys may be talking about just the bare minimum to live, yes everyone should be able to afford that. If you're talking nicer areas where you pay for that location, why shouldn't that be profitable?

What does it add to society? Profit at the expense of poor people, with no other tangible benefit, why is that acceptable in your eyes?

It's not very different from theft really. You take money out of the pockets of poor people and that's all you do. Why should theft not be profitable?

housing for everyone should not mean equality above all, that's a weird take you have

[Dolan]

Why shouldn't investing in property be profitable? I guess that depends more on the location. You guys may be talking about just the bare minimum to live, yes everyone should be able to afford that. If you're talking nicer areas where you pay for that location, why shouldn't that be profitable?

Because "investing" is not real economy, it's capital economics.
It doesn't really create any real economic value, it tries to gain a financial advantage from price arbitrage or from leveraging economic scarcity of goods. It's speculation, it doesn't create economic value, it just inflates it.
The only capital investment that creates real economic value is greenfield investment. Or loans that are taken to actually create a business or to improve how a business operates to create more real economic value.

[Horsemen]

@Horsemen going over the numbers you posted, doesnt that end up being a 100k investment with 10% ROI? That seems pretty decent, no?

No because I borrowed 400k on a 125k initial cash payment to make 10%.

I could invest 100k in QYLD and borrow 0 and still make 10%.

If the housing market fell 20% I would be fked, if QYLD fell 20% I would be fine.

If the housing market falls you'll lose more. But we're now completely ignoring the fact that you're also paying off that loan (that's a conservative 10k per year) and that historically the housing prices have increased continuously over longer periods of time.

Let's say you're taking 40 years to pay off that mortgage (that's pretty reasonable right?), and the housing market falls 20% after 10 years. You'll already have paid off 1/4th of your original loan, so a 20% drop in housing prices would be completely fine. We'd have a house worth 400k and a loan worth 300k, so we'd still have 100k cash. If after 10 years QYLD fell 20% you'd have 100k left.

You are investing incremental capital every time you make principal payments on your mortgage. If I have paid off my mortgage then the actual investment in my home is 520k, not 120k. I paid 520k to save 2k per month on rent.

[RefluxSemantic]

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@Horsemen going over the numbers you posted, doesnt that end up being a 100k investment with 10% ROI? That seems pretty decent, no?

No because I borrowed 400k on a 125k initial cash payment to make 10%.

I could invest 100k in QYLD and borrow 0 and still make 10%.

If the housing market fell 20% I would be fked, if QYLD fell 20% I would be fine.

If the housing market falls you'll lose more. But we're now completely ignoring the fact that you're also paying off that loan (that's a conservative 10k per year) and that historically the housing prices have increased continuously over longer periods of time.

Let's say you're taking 40 years to pay off that mortgage (that's pretty reasonable right?), and the housing market falls 20% after 10 years. You'll already have paid off 1/4th of your original loan, so a 20% drop in housing prices would be completely fine. We'd have a house worth 400k and a loan worth 300k, so we'd still have 100k cash. If after 10 years QYLD fell 20% you'd have 100k left.

You are investing incremental capital every time you make principal payments on your mortgage. If I have paid off my mortgage then the actual investment in my home is 520k, not 120k. I paid 520k to save 2k per month on rent.

This is wrong. You paid 125k to end up with a home of 520k + saving 1k per month.

[Horsemen]

Why shouldn't investing in property be profitable? I guess that depends more on the location. You guys may be talking about just the bare minimum to live, yes everyone should be able to afford that. If you're talking nicer areas where you pay for that location, why shouldn't that be profitable?

Because "investing" is not real economy, it's capital economics.
It doesn't really create any real economic value, it tries to gain a financial advantage from price arbitrage or from leveraging economic scarcity of goods. It's speculation, it doesn't create economic value, it just inflates it.
The only capital investment that creates real economic value is greenfield investment. Or loans that are taken to actually create a business or to improve how a business operates to create more real economic value.

Wealth extraction through secondary investment is necessary to incentivise wealth creation from primary investment.

[Horsemen]

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@Horsemen going over the numbers you posted, doesnt that end up being a 100k investment with 10% ROI? That seems pretty decent, no?

No because I borrowed 400k on a 125k initial cash payment to make 10%.

I could invest 100k in QYLD and borrow 0 and still make 10%.

If the housing market fell 20% I would be fked, if QYLD fell 20% I would be fine.

If the housing market falls you'll lose more. But we're now completely ignoring the fact that you're also paying off that loan (that's a conservative 10k per year) and that historically the housing prices have increased continuously over longer periods of time.

