[HN Gopher] If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a...
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If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund
Author : zpeti
Score : 552 points
Date : 2021-06-09 14:20 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| mrverify wrote:
| Its worse than that. As a tenant, you cannot have people who are
| not on the lease stay long term without them going through a
| background check. This means that you may end up increasing the
| homelessness of relatives with temporary financial issues and
| also isolating potential mates with financial issues from living
| with their significant others until married, forcing the better
| financially equipped mate to take a hit to their credit/rent risk
| and lose the ability to rent in a better area. Also, you are
| severely limited in the things you can do at leased residences.
| Garden? Maybe not if its in the lease.
| fb13 wrote:
| It needs to be significantly easier to buy a first house than a
| second house. Getting a first mortgage is "easy" until you
| factor in the "mortgage insurance" scam. Rent seeking should
| not be such an appealing option to make money. The result is a
| bunch of scummy landlords, essentially utilizing the poors to
| "keep down" the other poors through rent exploitation.
| Basically the "upper middle" class is the gatekeeper preventing
| lower classes from having social mobility by maximizing rent
| exploitation. It's a great system because it prevents the real
| upper classes from having to get their hands dirty.
| alert0 wrote:
| Rent control makes landlords very hesitant to add new people to
| a lease. Otherwise the unit can just be passed from friend to
| friend and never get back to market.
| fb13 wrote:
| > Otherwise the unit can just be passed from friend to friend
| and never get back to market.
|
| I'm not sure how this is unfair. Considering the way capital
| gains are taxed after the sale it seems like the
| grandfathered-in rent controls are just a lever at the
| opposite end of the spectrum. But of course, we don't want to
| give any levers to the poors so it has to go.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| We can want to support the poor and also recognize that
| prior attempts have unintended consequences or are
| ineffective. In this case rent control seems to reduce
| housing stock. The solution may be building more units so
| regulation should focus on that.
| cwkoss wrote:
| We should increase (double?) property taxes on single-family
| residences owned by corporations.
|
| These shifts in the housing market are destroying the middle
| class as an increasing number of Americans will never own any
| equity in their residences over their lifetimes.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Affordable, widely accessible:
|
| - TVs, video game systems, smartphones - Fast food, snacks -
| Clothing, fashion accessories
|
| Unaffordable, hard to find:
|
| - Houses - Healthy food - Cars - Ammo
|
| Bread and circuses.
| cpach wrote:
| One can read the linked article here: https://archive.ph/aBK10
| tptacek wrote:
| As has been pointed out repeatedly, this has the net effect
| transferring homes from owners to renters, which does not
| directly impact access or affordability; the housing stock
| remains available.
| stagger87 wrote:
| Do you think people should be able to buy affordable homes?
| Isn't affordability affected when you are competing with
| companies with deep pockets? When those companies need ROI do
| you think they will prioritize housing affordability over
| profitability?
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm not sure how much I care about whether people own or
| rent. The politics of the place I live are controlled by
| owners and are renter-hostile; I don't think increasing the
| rental stock is a bad thing, and am inclined to believe ---
| without making any value judgement about REITs and Blackrock
| ---- that it's probably a net positive.
|
| The compulsion to own homes and tie people's finances to the
| real estate market is a US idiosyncrasy. It's not, for
| instance, how they do it in much of Europe.
| [deleted]
| stagger87 wrote:
| Increasing the rental stock in an area of low rental units
| is one thing, but is not what the article is discussing.
| I'm not sure the relevance of the European housing market.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't understand the moral valence of an imbalance (in
| any sense) between owner-occupied and rented housing.
| Could you help me see where you're coming from here?
|
| I bring up Europe just to observe that it's not a settled
| norm, even in rich western societies, that homeownership
| is somehow better or prosocial.
| stagger87 wrote:
| > Could you help me see where you're coming from here?
|
| I like affordable housing and think everyone should be
| entitled to it. Whether renting or to own.
| tptacek wrote:
| Right, but this doesn't change that; in fact, increased
| rental stock probably increases affordability, both
| directly and in a bunch of knock-on ways involving zoning
| and variance decisions.
| stagger87 wrote:
| The article is about investment companies purchasing
| houses at a premium driving up the cost of ownership and
| renting. The article provides examples of this, not just
| speculation. People are seeing this happen in their
| communities, including my own, so I don't think it's
| enough to say "probably increases affordability". If you
| weren't able to read the article because of the paywall,
| see link below.
|
| https://archive.is/aBK10
| tptacek wrote:
| I've read the article (again) and I don't see it
| providing examples of these firms having a significant
| impact on rent; if I then go to one of the large firms
| they link to (Invitation Homes) and look at their rental
| stock in my area, it's not only broadly in line with what
| home rental prices are, but the numbers are roughly where
| they were 5 years ago, too.
| stagger87 wrote:
| This article is linked in the main article which talks
| about the rising rental rates. Invitation homes talked
| about in the article is owned by Blackrock.
|
| https://archive.is/JgQwb
|
| That is incredible that your rental prices have remained
| roughly the same over the last 5 years. Invitation homes
| is also in my area (PNW) and yes, checking their website,
| their rates are in line with other rates in the area...
| except... these are rates which have grown 10% YOY for
| the past 8 years. It's the same story for the cost of
| homes. I sold my home this year for 50% more than what I
| paid for it exactly 4 years ago. Rent for homes in that
| neighborhood (identical homes) went from 1700 to 2700
| (60%) in that same timeframe.
|
| If anything, hopefully we can realize that we live in
| drastically different housing markets and that affects
| our opinions on the subject.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| To my mind that backs his thesis. External factors are
| driving home prices in your area to increase and
| similarly not in his neighborhood. The existence of a
| blackrock investment isn't casually linked to those
| prices (at least not in a simple form).
| rdtwo wrote:
| Anyone know how to contact them directly and sell without an
| agent. Boy that would be easy
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Shouldn't we do something to curb institutions making
| "investments" that do nothing productive except pump the bubble?
| Dont these institutions have am obligation to act responsibly?
| adflux wrote:
| This is what happens when you keep printing money and keep
| mortgage rates incredibly low.
|
| All that money's gotta go somewhere. Hey, at least the CPI isn't
| going up right? Its only the most expensive thing in most
| people's lives that has doubled in cost in about 10 years. Same
| thing for stock prices, and slowly other commodity prices are
| catching up as well.
|
| Non-homeowners are being shafted by this fed/ecb policy. Every
| year the gap between poor and rich grows larger as a result.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Not arguing with you, but are you suggesting that raising
| mortgage rates and/or stopping the printing of money will get
| rid of the Blackrocks and make housing affordable to the
| working class?
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| The argument might be that in that event, housing becomes
| less attractive as an investment to the Blackrocks of the
| world, and they have alternative lower risk sources of return
| in a higher interest rate environment?
| mywittyname wrote:
| I doubt they are getting mortgages on these properties if they
| are overpaying the half.
|
| More likely is that they have no where else to part their money
| anymore.
| [deleted]
| alert0 wrote:
| Right now interest rates are low, they cannot use them as a
| tool in a crisis, for this reason they are printing money to
| lower the overall debt obligation of the US. Inflating away our
| debt. This will eventually lead to inflation at which point the
| interest rates will rise again (prediction, at the end of the
| decade). This is the correct play for where we are in the long
| term debt cycle. In my opinion, this is happening a little
| earlier than it should, but it might just be a sneak preview
| provided by the pandemic.
|
| Stock prices are rising because the interest rates are so low.
| A ton of institutional money that was in bonds is now out
| seeking yield. This moves a ton of money into stocks and, as we
| see in the article, real estate.
|
| The labor class has been shafted for years by the US dollar
| being the global reserve currency, causing us to run persistent
| trade deficits. This has off-shored manufacturing and gutted
| our capabilities. If the US weakens the dollar and rebuilds the
| manufacturing base, which they appear to be trying to do with
| the investment in semiconductors, I think we will be in a much
| better position. I am happy with the stimulus because it does
| both, weaken the dollar and invest in US capabilities. We just
| need to make sure it flows to the correct places.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Right now interest rates are low, they cannot use them as a
| tool in a
|
| No, interest rate are low _because_ they _are using them as a
| tool in a crisis_.
| gowld wrote:
| They were _already used_ as a tool, and so can 't be used
| further (due to irrational fears of nominally negative
| interest rates). Printing money is effectively equivalent
| to lowering rates.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| "Printing money" isn't a literal description, its a
| metaphor for a bunch of other "loose money" monetary
| policy choices which increase the money supply including,
| not alternative to, maintaining low interest rate targets
| (in fact, most of the other actions are the means by
| which actual rates are kept near the target rates, rather
| than actions in addition to acheiving rate targets),
| which is an ongoing intervention.
| deelowe wrote:
| They were trending low before COVID. Western nations are
| simply trying to stave off deflation as more people move
| into retirement and less have kids.
| xhrpost wrote:
| > for this reason they are printing money to lower the
| overall debt obligation of the US
|
| Except the way the US does it, the Treasury issues debt and
| then the Fed prints to buy the debt. So when we print $1T, we
| also take on $1T in debt. I know you mean lowering through
| inflation but as long as it's done this way I don't see how
| it matters. If the dollar looses 50%, we then need to issue
| $2T in debt and print $2T the next time.
| mattnewton wrote:
| The original trillion in debt can be paid back with 50%
| "cheaper" dollars though, right? That's the "trick" as I
| understand it.
| fb13 wrote:
| > We just need to make sure it flows to the correct places.
|
| That's the key, and also something that's unsolved. History
| shows that a lot of the money will be squandered in
| increasing "clever" ways, and it may take until the end of
| the decade before the public even realizes that it happened.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Its only the most expensive thing in most people's lives
|
| For homeowners, it is the most expensive thing, but homeowners
| are winning on it because they get the value of the asset
| appreciating.
|
| For non-homeowners, the reason CPI isn't going up is that rents
| aren't rising with purchase prices, its the purchase:rent ratio
| going up. So it isn't hurting them, either.
