Rapture and the property market
May. 27th, 2011 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hnpccSo in the aftermath of Camping's second failed go (1994?) at predicting the end times, this article ("What would the Rapture do to Real Estate Prices?") made me giggle. A lot.
But of course. In Melbourne at least a prime concern of the Rapture would actually be house prices. Will this finally cause the housing bubble to collapse?
Personally I remain unconvinced. Using the LaHaye version of the Rapture (rather than Camping's tiny cult version which would have bugger-all impact on anything actually) I thought I'd have a look at how a LaHaye rapture would possibly affect Melbourne property prices.
The key features of a LaHaye Rapture are:
1. All children under 12 (i.e. without hairy bits) vanish.
2. All Real True Christians, which in this case can loosely be defined as evangelical and pentecostal Christians with a couple of other "righteous" people, vanish.
3. The rest of us are Left Behind.
LaHaye estimates 50% of Americans would vanish. In Melbourne approximately 573,285 children aged 12 or under (I'm being generous) would vanish out of a total population of 3,366,542. So that's 17% of the population gone right there.
When you get into religion though, it gets a bit quieter. Only 44,922 people identifed as either Churches of Christ, Pentecostal or Other Protestant (I'm being generous again). Some of those are almost certainly going to overlap with the children, but hey, while I'm here let's just assume that they're all adults. So now we're up to 618,207 individuals vanished out of Melbourne, or 18% of the population.
Rounding up to 20%, yes that probably would affect property prices to some degree. But then again, the vast majority of these people vanishing are aged under 12. That would affect a lot of things - I imagine that mental health services would be in meltdown for starters - but given that the 12 and under age group don't usually own property, and a large number of their parents won't have vanished (being heathen and all)... well I'm just not sure that a 1% loss of population would have as great an impact as you'd think. I'm not quite anal enough to go into all the ABS data by local government region, but I'm sure that some suburbs (St Kilda, Elsternwick, Brunswick, Coburg, Broadmeadows) would be much more lightly affected than other suburbs (Doncaster, Templestowe, Endeavour Hills), meaning that while some suburbs would suddenly have quite a few properties about to come on the market others would remain as tight as they are now. This might at least help the rental market somewhat, particularly in that interim period where people were trying to work out whether you could declare someone legally dead who'd just blipped into thin air. (Yes of course this would happen... eventually. Well probably, unless we were all majorly distracted by the plagues etc that would be going on at that point. Now that would affect Melbourne property prices, not least because it would also affect one quarter of the world's population according to LaHaye.)
The inner suburbs would be likely to hold value, if not actually increase, as people attempted to move closer to work to the few vacant houses. The outer suburbs... would probably mostly stay put for a bit, or drop slightly and then recover.
What might have a bigger impact would be the number of parents who, having suffered complete mental breakdown, are now unable to work and as a result are losing their houses. Then again I think that's more likely to lead to people storming the banks and/or refusing to vacate than anything else. Surely even the banks would pursue a compassionate policy in the wake of all the world's children vanishing. Even bankers have children.
(Then of course there would be all these primary schools, many in prime locations, that could now be sold off for development if we still did have a housing shortage. Not to mention all the daycare centres that could be converted back into housing (or more likely into mental health centres). Even in a post-Rapture world I can't see a developer passing up that as an opportunity. Seven years left to make money? Let it all roll in!)
Hm. I guess the short version of this is: if Camping (or anyone else) ever manages to get a prediction of the Rapture date correct, Melbourne is not a good place to attempt to loot. Try the Midwest US. Even though they have more guns handy, they also have a lot more vanished people. And you should be able to pick up some left behind guns if needed from them.
I have to admit my overwhelming impression of Camping is that he's terrified of death and is hoping to be blipped into thin air before he has to face it. Pity he has followers, many of whom have children, who believe in him wholeheartedly. Or, quite possibly, "believed" in him. I really wish some of these people would read the damn book they profess to believe in and take to heart the verses about not knowing the hour or the day. It'd make it so much easier if they'd try to live in the world they're in, after all.
But of course. In Melbourne at least a prime concern of the Rapture would actually be house prices. Will this finally cause the housing bubble to collapse?
Personally I remain unconvinced. Using the LaHaye version of the Rapture (rather than Camping's tiny cult version which would have bugger-all impact on anything actually) I thought I'd have a look at how a LaHaye rapture would possibly affect Melbourne property prices.
The key features of a LaHaye Rapture are:
1. All children under 12 (i.e. without hairy bits) vanish.
2. All Real True Christians, which in this case can loosely be defined as evangelical and pentecostal Christians with a couple of other "righteous" people, vanish.