Let's say you're taking 40 years to pay off that mortgage (that's pretty reasonable right?), and the housing market falls 20% after 10 years. You'll already have paid off 1/4th of your original loan, so a 20% drop in housing prices would be completely fine. We'd have a house worth 400k and a loan worth 300k, so we'd still have 100k cash. If after 10 years QYLD fell 20% you'd have 100k left.

You are investing incremental capital every time you make principal payments on your mortgage. If I have paid off my mortgage then the actual investment in my home is 520k, not 120k. I paid 520k to save 2k per month on rent.

This is wrong. You paid 125k to end up with a home of 520k + saving 1k per month.

So the 400k mortgage loan that I paid down didn’t come out of my pocket?

[RefluxSemantic]

Why shouldn't investing in property be profitable? I guess that depends more on the location. You guys may be talking about just the bare minimum to live, yes everyone should be able to afford that. If you're talking nicer areas where you pay for that location, why shouldn't that be profitable?

What does it add to society? Profit at the expense of poor people, with no other tangible benefit, why is that acceptable in your eyes?

It's not very different from theft really. You take money out of the pockets of poor people and that's all you do. Why should theft not be profitable?

housing for everyone should not mean equality above all, that's a weird take you have

that's not my take though. Why is it okay for people to earn money at other people's expenses? Because that's all it is. It's someone earning money by making another person pay more. It's essentially equivalent to this person not doing so, letting the person that'd otherwise be renting be able to pay normal prices and then stealing a few hundreds from that person every month. It ends up being the exact same situation.

[SoldieR]

Why shouldn't investing in property be profitable? I guess that depends more on the location. You guys may be talking about just the bare minimum to live, yes everyone should be able to afford that. If you're talking nicer areas where you pay for that location, why shouldn't that be profitable?

Because "investing" is not real economy, it's capital economics.
It doesn't really create any real economic value, it tries to gain a financial advantage from price arbitrage or from leveraging economic scarcity of goods. It's speculation, it doesn't create economic value, it just inflates it.
The only capital investment that creates real economic value is greenfield investment. Or loans that are taken to actually create a business or to improve how a business operates to create more real economic value.

Isn't everything priced on scarcity? Supply and demand. Now whether it is good for the world or whatever, I'm not arguing that, I don't study that type of stuff.

[Dolan]

What poor people? I paid rent for 8 years, I was not poor, it was by choice. Why should anyone pay cheap rent to live near others that had to spend a lot to purchase in the same neighborhood?

Because people who own multiple houses are hoarders of economic goods. They create real estate scarcity, which distorts the market. When you have multiple houses to rent, there's not much pressure on you to lower prices, unless there's a major financial crash and there are almost zero incentives to move in the area and work/live there. So you are basically part of a cartel which controls rent prices and can afford to sit on your real estate bank and wait for some desperate enough person who needs to move there so that you can ask a rent that increases their living costs by a lot.

This artificially increased living cost is then passed on to an employer, another business which needs to pay wages that are high enough for someone to be willing to work for them and afford rent too. Even that's an idealistic way of looking at it, because often employers don't really care and it's workers who have to bear higher rent costs.

So what real estate hoarding does here is increases the profit of some speculators to the detriment of workers and businesses that are actually producing real economic goods and services. Whereas landlords don't produce anything of economic value, they just sit on their property bank and speculate.

[Dolan]

Isn't everything priced on scarcity? Supply and demand. Now whether it is good for the world or whatever, I'm not arguing that, I don't study that type of stuff.

Sure, but when someone is artificially creating scarcity in order to speculate it and make money off of it, then it's basically like gaining from someone else's misfortune, profiting from it. And actively working to create that situation in which you profit from their lack of capital to get their own place.

[SoldieR]

Show hidden quotes

Why shouldn't investing in property be profitable? I guess that depends more on the location. You guys may be talking about just the bare minimum to live, yes everyone should be able to afford that. If you're talking nicer areas where you pay for that location, why shouldn't that be profitable?

What does it add to society? Profit at the expense of poor people, with no other tangible benefit, why is that acceptable in your eyes?

It's not very different from theft really. You take money out of the pockets of poor people and that's all you do. Why should theft not be profitable?

housing for everyone should not mean equality above all, that's a weird take you have

that's not my take though. Why is it okay for people to earn money at other people's expenses? Because that's all it is. It's someone earning money by making another person pay more. It's essentially equivalent to this person not doing so, letting the person that'd otherwise be renting be able to pay normal prices and then stealing a few hundreds from that person every month. It ends up being the exact same situation.

In that sense mortgage is no different. I pay mortgage plus interest every month, they are stealing, right? If I take 30 years to pay off my mortgage then I end up paying nearly double what I borrowed. Not everything can be not for profit. People need to make money

[SoldieR]

Isn't everything priced on scarcity? Supply and demand. Now whether it is good for the world or whatever, I'm not arguing that, I don't study that type of stuff.