| spamizbad wrote:
| The root cause here isn't really the Fed. We've been under-
| building housing since 1990, back when rates were 5-8%. If you
| track new housing starts against adult population, you'll see
| some pretty terrible things.
|
| Granted this is lower than rates were in the 1980s. But if the
| answer here is you need to keep rates at 10-15% to build
| sufficient housing I don't see how that's politically tenable.
| notJim wrote:
| Low rates are effectively a demand-side subsidy for housing I
| think, similar to other policies. But as you point out, if
| you restrict the supply-side, demand-side subsidy can be
| counter-productive.
| nunez wrote:
| Based on US Census data, it actually looks like we're
| building about the same as we had in the past, if not more:
| https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/housing-starts
|
| These are building starts (i.e. permits obtained, but
| construction not having broken ground yet), but the more
| complete US Census data at the .gov website shows that
| completions haven't been far behind starts within the last
| five years.
| rektide wrote:
| upvoting but also this just feels like yet another contributing
| factor to the accumulation of wealth that was happening
| anyways.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| I don't really agree. Japan has had very easy money and QE for
| ten years longer than the West. Yet, it's one of the few
| housing markets in the world where prices have not risen in 25
| years.[1] Runaway housing costs are everywhere and always a
| phenomenon that results supply constraints. Usually entirely
| zoning/regulatory driven. Usually due to NIMBY activism.
|
| Given supply constraints, I agree that easy money probably does
| drive up prices. But without artificial constraints, any rise
| in price would just dissipate back into higher supplies. That's
| why you see QE result in higher housing costs, but not higher
| car prices.
|
| [1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-housing-crisis-in-japan-
| ho...
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Japan's population is declining. What's your point?
|
| Why would you expect house prices to go up when there's a
| ridiculous oversupply of housing. There's only 55M households
| in Japan, and there's ~9M vacant homes. That's ~14% of homes.
|
| Housing is an expense unless there's someone to live in it
| and pay rent.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Tokyo is growing faster than New York, London, or most
| other major Western metros.[1] (It's true Japan as a whole
| has slow growth, but Tokyo still has robust growth because
| or rural to urban migration.) Yet real housing prices have
| not risen in Tokyo in 25 years.
|
| [1]https://livejapan.com/en/in-tokyo/in-pref-tokyo/in-
| tokyo_sub...
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Tokyo had THE BIGGEST property bubble in the history of
| the world 30 years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J
| apanese_asset_price_bubble
|
| It arguably has STILL not deflated.
|
| At one point, the Emperor's Palace alone was worth more
| than all the real estate in California:
| https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/news-
| trends/article/309...
|
| I guess if you believe those valuations made sense, then
| sure.
| conscion wrote:
| > This is what happens when you keep printing money
|
| The problem isn't "printing money", inflation is a good thing
| as it encourages investment and maintains the movement of
| money. The problem is that printed money is only being put
| towards one purpose - capital markets - so the capital markets
| are what inflates (at the expense of everything else). If the
| printed money was being used on infrastructure payments, or
| some other distributed investment, the inflation would go to
| general labor first, which then would spread the inflation
| across the entire economy as they made individual purchase
| decisions.
| xapata wrote:
| > Its only the most expensive thing in most people's lives that
| has doubled in cost in about 10 years.
|
| Most people pay for housing by monthly payments, making the
| nominal value of the house irrelevant if the monthly payment
| stays the same. Further, you should consider the home owner's
| "basket of goods" to include the hypothetical rent they'd be
| paying for an equivalent house. Their mortgage payments and
| home ownership are then more like taking a loan to buy a fixed-
| income asset that gets renegotiated annually. A home owner who
| lives in their home is both a landlord and a tenant.
|
| I'm not a home-owner, and I don't feel shafted. My stock market
| holdings have kept pace or done better than if I'd purchased a
| house.
| adflux wrote:
| Non homeowners are paying way more whilst getting less in
| return.
|
| I really dont understand the logic of being OK with paying
| double for a house, just because the buyer can sell it for
| the same amount (or higher) afterwards.
|
| I could purchase a 150m2 house with my salary a decade ago.
| Now I could find a 75m2 house that would be too expensive for
| me. I dont care about being able to sell the house for more
| money afterwards, it doesn't matter, because I have to live
| somewhere anyways. So any profits gained will (probably) be
| factored into the purchase price of the next house I'm
| buying.
| foogazi wrote:
| > I really dont understand the logic of being OK with
| paying double for a house
|
| Double what? The price someone paid years ago under totally
| different market conditions?
|
| In the future prices might be halved or double again - act
| accordingly
| em-bee wrote:
| i am confused by your first sentence. what do non-
| homeowners sell?
| adflux wrote:
| Some people say "Well, you're paying more but you can
| also sell it for more afterwards". But non-homeowners are
| still paying more for less. That's the argument I am
| trying to make (poorly)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Some people say "Well, you're paying more but you can
| also sell it for more afterwards".
|
| No, they don't, even talking about non-homeowners,
| because non-homeowners aren't paying that much more
| (rents aren't increasing the way purchase prices are, the
| rstio between them is increasing), and non-homeowners
| have nothing to sell, unless you are referring to
| subleasing as selling.
|
| > But non-homeowners are still paying more for less.
|
| I think you mean "first-time homebuyers", but that just
| means it is more attractive to invest elsewhere while
| renting than jump into personal home ownership. No one is
| _losing_ anything, certain choices are just becoming less
| favored.
| xapata wrote:
| My rent doesn't change with interest rates.
| matwood wrote:
| Daily no. But higher interest rates and high inflation
| absolutely leads to higher rents each year when your
| lease renews (unless of course your in some rent
| controlled environment).
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That's true, rent keeps going up?
|
| A fixed loan doesn't change with interest rates either.
| xapata wrote:
| Rent increases are a _cause_ of inflation (as part of the
| basket of goods that defines inflation), which in turn
| causes interest rate increases, which then cause home
| price decreases.
|
| Homes are like fixed-income securities. When interest
| rates go up, the value of existing securities goes down.
| xwdv wrote:
| No, but in 20 years you'll be paying rent with expensive
| 2041 dollars while the 30 year fixed rate mortgage is
| still being paid in cheap 2021 dollars.
| xapata wrote:
| Yes, but it turns out I came out ahead from 1990-2021 by
| having all my investments in the stock market instead of
| housing.
| sremani wrote:
| So does my mortgage that is why it is called 15 year
| FIXED.
| xapata wrote:
| Yes, as I said, you care about the monthly payment, not
| the lump sum price of the house.
| xapata wrote:
| > paying double for a house
|
| Are you talking about monthly payment or lump sum? When the
| lump sum doubles yet the monthly payment is the same, has
| the cost really changed? To me, no. I was never going to
| buy lump sum, so I only care about monthly payment.
| basch wrote:
| Presumably, owing money for 60 years instead of 30 years
| will cost you much more in the long run. And more baked
| in interest early in the loan means less recovered when
| you sell.
| xapata wrote:
| How the hell do you find a 60-year loan? Sign me up!
| Remember, leverage is what makes home ownership a good
| investment.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Your liability has. If the interest rates goes back up to
| late 20th rates, your monthly payment isn't going to stay
| the same.
| foogazi wrote:
| Only if its a variable rate loan
| matwood wrote:
| After all the adjustable rate issues from the last
| housing crisis, I believe most mortgages since them have
| been fixed rate. I don't care what interest rates do, my
| mortgage rate is never going up.
|
| This touches on another point. For home owners like
| myself, inflation is a _good_ thing as it makes my
| highest monthly expense relatively cheaper.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Ah, this may be country-dependant. It's pretty much
| impossible to get longer than 10 years fixed here in the
| UK, and the rates are high.
| matwood wrote:
| In the US 30 year fixed rate mortgages are common
| (standard?). Rates have also bumped around record low
| territory for years.
|
| I know people who refied into 15 year fixed, but the
| rates have typically been so close I didn't see the
| point. Just pay more each month on your own and avoid the
| costs of the refi.
| poooogles wrote:
| >When the lump sum doubles yet the monthly payment is the
| same, has the cost really changed?
|
| Yes of course it has. You've just over doubled (interest
| rates are low but they're not nil) the time it's taken to
| pay back that loan.
| xapata wrote:
| It's a 30-year mortgage either way. The time frame is
| exactly the same.
|
| The only difference is the down payment, which matters
| because a bigger down payment means more opportunity cost
| of stock market gains.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| Here's why this matters to you. When the Fed funds rate is at
| 10%, the mortgage rate is 13% or so. That says that the risk
| that you have is 3% above the risk free rate.
|
| When the Fed funds rate is 0%, your mortgage rate is 3%, that
| same difference in the Fed Funds rate.
|
| But wait, think of that like we think of absorption. If I
| have a capacity to absorb of 1L and can absorb 50% of a
| liquid, then I will break when 2L is poured. If I bring my
| absorption rate to 98%, then I now break at 50L. If the
| government can absorb at 99.99% rates and you absorb at 97%
| rates, they can absorb 10000L while you can only absorb 33L.
|
| If you want the government to control every decision
| regarding money in the future, you want the interest rate to
| be as low as possible. If you want people to use free markets
| to decide where money flows, you want high interest rates.
| Why is politics so contentious? Interest rates are dropping.
| xapata wrote:
| > ... that same difference in the Fed Funds rate.
|
| The differential between mortgage rates and the federal
| funds rate is only driven in part by regulation. The rest
| is market forces and the perceived risk of rising
| inflation. If we had certainty on how inflation would
| change for the next 30 years, mortgage rates could be
| pushed to a negligible margin above the federal funds rate.
|
| > If you want the government to control every decision
| regarding money in the future, you want the interest rate
| to be as low as possible. If you want people to use free
| markets to decide where money flows, you want high interest
| rates.
|
| You haven't explained this assertion. I see it a different
| way. If we want consumer demand to decide how capital is
| invested, then we want more inflation. Inflation transfers
| wealth from creditors to debtors. Debtors spend their
| money, which indicates what's useful to produce. If we want
| a handful of bankers to make guesses (and often guess
| incorrectly) about what people will want to buy, then we
| want low inflation, transferring wealth from debtors to
| creditors.