3. The rest of us are Left Behind.
LaHaye estimates 50% of Americans would vanish. In Melbourne approximately 573,285 children aged 12 or under (I'm being generous) would vanish out of a total population of 3,366,542. So that's 17% of the population gone right there.
When you get into religion though, it gets a bit quieter. Only 44,922 people identifed as either Churches of Christ, Pentecostal or Other Protestant (I'm being generous again). Some of those are almost certainly going to overlap with the children, but hey, while I'm here let's just assume that they're all adults. So now we're up to 618,207 individuals vanished out of Melbourne, or 18% of the population.
Rounding up to 20%, yes that probably would affect property prices to some degree. But then again, the vast majority of these people vanishing are aged under 12. That would affect a lot of things - I imagine that mental health services would be in meltdown for starters - but given that the 12 and under age group don't usually own property, and a large number of their parents won't have vanished (being heathen and all)... well I'm just not sure that a 1% loss of population would have as great an impact as you'd think. I'm not quite anal enough to go into all the ABS data by local government region, but I'm sure that some suburbs (St Kilda, Elsternwick, Brunswick, Coburg, Broadmeadows) would be much more lightly affected than other suburbs (Doncaster, Templestowe, Endeavour Hills), meaning that while some suburbs would suddenly have quite a few properties about to come on the market others would remain as tight as they are now. This might at least help the rental market somewhat, particularly in that interim period where people were trying to work out whether you could declare someone legally dead who'd just blipped into thin air. (Yes of course this would happen... eventually. Well probably, unless we were all majorly distracted by the plagues etc that would be going on at that point. Now that would affect Melbourne property prices, not least because it would also affect one quarter of the world's population according to LaHaye.)
The inner suburbs would be likely to hold value, if not actually increase, as people attempted to move closer to work to the few vacant houses. The outer suburbs... would probably mostly stay put for a bit, or drop slightly and then recover.
What might have a bigger impact would be the number of parents who, having suffered complete mental breakdown, are now unable to work and as a result are losing their houses. Then again I think that's more likely to lead to people storming the banks and/or refusing to vacate than anything else. Surely even the banks would pursue a compassionate policy in the wake of all the world's children vanishing. Even bankers have children.
(Then of course there would be all these primary schools, many in prime locations, that could now be sold off for development if we still did have a housing shortage. Not to mention all the daycare centres that could be converted back into housing (or more likely into mental health centres). Even in a post-Rapture world I can't see a developer passing up that as an opportunity. Seven years left to make money? Let it all roll in!)
Hm. I guess the short version of this is: if Camping (or anyone else) ever manages to get a prediction of the Rapture date correct, Melbourne is not a good place to attempt to loot. Try the Midwest US. Even though they have more guns handy, they also have a lot more vanished people. And you should be able to pick up some left behind guns if needed from them.
I have to admit my overwhelming impression of Camping is that he's terrified of death and is hoping to be blipped into thin air before he has to face it. Pity he has followers, many of whom have children, who believe in him wholeheartedly. Or, quite possibly, "believed" in him. I really wish some of these people would read the damn book they profess to believe in and take to heart the verses about not knowing the hour or the day. It'd make it so much easier if they'd try to live in the world they're in, after all.
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 09:00 am (UTC)Good point.
I think the disappearance of all children would at least force developers to rethink their plans - no more 4br brick veneers touching the boundary fence on all sides, it'd be townhouses and highrises everywhere. And yes, inner-city properties would increase in value as all the professional couples (who haven't had breakdowns due to losing their children) can now live out their "if we didn't have kids" alternate life plans. Restaurants, evening showings at cinemas and other entertainments would have a surge in patronage while family venues relying on school holidays would shut down (and be replaces with more townhouses).
no subject
Date: 2011-05-27 12:13 pm (UTC)Not sure that there'd be a surge in night life, at least not for a while. Cinemas and theatre maybe as people tried to escape despair. Pubs and clubs? Possibly. It always amazes me how LaHaye (and Jenkins) have so little imagination about this world they've created - in their world nothing changes, the disappearance of every child on the planet effectively changes nothing. There's some car crashes, and plane crashes, and naturally everyone in the US notices the disappearance of all the RTCs - and they cannot see that (a) this world would be incredibly bleak and (b) the US is kind of weird in the number of RTCs it has. I doubt anyone in Melbourne would even notice the disappearance of adults - in the immediate post-disappearance confusion it'd be assumed that they'd gone to family interstate or in rural areas or run for the hills or left their cold, empty houses because the pain was too great. I also tend to think the murder-suicide rate would skyrocket, as relationships collapsed under the strain and peole started blaming each other for the loss of their children.
But yeah, the whole emphasis on property prices made me giggle a lot.