Sure, but when someone is artificially creating scarcity in order to speculate it and make money off of it, then it's basically like gaining from someone else's misfortune, profiting from it. And actively working to create that situation in which you profit from their lack of capital to get their own place.

So what do you want tho? Everyone to be given a home to start off with? People work hard to earn money and if they can buy land that others value but don't yet have a lump sum to buy, then I believe they have all the right to offer that land for whatever price others are WILLING to pay.

[RefluxSemantic]

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@Horsemen going over the numbers you posted, doesnt that end up being a 100k investment with 10% ROI? That seems pretty decent, no?

No because I borrowed 400k on a 125k initial cash payment to make 10%.

I could invest 100k in QYLD and borrow 0 and still make 10%.

If the housing market fell 20% I would be fked, if QYLD fell 20% I would be fine.

If the housing market falls you'll lose more. But we're now completely ignoring the fact that you're also paying off that loan (that's a conservative 10k per year) and that historically the housing prices have increased continuously over longer periods of time.

Let's say you're taking 40 years to pay off that mortgage (that's pretty reasonable right?), and the housing market falls 20% after 10 years. You'll already have paid off 1/4th of your original loan, so a 20% drop in housing prices would be completely fine. We'd have a house worth 400k and a loan worth 300k, so we'd still have 100k cash. If after 10 years QYLD fell 20% you'd have 100k left.

You are investing incremental capital every time you make principal payments on your mortgage. If I have paid off my mortgage then the actual investment in my home is 520k, not 120k. I paid 520k to save 2k per month on rent.

This is wrong. You paid 125k to end up with a home of 520k + saving 1k per month.

So the 400k mortgage loan that I paid down didn’t come out of my pocket?

It did come out of your pocket, but if you were renting the same amount of money would've been spend on rent. You're ignoring the fact that the 'investment' also covers your living expenses.

[Horsemen]

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@Horsemen going over the numbers you posted, doesnt that end up being a 100k investment with 10% ROI? That seems pretty decent, no?

No because I borrowed 400k on a 125k initial cash payment to make 10%.

I could invest 100k in QYLD and borrow 0 and still make 10%.

If the housing market fell 20% I would be fked, if QYLD fell 20% I would be fine.

If the housing market falls you'll lose more. But we're now completely ignoring the fact that you're also paying off that loan (that's a conservative 10k per year) and that historically the housing prices have increased continuously over longer periods of time.

Let's say you're taking 40 years to pay off that mortgage (that's pretty reasonable right?), and the housing market falls 20% after 10 years. You'll already have paid off 1/4th of your original loan, so a 20% drop in housing prices would be completely fine. We'd have a house worth 400k and a loan worth 300k, so we'd still have 100k cash. If after 10 years QYLD fell 20% you'd have 100k left.

You are investing incremental capital every time you make principal payments on your mortgage. If I have paid off my mortgage then the actual investment in my home is 520k, not 120k. I paid 520k to save 2k per month on rent.

This is wrong. You paid 125k to end up with a home of 520k + saving 1k per month.

So the 400k mortgage loan that I paid down didn’t come out of my pocket?

It did come out of your pocket, but if you were renting the same amount of money would've been spend on rent. You're ignoring the fact that the 'investment' also covers your living expenses.

The 1k saving is assuming the mortgage is interest only. If I also repay principal then on a 25 year mortgage I don’t make any savings.

[Dolan]

Isn't everything priced on scarcity? Supply and demand. Now whether it is good for the world or whatever, I'm not arguing that, I don't study that type of stuff.

Sure, but when someone is artificially creating scarcity in order to speculate it and make money off of it, then it's basically like gaining from someone else's misfortune, profiting from it. And actively working to create that situation in which you profit from their lack of capital to get their own place.

So what do you want tho? Everyone to be given a home to start off with? People work hard to earn money and if they can buy land that others value but don't yet have a lump sum to buy, then I believe they have all the right to offer that land for whatever price others are WILLING to pay.

I wasn't talking about selling and buying, but I get how this point is connected, in the sense that it's part of how the free market works that prices get set by supply and demand dynamics.
The problem is when someone with a lot of capital buys up big chunks of land or multiple houses and just sits on them, asking for high renting or selling prices. If he can afford to do that, there's nothing you can do, and others will follow suit, because if they undercut other sellers/landlords, then they lose money themselves. Because it's more profitable to wait and squeeze the renters or buyers, make them bear the higher asking prices. It's a seller's market, basically. There's no real pressure on these owners to adjust their prices anywhere lower, as long as they can afford waiting until someone takes on all the financial risks of either buying or all the high costs of renting. And what economic value did these owners create? None. And instead they have made things worse for those employees and businesses that actually create real economic value and need to pay these property owners and landlords huge amounts of money just because they're hoarding those properties.