|
| The problem with (excessively) low inflation and supply-
| side economics in general is that the suppliers must make
| their choices with a decreasing level of information on
| what will be demanded. It's only through consumer demand
| and its pressure on supply that reveals what's important
| through market forces. Otherwise we may as well go back to
| central planning.
|
| Note that I'm not advocating for fluctuating inflation. All
| parties benefit from stable inflation rates. Uncertainty is
| dead weight loss.
| wallacoloo wrote:
| > Most people pay for housing by monthly payments, making the
| nominal value of the house irrelevant if the monthly payment
| stays the same.
|
| Except homeowners get price exposure to the value of their
| home on the market. If you purchase and then go through a
| downturn which devalues your house, now you're in the hole:
| you can't use the sale price of the home to pay off the loan,
| so you're stuck in that home until its value climbs again or
| you earn enough to pay off the loss.
|
| Higher values means it takes longer for you to cover any %
| decline with wages, so you lose mobility for longer in a
| downturn. Irrelevant if you truly want to live in that place
| for 30 years, but not many people can actually make that
| commitment.
| xapata wrote:
| > Except homeowners get price exposure ... you're stuck in
| that home until its value climbs again or you earn enough
| to pay off the loss.
|
| > ... Higher values
|
| Higher values at the time of purchase or at the time of
| sale? The latter doesn't jive with the idea of being
| "underwater" on the loan, since you'd have benefited from
| the price exposure.
|
| Higher values at the time of purchase is relative to what
| the home was worth in the past, but our efficient market
| theory tells us that the price today can be considered
| neither high nor low (yes, Shiller might disagree).
|
| I guess you're pointing out that interest rates are near
| zero, so that there's really only one way for them to go.
| I'm not so sure, because in some ways it's a Zeno's Paradox
| situation. I don't always care about the number of basis
| points the interest rate has changed, but the percent
| change of the interest rate. I get more benefit from the
| rate going from 4% to 3% than I did when it went from 5% to
| 4%. We can always get closer to 0%, because there's an
| infinite number of subdivisions we can make.
| nly wrote:
| It's tempting to say house prices and interest rates are
| opposite sides of the same coin, but the situation is messy.
|
| I mean ultimately what I want is to pay 35-40% of my take home
| salary on a mortgage, just I like I pay now in rent.
|
| The reality is though, here in the UK, that I need to save _2-3
| years_ of take home pay, to put down on a deposit for a
| mortgage that will see me pay 50% of my take home pay, and I
| will still end up living in an inferior property to what I 'm
| renting.
|
| Meanwhile my landlord, who bought the place I'm in the 90s, is
| making a profit.
| headbee wrote:
| The illusion of realty appreciation transcends recent
| quantitative easing.
| twox2 wrote:
| If the "remote work" future is here, then this will just push
| people out further to the middle of nowhere instead of suburbans
| towns.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Are they trying to flip these or trying to rent them?
|
| I'm curious why Blackrock thinks these homes are worth this much
| if the rest of the market currently doesn't.
| whitc09 wrote:
| this is actually good. once people no longer own homes they are
| going to stop voting for people who artificially prop up home
| prices by restricting supply through zoning and land use rules.
| Long term positive for our political system.
| timmg wrote:
| The problem (I think) is that the Fed has dumped too much money
| into the system. There are no assets left to buy at reasonable
| prices. So now investors are buying homes.
|
| This is the downside to the current "bailout". I think the last
| "bailout" was a bit more lean. People were hurt, but in different
| ways than they are today.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| REITs have been doing this for a long time. It accelerated
| after 2008 because of the housing collapse which was triggered
| by Banks creating to much money rather than the Fed.
| bravo22 wrote:
| Fannie and Freddie bought up a lot of subprime mortgages.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| davidw wrote:
| Here's why investors buy up houses: they know your neighbors will
| do the dirty work of artificially constraining the housing
| supply, which makes it a good investment.
|
| Here's one who comes right out and explains this:
|
| > Meanwhile, local opposition to building is so commonplace and
| the approval process so cumbersome, time consuming, and
| expensive, even when a proposed project complies entirely with
| requirements, approvals are not forthcoming, at least in an
| expeditious manner and needed supply is simply not provided.
| Recently I heard of a new acronym to add to my vocabulary: CAVE,
| Citizens Against Virtually Everything, to be added to NIMBYISM
| and BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone).
|
| https://www.clearcapllc.com/2021/04/27/q1-2021-clear-capital...
|
| Support groups like https://yimbyaction.org/ if you want to
| 'stick it to the investors'. If there's a credible threat to
| build plenty of housing, they'll move on.
| zamfi wrote:
| > they know your neighbors will do the dirty work of
| artificially constraining the housing supply, which makes it a
| good investment
|
| ...until your neighbors are all renters, at which point the
| tide turns?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| A lot of renters are nimbys as well, due to misconceptions,
| or other factors such as rent-control affecting their
| outlook.
| majormajor wrote:
| Is there a market in the US where density and population growth
| has made land cheaper? I can't think of one.
|
| Development increases the value of land in the long run, that's
| nearly tautological; investors in land will benefit from this
| increase just like the developers themselves do. I think
| there's a high likelihood that the markets for "home with land"
| and "condo" diverge further in the future. Increased demand and
| density only increases the scarcity of single family homes with
| actual plots of land in popular areas.
|
| There are a lot of vacant/under-utilized properties, especially
| ones zoned commercial, next to high-demand residential areas in
| my town. The owners seem to be just sitting on the property and
| waiting, vs actually fully making use of it currently.
|
| I'd go a step further: why are we arguing about single-family
| homes when we have homeless people camped out around unused
| commercial and industrial properties? _That 's_ the property
| that's being wasted and could most-easily be re-utilized. If
| you have continual high demand it will be difficult to add
| supply fast enough once you run out of empty surrounding land (
| _that 's_ the biggest difference between the big coastal cities
| and the Phoenix/Dallas/Atlantas of the world) because it
| requires demolition and higher-density construction), but at
| the very least if you're in that situation, attack the empty
| areas harder!
|
| (Whether or not there's ANY good sustainable long-term solution
| for perpetual demand growth is another question entirely...)
| Guest42 wrote:
| I think also that high lumber prices combined with tariffs
| contribute quite a bit.
| brightball wrote:
| I just experienced something similar to this and it makes me
| wonder if much of this is just perception.
|
| We recently dealt with an out of state builder pushing to have
| a property that was zoned Neighborhood Commercial to be rezoned
| to something more flexible so that he could build 49 town homes
| with 49 parking spots on 5 acres of land.
|
| Everybody opposed the rezoning and fought to defeat it. The
| project would have been the most dense townhome development in
| 4 counties.
|
| There is uniform agreement that people want commercial projects
| built there as zoned, but I wonder if the opposition would be
| classified as NIMBY?
| maxsilver wrote:
| > Everybody opposed the rezoning and fought to defeat it.
|
| Why? That's kind of an important point.
|
| For example, unless this is NYC or similar, 49 townhomes is
| going to need a minimum of at least 110 parking spots (just
| to hold the occupants alone, assuming no one ever has guests
| ever). A _realistic_ parking minimum should be 2.5 spots per
| townhouse.
|
| A lot of builders outsource their pollution to the local
| neighborhood, especially on infrastructure (parking, water,
| sewer, electrical, natgas, etc). It's a common reason to
| opposed development, and it's a good one.
|
| It's usually done to save cash, and it saves literally just
| pennies. (Parking on these projects, for example, is always
| less than 6% of the total cost. Cuts to sewer and electrical
| are less than 12% of total cost). Builders do it anyway,
| builders will generally build the literally shittiest thing
| code lets them get away with -- they'd build buildings that
| fall apart in the slightest breeze, if it were legal to do
| so.
|
| This is why zoning rules, building codes, and the large piles
| of regulations are so important.
|
| > The project would have been the most dense townhome
| development in 4 counties.
|
| Ok, that means it would likely carry the highest prices per
| square foot in 4 counties, which means it would immediately
| make that neighborhood the most expensive neighborhood in 4
| counties. Could that be a reason it was opposed? Density
| isn't free, it's a form of financial pollution that the other
| residents will mostly have carry the burden of. Not
| everywhere is California, not everywhere gets free unlimited
| property tax lock-ins. If you built a luxury townhouse next
| to a generic house, _their_ taxes will spike 200%+ to cover
| your luxury development, and all nearby rents would spike in
| a similar way against nearby renters.
|
| I get that California and San Francisco specifically is it's
| own unique terrible experience. But here in the Midwest,
| generally speaking, locals are pretty reasonable. You can get
| away with building almost anything you want, so long as you
| don't screw over the locals. (And I mean that quite
| literally, we have almost 100 new developments here in our
| small city, including the worlds gaudiest ugliest castle
| monstrosity -- zoning _never_ stops builders _ever_ , you can
| build anything you want anywhere you want, as long as you
| don't hurt too many people)
|
| What is _actually happening_ in most cases, is that some sort
| of builder wants to screw over all residents, residents
| rightly complain, and then those residents get labeled
| "NIMBY". The only time a project gets cancelled is when it
| makes residents bleed so much, they push back hard. And even
| then, local residents only win that fight about ~40% of the
| time.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > Ok, that means it would likely carry the highest prices
| per square foot in 4 counties, which means it would
| immediately make that neighborhood the most expensive
| neighborhood in 4 counties. Could that be a reason it was
| opposed?
|
| Artificially constraining expensive housing isn't a good
| thing. If the demand is there in the first place, doing so
| just means that the people who are interested will insteaad
| buy or rent existing homes that could have otherwise gone
| to lower-wealth families.
| maxsilver wrote:
| > Artificially constraining expensive housing isn't a
| good thing
|
| Again, this isn't California. This is the Midwest. We
| have gentrification problems even in cities that are
| _still losing population_. And we 've never constrained
| housing, for our cities that are slowly growing, many
| have built more new units than residents for years now.
