Real Estate /
Poland's apartment prices continue to fall [1844]
Good move if you can afford it.
I must admit - it's hard to see the wood for the trees. When you make a 2x overpayment and see your mortgage go down by not very much (compared to the actual payment each month), it's like "meh, what's the point?". But I want to buy a house in 5 years - and the only way that's going to happen is by having a decent deposit. Pain today, gain tomorrow I guess.
From what I've read you work hard, and so do I. But some, e.g. state school teachers, nurses, etc, earn so little that their only option is to borrow at usurous rates from banks, or worse. For me, a shipload of bank CEOs going down is a good day. (OK, I'm a naive old socialist!)
State school teachers are an interesting bunch. There's certainly no excuse for language teachers to struggle financially (I know one who runs her own private school as well as working the mandatory 20 45-minute classes in school - she's raking it in) - but on the other hand, it's easy to see how unpopular subject teachers can struggle, especially the ones that have no demand for private lessons.
But one interesting thing for me - is the way that the culture here was to take an absolutely massive mortgage on a huge property that you can barely afford. I used to teach one guy who was very heavily involved in retail mortgages, and he said that they were forever getting people applying for mortgages way beyond their means - and when they were asked "how do you intend to pay for it?" - they always said "oh, we'll earn more in future". Insanity.
