• Iconoclast@feddit.uk
      282·
      7 days ago

      To be fair, you too can own a house if you’re willing to settle for what the average house in Russia is like. In-fact you can often get the house for free and only have to pay for the plot.

      • balsoft@lemmy.mlEnglish
        184·
        7 days ago

        That’s just not true. Most permanently inhabited houses/apartments in Russia are quite well-built and well-insulated because otherwise you wouldn’t make it through the winter. They may be ugly as fuck but you can’t get anything similarly well-built in western europe for less than 100k in the middle of nowhere, and most people can’t really afford that (how are you going to pay the mortgage if you are in the middle of nowhere?)

        If you settle for the “european-quality” home or apartment with more cracks than walls and a slightly leaky roof, sure, you can probably afford it (which I actually plan to do at some point). But most people prefer to rent than to live in a place like that.

        • yucandu@lemmy.world
          6·
          6 days ago

          Most permanently inhabited houses/apartments in Russia are quite well-built and well-insulated because otherwise you wouldn’t make it through the winter

          No they’re not. They’re cold as fuck and heated by a single gas or coal stove in the middle of one room. They can’t afford insulation, and good building materials can’t be shipped to the middle of nowhere.

          • balsoft@lemmy.mlEnglish
            82·
            6 days ago

            Dude you are talking out of your ass. I have lived in plenty of apartments and houses in middle of nowhere Russia and on average they’re much better built and insulated than even modern houses and apartments in Spain or France (can’t speak for Germany). Besides, almost all apartment blocks even in tiny towns have central heating and not an individual stove, just for efficiency reasons.

            Because, once again, you will fucking freeze to death if your house is not well-insulated and it’s -35 outside.

              • balsoft@lemmy.mlEnglish
                5·
                6 days ago

                Most housing units in Russia are apartments in “Khruschevkas”, built long after Stalin. They look really ugly, and the quality is not amazing but it’s actually pretty good if you renovate it properly. Speaking to a couple people who worked construction during the period (friends of my parents), both of them were quite happy with the salary and benefits back then, and they still live in Khruschevkas they helped to build themselves so that’s kinda nice.

                BTW, “Stalinkas” (apartment blocks built for communal living during Stalin’s time) are actually revered as literally the best housing options in both Moscow and St Petersburg due to thick walls, high ceilings, good floor planning and high-quality building materials. I’m not pro-Stalin, I think he’s the second worst leader of USSR (after Gorbachev). That said the quality of construction was actually pretty good back then, even though there may have been some near-slave-level labor used to build them.

            • yucandu@lemmy.world
              25·
              6 days ago

              Why have you lived in plenty of apartments and houses in middle of nowhere Russia? Even average Russians haven’t lived in plenty of places.

              • balsoft@lemmy.mlEnglish
                92·
                6 days ago

                I was born & grew up in a small town in Russia (we moved apartments twice during that time), moved to Moscow to study (had to move apartments there as well), then spent a year in St. Petersburg, then came back to a small village next to my hometown where I lived in my grandparent’s house and started to build my own. (in the end I had to flee the country when the government started to crack down on any opposition)

                It’s not an unreasonable amount of times to move.

          • a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world
            1·
            6 days ago

            That isn’t true at all. I’m not from the area, but I was watching a guy recently discussed the town he lived in. It was a series of giant apartment complexes from long ago.

            They’re insulated from the ground by standing on stilts because they have to be otherwise they’d melt the permafrost and sink. They also have centralized heating that gets pumped each of the buildings.

            It’s a giant-ass country man, there’s probably lots of ways to live. I’m not going to claim all of them are great but they clearly don’t all resemble what you’re talking about.

        • Iconoclast@feddit.uk
          1·
          5 days ago

          I didn’t claim it’s badly built - but it’s typically unmaintained, with outdated doors and windows that leak heat and draft, old plumbing that’s prone to leaks and low pressure, dangerous electrics that haven’t been updated in decades, unhealthy old building materials that off-gas or contain asbestos or other hazards, and almost definitely poor air quality due to mold, moisture problems, and inadequate ventilation. We have houses like that in Finland too - and rather often they’re abandoned and/or for sale basically for the price of the plot, because the cost of bringing them up to modern standards exceeds what anyone is willing to pay for the building itself.

          I’m not saying all houses in Russia are like that but throw a dart on a map of Russia and go see the houses there and it’s going to be one of these ones.

      • Alex@lemmy.ml
        5·
        7 days ago

        My old bosses dacha sounded nice until he pointed out how cold it could get in the winter as it was essentially only heated by a stove. I guess it’s nice for a summer getaway from the big city - a bit better than a tent.

  • atro_city@fedia.io
    211·
    6 days ago

    How do so many people own a home? There’s no way that’s right. How is this being counted? Is this a percentage of adults? Does it take the number of home owners and divide it by the number of adults in the country? Does it count adult children living in their parents homes as “owners”?

    I need to see some methodology.

  • cholesterol@lemmy.worldEnglish
    141·
    7 days ago

    That (ai?) image of a ‘European’ home doesn’t give me great confidence in the map. I live in a communally owned, non-profit apartment complex which is common where I’m from. So I’m guessing that counts toward red in this map.

  • sasquash@sopuli.xyz
    4·
    7 days ago

    cries in swiss. I think it’s even lower than that. In order to buy a home for 1 million you need 200k equity and an income of 180k to get the credit. And a million swiss franc (1.2 million dollar) is not even a lot…

  • Sibbo@sopuli.xyz
    42·
    7 days ago

    We actually decided against buying a home, because we are still young and our family is still growing, so we don’t know what we need in ten years from now. Also, we know that our needs will change once the kids have moved out, so getting something permanent (or at least less flexible) doesn’t make sense right now. Of course, a bought home can also be sold again so it’s not completely permanent, but it’s much more easy to switch to a different rental. And then, it seems like ETFs are a potentially better investment than real estate right now, so why put money into real estate?

    All that being said, we are living in a “right to dwell” system right now that is different from rental in that you can’t be evicted as long as you pay rent. So the owner of the building can’t just throw you out for other reasons. So it’s different from a normal rental where the landlord basically can make up all kinds of reasons to get you out.

    • Alex@lemmy.ml
      3·
      7 days ago

      I guess it depends if you have a maximum number of kids your planning on. But a family of four is pretty likely to stay put for at least 10 years which should be long enough to iron out any short term fluctuations in the market. I’m not overly worried by the slight dip in valuation since I bought my last house because a) I have somewhere for my family to live that is secure and b) whenever we do eventually sell the capital will cover the next house.

  • yucandu@lemmy.world
    44·
    6 days ago

    Ah sweet I love these kinds of maps that show which countries are better than others!

    Now do income inequality, life expectancy, and democracy.