| Most cities have no meaningful housing shortage here, but
| every city currently has a housing _market manipulation_
| problem.
|
| > If the demand is there in the first place, doing so
| just means that the people who are interested will
| insteaad buy or rent existing homes that could have
| otherwise gone to lower-wealth families.
|
| Or you could just reduce demand. Perhaps Pension Funds
| shouldn't be allowed to buy housing at all. Make them
| invest in something that doesn't hurt citizens. That
| would reduce prices instantly, without requiring the
| construction of fake-unusable for-equity-firms-to-hold-
| only housing.
|
| In what world does it make sense for real humans to have
| to compete with private equity firms or pension funds for
| housing? Real humans are constrained by their incomes
| (incomes that famously haven't grown in decades),
| everything else is not.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| I'll do you one better maybe people that don't intend to
| live in them at least half the time shouldn't be able to
| buy a second home.
| maxsilver wrote:
| I agree 100%
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >A realistic parking minimum should be 2.5 spots per
| townhouse.
|
| A realistic approach in the face of coming climate doom
| would be max 0.5, for the people that really need cars as
| primary transport due to disability etc.
| maxsilver wrote:
| In theory sure, but that's not realistic, it just induces
| sprawl.
|
| Great, you manage to artificially limit parking. So the
| new housing development moves another 10 miles outside of
| town, to get away from your artificial limit, and now
| their mowing down a cornfield out there instead for their
| build, so they can get the parking residents actually
| need.
|
| If cities want to be a solution to climate change, they
| have to let people actually live in them. That means,
| they have to care about the price points of developments
| (they can't just keep deflecting and saying "luxury
| housing lowers prices in 50+ years when it trickles
| down") and they have to care about supporting residents
| actual transportation needs. (they can't just hide behind
| "everyone will bike or whatever").
|
| Everytime they deflect on either of those, another farm
| or forest gets razed instead.
| pempem wrote:
| ^ So accurate!
|
| Los Angeles is suffering from this. Towers and towers of
| expensive apartments left empty at 4000+/mo meanwhile the
| homeless population grows and the population on the
| border of homelessness grows.
|
| Traffic increases as people move out of the city center
| and need to commute in and then those people are taxed
| through congestion charges or tolls and provided with no,
| or tremendously expensive, parking.
|
| The whole effort seems to conspire against exactly what
| made the city a city. Dense, mixed zoned, mixed class
| living
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I'm not opposed to people who want to live out in the
| boonies, but given the extra cost of infrastructure to
| service them, they should have to pay for the privilege.
|
| They never do though. It's always the poor neighborhoods
| close in that subsidize the rich people in the suburbs.
| bendbro wrote:
| There is no extra infrastructure cost.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Longer roads, longer sidewalks, longer water and sewer
| pipes. Longer electric and phone cabling. Of course it
| costs more.
| bendbro wrote:
| When you live in the boonies, utilities are provided for
| by the local municipality. Water is usually well water.
| Waste goes to a septic tank.
|
| There is no additional infrastructure cost placed on
| cities. You are just plain wrong.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| The developer wants to build the densest housing in four
| counties with little parking, and nobody has asked the real
| question: is this planned as Section 8/affordable housing?
| It sounds like it. Section 8 is guaranteed income for the
| landlord and probably a headache for the neighbors,
| especially if they had no poverty in the area before. A
| very similar situation happened in my rural village, where
| a developer decided some commercial property would make a
| great spot for dense, low-income housing; the village
| fought it and got called racist by the courts, who forced
| the village to rezone and the village council to undergo
| racial sensitivity training.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Where do you expect poor people to live exactly?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The standard answer has a convenient acronym: NIMBY.
| ipaddr wrote:
| In places that can support additional social services not
| available in remote communities. The poor are being
| kicked out of cities.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| In the big city where they currently live. The rural
| village I'm in now has a 7% poverty rate, while the
| nearest big city has a 21% poverty rate. The big city
| would like to redistribute its poor to suburbs and rural
| areas and redevelop ("gentrify") the land the poor used
| to occupy. Poor people don't suddenly come into existence
| ex nihilo: they exist and live somewhere now. They just
| need to move into the countryside because the urban real
| estate is worth too much for them to live on it.
| nradov wrote:
| I don't believe you. Civil court judges don't have the
| authority to order elected politicians to undergo racial
| sensitivity training. Citation needed
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I guess the other option is that poor people should just
| be homeless?
| ipaddr wrote:
| The social services costs will be higher than the tax
| base. City planning involves carefully balancing
| priorities. If the community is made up of 100 rural
| homes introducing 100 townhomes used for section 8
| property incomes creates chaos.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I hope they appealed that ruling. Elected or appointed
| judge?
| zip1234 wrote:
| Parking minimums should not exist, for about 1000 reasons.
| For further reading on the topic, check out 'the high cost
| of free parking'. They are a failed experiment from the
| mid-20th century.
|
| Many places are switching to parking maximums instead of
| minimums.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I think they exist because in reality, people start
| parking in driveways (blocking in people that may need to
| leave home for, say, work/school) or worse - they double-
| park or loiter in ever more congested circular drives
| around the neighborhood looking for parking.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If you can only build dense housing in the places where
| there are no few jobs and few people it doesn't help much.
| The fact that the locals are by definition negatively
| impacted by new development is a great reason to take
| virtually all say away from the locals.
|
| Anyone who is already a home owner will find that
| increasing supply of homes a necessary function of the
| society decreases the value of the asset in which they have
| parked most of their wealth. Even when it increases the
| value you can't get them on board. Look at your own logic.
|
| > my taxes will spike 200%+ to cover your luxury
| development
|
| You aren't covering the cost of their development they are
| actually increasing the value of your property. For your
| taxes to spike 200% they would literally have to triple the
| value of your property. It's like they are throwing
| hundreds of thousands of dollars in bags full of hundred
| dollar bills over your fence and you are complaining about
| income tax.
|
| Presumably if someone did something like build a crack
| house and halved the value of your property you wouldn't
| thank them for halving your tax bill!
|
| Basically for any given project locals have interests that
| are almost always out of alignment with the rest of
| society. The some people in aggregate elect your state wide
| officials but at least those folks are apt to think and
| plan based on a broader perspective than the locals whose
| attitude is universally "I've got mine"
|
| This is both the worst timeline and the worst most selfish
| nation.
| maxsilver wrote:
| > It's like they are throwing hundreds of thousands of
| dollars in bags full of hundred dollar bills over your
| fence and you are complaining about income tax.
|
| They aren't throwing dollars over the fence, they're
| throwing _debt_ over the fence.
|
| Sure, my property is on-paper worth more. If I cash that
| out, I just have to spend it all (every other house got
| more expensive by an equal amount, and I have to live
| somewhere). And the new person who buys it now has to
| cover all that extra debt directly in their mortgage,
| they get soaked too!
|
| Property values are not real wealth, it's not real money.
| It's fake. Coastal folks can treat it like it's real,
| because they can play markets against each other, they
| can depend on moving to some "low COL" area as their
| cash-out-to-real-money exit strategy. Those of us in low
| COL already (or who can't play markets, because they have
| to stay here for family/work reasons) don't have similar
| luck, the chain ends here, there's nowhere left to go.
|
| > Presumably if someone did something like build a crack
| house and halved the value of your property you wouldn't
| thank them for halving your tax bill!
|
| I _would_ thank them, actually. Property _should_
| depreciate. It 's the only way housing will ever get
| affordable for real humans again. I don't expect to get
| every dollar I paid for a house, back again. No one
| should.
|
| > locals have interests that are almost always out of
| alignment with the rest of society.
|
| Locals _are_ the "rest of society". Locals don't all own
| property, half of our locals rent. Locals who own, still
| often have kids who need to buy houses, and they want
| them to be able to afford to live near them. The selfish
| behaviour seems to be coming entirely from developers or
| 'urbanists' who think if they just keep ignoring the
| ramifications of their actions, they can strongarm
| society into accepting forever-increasing housing costs.
| Why you paint "Locals" with that brush, when Locals carry
| every penny of those increased costs, I have no idea.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The utility of your argument relies on it being something
| burdensome like a 200% increase but in fact if your
| property went up by 200% for building a complex it would
| in fact be extraordinary not only for the nation but for
| your area as well. If your 200k house for example went up
| to 600k you could in fact sell it and have a money fight
| with hundreds of thousands of dollars of real profit in
| your new living room even after you paid off the capital
| gains especially when the first 250k single or 500k
| married couple is tax free.
|
| When you reduced the projected change in price to a more
| reasonable increase like 10% your argument about not
| being able to move to a lower col area becomes true
| because everything has gone up equally but it is hard to
| argue that the increase has greatly burdened your life to
| the point that people ought not be allowed to build on
| property they own.
|
| For example locally if assessed value went from 200k to
| 220k my taxes would increase 16 per month. 400-450k would
| net me a cool $41 per month.
|
| Looking at actually realistic figures makes it much
| harder to justify constraining housing supply which
| negatively effects all of society in order to optimize
| your tax bill.
| maxsilver wrote:
| > but in fact if your property went up by 200% for
| building a complex it would in fact be extraordinary
|
| It's not, at least in the us. In the past nine years, my
| house went from a real-world value of ~$90k (2012), to
| now being worth ~$240k (2021), despite wages being mostly
| flat. This is not uncommon, most homes in this or any
| nearby city have posted somewhat similar gains (plus or
| minus 10%). This property specifically, recorded it's
| highest jump ($40k over a single year) in the year after
| they built luxury apartments in the lot directly behind
| it.
|
| And that's not a NYC / SF / Chicago / Seattle / Austin
| type hip place. It's just generic small-city Midwest
| nowheresville. A place with no restrictions on housing
| construction whatsoever, and has entire neighborhoods of
| new development in the past decade to prove it.
|
| > If your 200k house for example went up to 600k you
| could in fact sell it and have a money fight with
| hundreds of thousands of dollars of real profit in your
| new living room
|
| You are not getting it. No, I literally can not do that.
| If my house went from 200k to 600k, then every other
| house has also gone up a similar amount. If I sell my
| house to cash out, my family is _homeless_ , I don't have
| a "new living room". And if I want a "new living room" to
| live in, I have to give _every single dollar_ of that
| 600k back, for some new property at similar high prices.
| It 's not _real_ money, it 's debt that I happen to be
| holding in my hands in paper form, and the future
| occupant of my house is now on the hook for.
|
| Californians simply can not seem to wrap their head
| around this. They just assume the money is real, because
| "move to the south or the midwest" is always an option
| for them, so they can cash out and keep a bunch of it.
| Some of us already live in these places, and don't have a
| magic "high quality housing at cheaper-than-my-home-
| market rate" place to escape to.
|
| > justify constraining housing supply
|
| Literally no one is arguing to constrain housing supply.
| Blocking a shitty luxury development _never_ constrains
| housing, it frees it to be used for real housing.
|
| Fighting against Poisoned Milk sales is not "justifying
| constraining milk supplies". Fighting against cost-
| raising developments for private equity firms is not in
| any way "justifying less housing". You can want more
| housing _and_ not want everyone 's rent to spike, these
| are not in conflict in any way.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Property values are not real wealth, it's not real
| money.
|
| I don't know, having $100k+ more in equity than a couple
| years ago it acts like having an asset with real monetary
| value when I go to a bank looking for credit, having a
| big effect on both the amount of funds I have access to
| and the terms on which I can get them.
|
| It's not _liquid_ like cash, so there is more work to
| take advantage of it, but its definitely real.
| adolph wrote:
| > I wonder if the opposition would be classified as NIMBY
|
| If a protected classification like gentrification or
| environmental impact can be found, then it isn't NIMBY
| anymore.
|
| Say for example, if the town homes projected to be priced
| higher than the neighborhood, there is a gentrification
| angle. Density often requires some environmental impact
| review. For example, a change in development density might
| have significant water runoff impacts that require a
| retention area large enough to make the development
| economically unviable.
|
| I think finding a potential habitat for an endangered species
| is the strongest reclassification from NIMBY because it
| doesn't require any change to existing structures, mostly
| freezes things in place and has regulation from redundant
| inscrutable jurisdictions and the support of outside
| organizations that are generally successful and seeking new
| cases to work on.
| jeffbee wrote:
| "Everybody" opposed it except I imagine the process did not
| gather the input of the fifty families who could live there.
| mcculley wrote:
| Congratulations, Central Planner! It sounds like individuals
| and markets almost won.
| davidw wrote:
| Without knowing more, it sounds complicated: denser infill
| housing is good in so many ways. Mixed use, with commercial
| on the ground floor and housing above is even better in many
| situations, but not all developers do that kind of thing. So
| it kind of depends on what the alternatives are and what the
| housing situation is like where you live. There are places
| where "the perfect is the enemy of the good" in terms of what
| gets built.
|
| Commercial is critical for '15 minute neighborhoods':
| https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/9/6/7-rules-for-
| cre... - but without the density to support local commerce,
| it's tough to justify it.
|
| But I don't think 15 minute neighborhoods are likely what
| your angry neighbors had in mind, so most likely just
| NIMBYism.
| milkytron wrote:
| Where I live now is planned to be a 15 minute neighborhood.
| I moved into one of the first new developments of many, all
| residential, all within a 5-10 minute walk of a train
| station.
|
| There are about 1000 housing units being built, and there
| has been zero commercial development. It's great that they
| are building dwelling units here all around transit, but
| the only businesses that already exist are industrial, a
| gas station, and a dollar store. Commercial land owners
| have been refusing to sell to developers as they watch
| their land value increase. It's a real shame, but it does
| seem better than what existed before and the area certainly
| has potential.
| opportune wrote:
| This is kind of textbook NIMBY although it is possible taking
| away the commercial zoning could make the area too light on
| commercial activity.
|
| But one of the main contributors to housing shortages is that
| areas have been overly permissive with commercial zoning
| (since they don't have residents, city expenditure is low)
| which causes imbalances in the amount of jobs:people in an
| area. That in turn not only increases prices but increases
| traffic as some portion of people must be commuting from afar
| to fill those jobs.
| bangoimby wrote:
| Bingo. Balance is way more important than density. It
| should be mandated by state law. Doesn't need to be per-
| city; you could have a system to trade jobs vs housing with
| neighboring cities or something.
|
| A major irony is that California is approaching this all
| wrong. The "let Scott Wiener build whatever he wants" laws
| are in some cases being used to make the problem worse.
| See: Vallco Mall redevelopment plan, more jobs than
| housing.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Yes.
|
| If you believe that no town homes should be built in the U.S.
| than you might not qualify as NIMBY.
|
| But if you believe that town homes shouldn't be built next to
| you that's the definition of NIMBY. Of course every instance
| has a long list of reasons why next to them is especially
| bad, character of the neighborhood, parking issues,
| infrastructure, etc....
|
| But the end result of everyone fighting increased density in
| their neighborhood is we have a less density (bad for
| environment) and more expensive housing.
| bangoimby wrote:
| No. People always say density helps availability, and price
| increases are due to the denser areas being more desirable.
|
| The major factor driving housing inflation is restricted
| supply, which is relative to demand. Demand is created
| primarily by jobs. The difference between jobs and employed
| residents (with overhead for non-working family members
| etc) drives the imbalance. If demand was being met, prices
| would plummet.
|
| This factor is orthogonal to overall density. The Bay Area
| is expensive because there is not enough housing for the
| jobs. If San Jose became as dense as SF, it would not help
| anything, unless that growth was focused primarily on
| housing. But San Jose already supplies net housing and SF
| supplies net jobs. These are not small imbalances either;
| they are both 6 figures in 2008 ACS commute data.
| (Unfortunately that dataset seems to be compiled very
| infrequently, but I doubt things have changed much other
| than density increasing.)
| Justsignedup wrote:
| The irony is that density means more people, more homes,
| more availability.
|
| That means more jobs open up and makes the place more
| lively. More desireable.
|
| That means the house property value will go up.
|
| They are thinking "will this make the property value go
| down in the next 5 years"? vs "will this make the property
| value skyrocket in the next 10 years".
|
| We are catering to short-term gains at the expense of long-
| term.
| ljm wrote:
| It also means you can get walkability and nice things
| like shops and leisure activities without having to buy a
| car and drive literally everywhere.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Maybe. If zoning is fluid and organic, you might get
| those. And they are nice things that many people value.
|
| But, in existing zones? Maybe not - you'd have to
| convince people to change residential to
| commercial/retail. And changes to parking minimums, which
| always seem to screw up projects (they almost always
| require more parking than a "free market" would dictate).
| heavyset_go wrote:
| That also means "those people" can walk into your
| neighborhood, and many are motivated not to let that
| happen.
|
| I lived in an area that, for years, refused to let an old
| railroad track be converted into a trail because it would
| connect a working class area of the town to an upper
| middle class area via a miles-long footpath.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| That needs a commitment to commercial space on the first
| floor and underground parking for tenants so that surface
| parking is available to customers without the need for
| massive lots. Builders who want to extract maximum profit
| with the cheapest construction won't go for it.
| ljm wrote:
| So, the status quo has to change. Not an easy job, but
| the rest of the world shows how it can be done.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > They are thinking "will this make the property value go
| down in the next 5 years"? vs "will this make the
| property value skyrocket in the next 10 years".
|
| Not even. Near here, there was a proposal from the city
| to increase middle-density housing.
|
| They hired economic forecasters. Their projection, that
| property values would "decrease" from 13% YOY increases
| (we are in one of the highest increasing cities in the
| country) to 9% YOY.
|
| In other words, you'd still see your home value
| _increasing_ 53% in five years (versus 84%), not
| decreasing...
|
| ... and people still acted like the city wanted to shoot
| their first-born in the streets.
| adflux wrote:
| Exactly. Parents bought a house in relatively scarcely
| populated area. Then 10000 neighbours moved in. Now they
| own the largest property in the neighborhood. Guess what
| that does with the price...
| delaynomore wrote:
| Look at any typical city in North America, your priciest
| neighborhood likely has low density.
|
| People tend to work away from where they live (at least
| for high paying jobs) and prefer having ample space at
| home therefore I don't think higher density would
| increase property value as you stated.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The priciest neighborhood ($2MM+) in my city is low
| density and full of mansions for sports stars and execs
| for of all the local F500 companies. But the next tier in
| price ($1MM-$2MM) is actually pretty high density housing
| abutting downtown.
|
| Once you get into the $500-$1MM range density falls
| again, as these are the McMansions in suburbia. Density
| keeps dropping as price goes down until you get into the
| slums territory, which are basically the pockets of urban
| blight that haven't been redeveloped yet.
| ako wrote:
| You're looking at one half of a normal distribution and
| seeing "more is less" (more money is less houses per
| square meter), and you're reacting to someone looking at
| the other half of the normal distribution and he's seeing
| "more is more". You're both right, just not looking at
| the entire picture.
| svachalek wrote:
| You are probably looking at price per home, not price per
| acre.
| Retric wrote:
| That's only true up to a tipping point when poor people
| move in. Parts of Detroit are a great example where poor
| people are diving down the value of houses around them.
|
| People essentially want to be surrounded by people of
| almost exactly their economic class to somewhat richer.
| To rich and stores they can't afford to stay ie
| gentrification, to poor and you have to move ie white
| flight.
| jdhn wrote:
| Honestly, Detroit had nowhere to go but up. The city was
| so poor that even a decade ago downtown was a hot mess
| where there was virtually nobody there after 6 PM.
| [deleted]
| michaelmrose wrote:
| I think you have it exactly backwards the cost goes down
| due to the area being a less desirable location allowing
| the poor to afford the houses there. If you analyzed the
| situation better it is extremely likely that there is an
| underlying cause that isn't poor people moving in. The
| economic situation in Detroit has been shit and getting
| shittier for years now leading to the people who are more
| capable and therefore able to command a higher salary to
| tend to move elsewhere.
|
| A house that a doctor and a lawyer are competing to buy
| is going to be go for more than the one an auto mechanic
| and a fireman are competing for.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is a little bit of both, at least when it comes to
| maintaining a local public school's rating. People will
| oppose lower income housing to prevent the children of
| lower income people from attending the same schools,
| which might cause the school's rating to go down. Which
| would then be downward pressure on the price of the land.
|
| Every real estate website has school ratings for each
| house listing because it is such a sought after amenity.
| werber wrote:
| I'm not sure what parts of Detroit you're talking about,
| I can't think of a single neighborhood that is struggling
| with that problem, blight and abandonement? Sure.
| Retric wrote:
| Blight is a direct result of people in the area being to
| poor to afford to maintain infrastructure.
|
| As to driving prices down, some houses in good condition
| are selling for ~25-50k which would be worth more
| basically anywhere else in the US.
| jandrese wrote:
| That's not because a bunch of poor people moved into the
| neighborhoods. That's because the middle class moved away
| or lost their jobs.
| Retric wrote:
| It's not just a question of the middle class moving away,
| people die which means you need more people moving in. As
| soon as the mix of people moving in starts to include
| less affluent people it eventually gets dominated by them
| simply because their are more people as you move down the
| income curve.
|
| The transition within a city is rarely about some
| specific employer shutting down. The more general case is
| homes age and different areas become attractive over
| time. You can find areas where nearly identical homes
| where build across a wide area, yet one community falls
| into disrepair while another becomes desirable simply
| based on school zoning.
| neilparikh wrote:
| Many NIMBYs aren't purely financially driven. What they
| want is for their neighborhood to stay exactly as it was
| when they moved in, with the same type of people, and
| same amount of traffic.
|
| Bay Area has plenty of this type. Many of them already
| have had property value skyrocket (50K -> 2M is not
| uncommon), so they can just have both (high property
| values, and preserve their neighborhood exactly as they
| want it).
| bangoimby wrote:
| Honestly I think this would be fine. The problem is they
| allow FANG to build giant offices, which brings new
| 400k-income jobs and bids up the restricted supply.
|
| I think they should be forced to choose one or the other.
| Keep their SFH and say no to FANG, or accept townhomes
| and condos to balance out the new jobs.
| kelnos wrote:
| This is also in part due to tax revenue. Because of Prop
| 13, residential units in CA generate very little property
| tax revenue (revenue which doesn't grow much until the
| property changes hands, which is unpredictable).
| Commercial units don't have this problem, so
| municipalities can depend on a decent amount of property
| tax, with predictable increases over time.
| bangoimby wrote:
| Prop 13 applies to commercial property too, I'm pretty
| sure.
|
| I think commercial property just doesn't burden the city.
| A Google office has private security, a fire suppression
| system, and doesn't house kids who need to attend the
| school district.
| jandrese wrote:
| Commercial property does burden the transit systems (LOL
| for CA) and roads. The road issue is pernicious because
| they take up enormous amounts of real estate to begin
| with and are extremely difficult to expand after the
| fact. This is one of the primary arguments against
| building high-rise housing in SoCal. Neither the transit
| systems nor the roads are able to deal with the
| additional people. The roads probably never will at this
| point--there is no room to expand them. Yet the transit
| systems are woefully underdeveloped for the size of the
| population and would take years to catch up even if the
| local politics supported them.
| nradov wrote:
| More homes and more people doesn't necessarily make an
| area more desirable. Many people prefer space, privacy,
| and quiet. Those things are more important to them than
| property values.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| That is fantastic for retirement but 80% of people who
| live in Urban areas value above all else seemingly
| proximity to jobs which are driven themselves by the
| proximity of many people which is often driven by the
| proximity to desirable features like ports.
| ghaff wrote:
| >who live in Urban areas value above all else seemingly
| proximity to jobs
|
| Many jobs are in the suburban areas near metros rather
| than in metros themselves. SV is somewhat unusual in that
| a large swath of suburban area is as expensive or more
| expensive than in the city itself. This isn't the case
| with a lot of cities.
| nradov wrote:
| Retirement isn't the issue. Most people who live in
| suburban areas today close to live in low density areas.
| They don't want their neighborhoods to become urban
| regardless of what that would mean for proximity to jobs
| and other desirable features.
|
| Stop trying to tell people what they ought to want. Not
| everyone agrees.
| kelnos wrote:
| Not the parent, but upthread we're talking about density
| and zoning in cities, not in suburban or rural areas. I
| get that people who want to live in a suburban or rural
| environment have different priorities, and they're free
| to set building policy to achieve those goals.
|
| But it feels like (in SF at least) we have people with
| conflicting goals: they want to live in a city, but they
| want their experience to be similar to suburbia.
|
| I want to live in a city and for it to actually feel like
| an urban environment! I want to walk everywhere for my
| day-to-day needs, and take transit for everything else. I
| want to sell my car and rent one only for the times I
| want to leave the city. But we're in this weird middle
| state where that often doesn't work. My guess is that the
| only place in the US where it really does work is NYC,
| and then maybe even only really in Manhattan.
| ghaff wrote:
| >My guess is that the only place in the US where it
| really does work is NYC, and then maybe even only really
| in Manhattan.
|
| It's probably the case that it's the only place in the
| country where it's considered perfectly normal as an
| adult not to own a car even if you have plenty of money.
|
| There are--especially given Zipcar/Uber/etc.--other
| cities where people can get buy without owning a car,
| especially if it's a young post-college lifestyle. But it
| probably requires organizing your life around not owning
| a car to a certain degree.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Not everyone cares about greed-driven financials (houses
| as "investments") nor wants to live in a "lively" place.
| I'll take my peace and quiet, thanks... _and_ my stable
| property values and town size.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| What if you're someone who thinks building stack-and-pack
| residences is the incorrect response for an investor-
| manufactured housing shortage?
| bennysomething wrote:
| How can investors decrease the supply of housing?
| nimih wrote:
| By backing policies and politicians that constrain the
| expansion of public and affordable private housing in the
| face of an increasing population. Or by purchasing homes
| they do not intend to use as a primary residence.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Then your thoughts are incorrect.
|
| Portland, Ore. is facing a huge housing crisis because
| single-home zoning prevented increasing density. Without
| the ability to create more housing on existing land,
| there is a shortage. It's that simple. They recently
| passed a law allowing more dense developments, and that
| will create more supply. There are currently 10 apartment
| projects in flight in the city, so there is no cabal
| conspiring to not build housing as you suggested.
|
| Unfortunately, current homeowners love the shortage
| because it is increasing the value of their homes in ways
| we haven't seen since ... ever. Which is incredibly
| short-sighted because the economy will stall without
| housing, which will crater the boom. Moreso because if
| they sell, where are they going to move in the same town?
| They would need to sell and leave town to someplace
| cheaper. It is amazing to me how many people don't think
| one more step ahead.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Yes, I'm familiar with that narrative. Perhaps it is
| reality in _Portland_and_handful_of_other_places. In that
| case, you're actually specifying the different case of
| solving a real housing shortage, not a manufactured
| shortage.
|
| I routinely take 3-mile walks through my neighborhood in
| NE Los Angeles. There are at least two homes on each
| block that are unoccupied. The nearby stack and pack
| developments don't offset the inventory sitting idle.
| [deleted]
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| If I understand your argument correctly, you are making
| an un-evidenced claim that a cabal of housing developers
| are conspiring creating a housing shortage despite the
| biggest housing boom in the US since post WW2, while also
| claiming single-dwelling zoning as the root cause is
| somehow just an anecdote?
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| it doesn't take some kind of cabal to do the incentivized
| thing, plow millions/billions into properties and don't
| bother with the hassle of renters when the amount they
| increase is far more than you would have gotten from rent
| before you flip them.
| epistasis wrote:
| Vacant houses do not match the behavior of private equity
| investors. PE will rent out houses and viciously profit
| maximize at every step.
|
| Vacant homes from "investors" are almost certainly older
| residents that have moved, or passed away and left it to
| kids that haven't figured out what to do, or just owners
| in the area that have locked in low property taxes and
| don't want to bother with the hassle of renters.
|
| These are precisely the small-time landholders that
| benefit the most from stopping apartments from being
| built, because the source of their investment games is
| entirely from scarcity.
|
| And the cure is precisely to take away their ability to
| limit housing by building what you call "stack and pack."
| epistasis wrote:
| I think if you are using derisive terms like "stack and
| pack" for apartments then you are probably precisely the
| investor that is manufacturing the housing crisis.
|
| Apartments create greater affordability, they allow for
| designing cities with lower carbon impact than single-
| unit homes, they allow better community, more
| connections, cradle-to-grave living, they allow people to
| survive without having to get in a car to do any task
| during the day. They are fantastic. I would live in a
| "stack and pack" home in an instant if they were allowed
| in my community.
| paiute wrote:
| try living in one. they are great maybe from age 24-29.
| they typically cost more than a mortgage in my area. you
| don't talk to people when you are that close. I find the
| greater the distance between neighbors the better the
| relationship.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Your points are true, and I'm in favor of building more
| housing, however the single family home has traditionally
| been a financial boon for lots of Americans, and having
| to pay for rent every month vs keeping some of that value
| in your mortgage is hard to discount.
|
| I guess I'm just saying there should be cheap smaller
| houses and condos in cities too, not just rental places.
| epistasis wrote:
| It's weird, people say the same things whether it's
| condos or apartments. Where I live, they will typically
| be derided as "luxury condos" despite being less than
| half the price of detached homes in the area.
|
| (One of my more heretical opinions is that homes and land
| shouldn't be considered investments, and should perhaps
| not be a method of wealth building, as it turns every
| person into an investor whether they want to be or not.
| Which fuels regular people to take control of the local
| political processes that block new homes with talk of
| "luxury condos" and "stack and pack." If we are going to
| do something like this I'd favor a sovereign wealth REIT
| that redistributes the wealth more evenly and removed the
| financial incentive to be anti-competitive in land use
| decisions. That, or tax away all profits from speculation
| on land gains.)
| bradlys wrote:
| lol, that's not even that dense. We have SFH here in the Bay
| Area just like that. Lots of places where people have
| 4000sqft lots with their relatively normal houses.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| To me, the issue depends in large part on the context: What
| kind of area are you in? Rural? Urban? And what is the
| availability of housing and the economic diversity of the
| neighborhood?
|
| I don't think it's useful to try to determine if some loaded,
| politicized, pejorative term applies by definition.
| jiofih wrote:
| I had to laugh at "the most dense development". 400sqm is
| absolute luxury in Europe, and plenty of space for a massive
| detached house with a garden and garage. A house on the high
| end here sits on less than 150m2 (northern europe).
| lelanthran wrote:
| > 400sqm is absolute luxury in Europe, and plenty of space
| for a massive detached house with a garden and garage. A
| house on the high end here sits on less than 150m2
| (northern europe).
|
| Just how "massive" can that house be with a garden (say,
| 35sqm) and a garage (36sqm)? You can probably build a fine
| house in the remaining 330sqm, no doubt, but I'd hardly
| call it "massive". Maybe "generous".
|
| OTOH, it might be a point-of-view problem: I'm in South
| Africa, with a 700sqm building on a 2000sqm plot, in a nice
| area near the train/bus stop, near all amenities.
| gambiting wrote:
| It's definitely a point of view problem. We currently own
| a 90sqm, 3-bed house in the UK and it's not small by any
| measure here. On this street there are definitely smaller
| houses than this and people live here with families just
| fine. Also quite a wealthy area not a dump.
|
| From that point of view, 400sqm sounds positively like a
| mansion to me. Sure, would love that much space, but I
| have no idea if houses this large even exist anywhere
| nearby to buy, I've certainly haven't seen any.
| jiofih wrote:
| Exactly. The largest homes around here are barely above
| 200sqm, and cost 2-3 million. Most houses have two or
| three floors though.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Yes. But birthrate is only half in the Europe compared to
| the U.S.
| jiofih wrote:
| And what does that have to do with anything? The USA
| would need 3 billion citizens to rival the density of the
| Netherlands.
|
| Or are you implying you need a 500sqm house to raise two
| kids?
| iso1210 wrote:
| 49 parking spaces for 49 houses seems like a disaster in
| anywhere other than the densest of US cities. Surely most
| houses have at least 2 drivers?
|
| 5 Acres is 2 Hectares, so that's about 25 houses per hectare.
| Typical new housing estates in the UK is about 25 hours per
| hectare, with minimum of 3 parking spaces (including a garage
| if given) for a 4 bed, and 2 for a 3 bed.
|
| Even that number of spaces is too low - especially when one
| is a garage (which nobody uses to park their car)
| reallydontask wrote:
| >Minimum of 3 parking spaces for a 4 bed in the UK?
|
| This is certainly not my experience, unless you are
| counting on street parking and even then, that's a stretch
|
| I'm only thinking of new developments
| iso1210 wrote:
| I'm thinking 5 bed sorry, yes 2 spaces for 3/4, 3 spaces
| for 5 - at least in my local authority.
|
| Given that almost always one of those is a garage which
| almost never has a car, reality is tons of on street
| parking (or rather on pavement parking)
| opportune wrote:
| What if I told you that in many areas households don't even
| need a single car?
|
| If you require large amounts of parking everywhere and
| commensurately large roads, everything ends up so spread
| out that car based transportation seems like a necessity.
| It's a self perpetuating cycle. If you don't require so
| much land to be dedicated to cars you can build things
| denser and lower or even remove the need for personal cars.
|
| I think one car per household is fine for townhomes
| assuming most are 2-3 bedrooms. A lot of families only need
| one car.
| iso1210 wrote:
| > What if I told you that in many areas households don't
| even need a single car?
|
| That's in very dense urban cities. Given the numbers in
| question (low density 10 houses/acre) that's not going to
| be the case.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| > What if I told you that in many areas households don't
| even need a single car?
|
| Any part of the US where a street of townhomes would be
| more dense than the existing status quo is not one of
| these areas.
| kgermino wrote:
| In my city (Milwaukee Wi) there are plenty of areas with
| single family houses, less than 10 units/acre with 0-1
| cars per house.
|
| It's not that uncommon in the US, especially in poorer
| areas
| mattmcknight wrote:
| It's just not like that in reality. There is a townhouse
| neighborhood near me with 1.25 spots per house, and it is
| a disaster. A lot of places are occupied by people with
| roomates, not families. It's the kind of place where most
| people need a car for their job- work trucks abound,
| people drive uber or doordash, etc. Not everyone takes a
| laptop to the office every day. The roads are nearly
| impassable, people park 1km away. I knew someone trying
| to run a small business out of their home there (piano
| lessons) but there was nowhere for customers to park.
| There is bus service there, but they reduced the number
| of routes due to insufficient usage.
| opportune wrote:
| Yeah, there is for sure a chicken-egg problem here. If
| the existing public transportation isn't good then people
| will just not have enough parking. If everything is still
| spread apart, or there aren't sidewalks or biking
| infrastructure, there won't be walking or biking to the
| office or work site.
|
| Although I will say, living in a neighborhood with very
| little parking, I am sure people who insist on owning a
| car anyway will think it's a disaster too. But I love it
| because everything is close by and I can get around
| through a variety of non-car methods. But to get to that
| point takes time.
| klhutchins wrote:
| This really depends on too many variables of the
| surrounding area. There are places this could work, but I
| would argue there are more areas where this would not.
| vladgur wrote:
| What if that development was walking distance to transit? I
| live in SF Bayarea suburb in a SFH with a wife and a
| elementary school aged kid. We have 1 car that is parked in
| our driveway(on our property). For everything else there is
| a commuter train within 10-15minute walk and uber within
| reach.
|
| Limited parking does incentivize non-car-oriented
| lifestyle. Im all for it.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I'm all in for subways everywhere but do you feel as
| comfortable getting in a rush hour car after covid? I'm
| starting to think subways and megacities might not be the
| safest way to live.
| richiebful1 wrote:
| I feel perfectly safe using public transit. 36,120 people
| died in traffic in 2019 in the United States. When there
| isn't a pandemic going on and I'm getting the annual flu
| vaccine, I feel pretty darn safe compared to driving
| ipaddr wrote:
| But there is an ongoing pandemic going on we can't go
| back to 2019. The new delta variant makes the vaccine
| weak. What are the chances this mutates again and again?
| It doesn't seem like a healthy approach for humans
| anymore.
| kitsune_ wrote:
| Another example that cars take too much space. Public
| transportation is the answer.
| zip1234 wrote:
| and bikes
| davidw wrote:
| The real disaster (environmental and economic) is that so
| many places regulate parking so strictly rather than being
| more market-oriented and allowing people to figure out how
| much they want.
|
| https://www.planetizen.com/features/113459-perils-central-
| pl...
| iso1210 wrote:
| If nobody was allowed to park on public land, that could
| work
|
| Certainly in the UK it's common for people to expect to
| own an extra 50 square foot of land for a car or two,
| usually abandoned to block the pavement. This impacts
| everyone, especially those of us who don't drive.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| It's not really market oriented, it's tragedy of the
| commons oriented, as developers will build the cheapest
| thing they can on the premise that new residents can use
| existing parking, resulting in a reduction of value for
| others utilizing those commons. By not having parking
| minimums, it allows developers to pass those costs onto
| surrounding residents. There are townhouse neighborhoods
| near me with nearly impassable streets, people crossing 4
| lane roads, spreading into surrounding areas, having to
| walk over 1km to their home from their parking due to
| insufficient parking minimums. Everyone sees it is a
| giant problem now, but it is too late to fix. These
| minimums are there for a reason.
| groone wrote:
| Another solution is robotaxis. If ridehailing becomes
| easily affordable You will have your nice neighborhood
| back. Robotaxis can pick you up in a minute and go to
| park and recharge in some distant multi story parking.
| nradov wrote:
| That is a science fiction fantasy, not something we can
| plan on in any reasonable time frame.
| aggronn wrote:
| The solution isn't to build more parking, its to reduce
| the need for car trips. Improve transit and support
| commercial development in the neighborhood.
|
| The fact is that we're in a housing affordability crisis.
| We need builders to build "cheapest thing they can" right
| now because housing is insanely expensive in most urban
| areas. Parking minimums make housing more expensive, and
| the fact that people are buying these homes is saying
| something important: housing is more important than
| parking.
|
| Yes parking is nice, and there are costs associated with
| not having a dedicated parking space for each person. But
| those costs pale in comparison to the costs we pay for
| having a severe housing shortage. The economic costs, the
| costs paid in rents, the costs paid in health.
|
| There isn't a world where you can have it all. But its
| clear that we need more housing, not more parking, and
| there is an unavoidable trade-off between the two.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Improved transit works in megacities because of rapid
| transit but in this case they might add a bus route or
| the bus might come every 1/2 hour. You still do not have
| the scale to make public transit work unless you turn
| this place into an actual city.
| scythe wrote:
| It's impossible to take a "market-oriented" approach to
| parking when street parking exists. Either you remove the
| street parking, you regulate the space somehow, or you
| have a tragedy of the commons that pisses everyone off.
| In context, it sounds like the developer was obviously
| planning to take advantage of existing street parking to
| reduce the number of spaces built; it was, as described,
| the densest development in the area, at a below-normal
| spaces-per-unit for such an area.
| toast0 wrote:
| The issue is that in areas with sufficient parking, on-
| street parking has few restrictions; maybe you have to
| move your car every few days and might have a scheduled
| street cleaning that you need to move for, but you don't
| need to obtain a permit or feed a meter or worry about
| where guests might park.
|
| If you put a building with insufficient parking near
| there, users of that building are likely to park on the
| nearby streets and that reduces the utility of the street
| parking for the existing residents; either they may no
| longer be able to find parking readily, or they need to
| manage permits, etc.
|
| It's different if you build in an area that already has
| tightly restricted parking. If you move into a downtown
| LA building without enough parking for your vehicles,
| you're not going to be able to find a free spot nearby
| and you won't reduce the utility of your neighbors.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| So, what? What business is it of the local government? Why
| can't we just let consenting adults make their own personal
| decisions about the details of the housing and parking they
| choose to live in?
|
| Some people may only need limited parking. Some people may
| not need any parking. Maybe they're making a mistake and
| will regret it. Maybe not. Maybe nobody wants that, in
| which case the developer will pay the cost. Who cares! This
| is how freedom works. Can we please just stop ramming
| regulations down people's throats. "Well, no trust me. I'm
| from the zoning board and I know you're really gonna need
| two parking spots."
|
| Imagine if we had a clothing board, and anytime a company
| came out with a new apparel style they had to get approval.
| "I just don't think anybody wants shorts that far above the
| knee. Permission denied". Just let the market decide, for
| God's sakes.
| ivalm wrote:
| Because there are external costs. The "consenting adults"
| narrative is false. Not enough parking means people
| living there will use street parking in nearby areas
| affecting the residents of those communities. This
| happens all the time.
| helen___keller wrote:
| This line of dialogue is a very strong demonstration of
| how car-centric transportation model leads to a perverse
| anti-social urban development mindset. Unused parking is
| quite literally the least productive and least attractive
| use of land, I simply can't fathom seeing it as
| attractive.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| This problem only exists because street parking is
| heavily subsidized at below market rates. In urban cores,
| street parking is often 90% cheaper than garage parking.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| The developer used a Variance to change zoning rules.
|
| Many Bay Area (I only know this market)counties will happily
| acccept the fee (upwards of $1000), and 99.99% of the time
| the Variance is not granted. I truly believe counties count
| on the fees for revenue.
|
| I 've noticed a slight lightening up though.
|
| Gavin Newsome made it much easier to build certain
| structures. He made in-law units (ADU) easier to build.
|
| What happened is wealthy people took advantage of the laws,
| and added extra feet to their already huge house. These ADU
| will not be rented out to low income, or even strangers. The
| wealthy found a loophole, and used it to remodel their homes.
| Oh yea, their is still a lot of kissing town officials ass in
| order to build anything.
|
| Neusome also mandated new apartments, and reasonably hosing,
| to be built. It is a great move. He slashed a lot of red
| tape. It's still a pain though. You will have town officials
| arguing over siding, window placement, gardens, exactly whom
| will be living in the ADU.
|
| NIMBY's are alive and well in my county. Just about everytime
| we want to build a homeless shelter; homeowners scream, and
| officials listen. (Towns are panicking now over homeless. The
| homeless camps are getting bigger, and Thurston Howell III
| does not like looking at them. The Supreme court gave the
| homeless some rights though. Cops can't just harass them to
| move quite as easily as they did in the past.)
|
| I have watched towns/counties harass homeowners who want to
| build since the 80's. (I was going to buy a cabin, and I knew
| the foundation would need to be replaced. Half the cabin was
| sitting on a redwood stump. I just wanted to put a foundation
| in, and it wasen't possible due to zoning.)
|
| I don't like our building system. They make the process
| rediculiously expensive, and complicated (remember you, tge
| architect, the contractor, will be going to many meetings
| with town offivials begging to remodel, or build. They love
| saying no.
|
| It's become a disensentive for middle class homeowners to
| remodel.
|
| I currently have one fear over new residential building. It's
| water in the Bay Area. This drought does not feel temporary.
|
| I woukd like to see apartment complexes build adjacent to
| 101, but the water shortage needs to be addressed.
|
| At this point, I only trust care about very low income, and
| the homeless. I have never seen so many people without a roof
| over their heads.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| For one thing, the zoning was probably there because the
| local NIMBY opinion.
| MoosePirate wrote:
| Yes, this is what NIMBY means. "I am ok with more housing,
| just not by me."
|
| The specifics will vary in every case, but in every case it
| will be some argument on why THIS is not the right place to
| build more housing. For every possible value of this. Areas
| that don't have extremely local control over zoning do a
| better job of combatting this.
| wubawam wrote:
| Yes lol.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > Support groups like https://yimbyaction.org/ if you want to
| 'stick it to the investors'.
|
| I'm pretty sure you're not sticking it to investors if you
| support development.
|
| You might be sticking it to _different_ investors.
| MoosePirate wrote:
| Disincentivize the rent-seeking investors.
|
| Incentivize the investors creating and selling something of
| value.
| davidw wrote:
| Precisely. Also, really, the _vast_ majority of benefits
| from housing scarcity accrue to existing homeowners:
|
| https://oregoneconomicanalysis.com/2021/03/16/who-
| benefits-f...
| jimrandomh wrote:
| The word "investor" is conflating two things. On one hand
| you've got "investment" where someone pays up front for
| materials, construction workers, and equipment, producing a
| building, and then makes money by selling or renting that
| building. This is good, because it resulted in a building
| that people can live in. On the other hand you've got
| "investment" where someone purchased a preexisting building,
| in a way that's disconnected from the process that caused it
| to get built in the first place. This is usually neutral or
| bad.
|
| So yes, it's sticking it to different investors. But that's a
| good thing! Stick it to the investors for whom "investment"
| means pushing dollars around, rather than the ones for whom
| investment means construction.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Investors in passive assets can go screw themselves.
|
| Developers aren't passive asset investors, they ... you know
| ... actually create things.
| jxramos wrote:
| this is interesting, when supply is artificially limited so
| reliably you can bank long term investments on it. Pretty
| amazing.
| swiley wrote:
| This is a dumb investment. In order for the entier country to
| not descend into dysfunctional chaos there will have to be
| statewide laws that prevent this sort of brain damage.
|
| When that happens there will be nothing keeping the prices of
| individual housing units in these areas up.
| notimetorelax wrote:
| By that time - funds will have charged their fees, personnel
| will have earned their bonuses, etc.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| How does this not play out like Archegos in the end?
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-04-08/archeg...
| the_optimist wrote:
| If you're politically connected and influential, you get
| bailed out. Also, Blackrock is intermediating people's
| pensions, so they're ultimately just levering up retirees
| against the future generations of home buyers (empowered by
| the Fed). Think the politically connected Fed/DC/Davos crowd
| is simply going to just hand over power and influence?
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Aha. So, basically, there are some failures in this
| particular market that make it more difficult for prices to
| correct themselves?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| The Fed buying $40B of MBS bonds a month sure isn't
| helping
| [deleted]
| OldGoodNewBad wrote:
| Why artificially? People move into single family dwelling
| neighborhoods because they have lower crime and better schools.
| There's nothing artificial about selecting the best environment
| for yourself and your family.
|
| Is it necessary to artificially editorialize when you're making
| what is, at its root, a thinly veiled socio-political point?
| ryandrake wrote:
| I agree. I moved to a suburban single family home
| neighborhood specifically because I like the environment of a
| neighborhood with suburban single family homes. That suits me
| and my family. Others might like low-rise apartment buildings
| and townhomes, and they should have access to neighborhoods
| with that type of housing. Others might like high-rise
| apartments, and those neighborhoods should be available too.
| Why is it so bad that many different types of neighborhoods
| exist?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Nimbys fight against higher density housing everywhere.
| Read the BANANA definition up thread.
| OldGoodNewBad wrote:
| As an Oregonian I'm a little disgusted with social
| activists in Portland couching their impending rape of many
| neighborhoods across the state as YIMBY when this policy
| was designed to attack rural Oregon specifically.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| So why would people like you oppose development of other
| single family homes in your area? Or go out of your way to
| oppose development of high density buildings around transit
| stations? (Don't take it personally, but you know that many
| people will in principle oppose a mixed density development
| in not far from their homes - 5-10miles. Or pedestrianization
| of a street, in the middle of their town)
|
| Look at the map of LA, where there's miles upon miles of low
| rise buildings... That need not be there, if a few high
| density blocks were created.
|
| Or the insanity of San Francisco...
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _Why artificially?_
|
| Artificial in the sense of "caused or produced by a human and
| especially social or political agency" (see
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/artificial).
|
| When prices of something get higher, people naturally try to
| make more of it to increase supply and cash in on that
| demand. If a law or zoning regulation or whatever prevents
| that from happening, that's artificial.
|
| It's not really a statement about whether those laws or
| regulations are better overall. It's a comparison to other
| types of investment alternatives which follow the normal laws
| of supply and demand and have the (lower) earnings to go
| along with it.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Housing is not a normal rational market like a market for
| shoes, every ecobonist knows that much.
|
| Housing supply cannot, and never could fix the problem. There
| is no city or country in the world where this has ever
| succeeded.
|
| The house prices are rising because of increasing
| financialisation of our economy, cheap credit and low interest
| rates.
|
| 700,000 people left London during pandemic, put prices keep
| rising.
|
| If we offered 300 year long mortgages that get passed on to
| your next of kin, house prices would quadruple overnight. The
| price of a house has no relationship to it's utility, like it
| does for all other goods. You know you will always be able to
| sell it for more to the bext sucker.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| False, false, and false.
|
| True, financialisation is a factor, combating that must be
| part of the solution.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "False" is a hell of an elaborate argument, very convincing
| when placed against 50 years of data across 5 countries,
| all leading to same skyrocketing housing prices.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Nothing more needed to refute an argument of said
| quality. If I delivered one million finished apartments
| to your city anywhere in the world today, the average
| price _would_ go down. How about ten or a hundred
| million? Q.E.D.
|
| Housing scarcity is real, whether you believe it or not.
| legulere wrote:
| I would not call it artificially constrained supply. New
| construction in the vicinity has an effect on the quality of
| life in the existing houses/flats. In the end space is indeed
| physically constrained, especially where people want to live.
| Even from that scarcity perspective a lot of low density
| construction just seems like waste.
|
| I guess you could get both perspectives behind a Georgism type
| land value tax.
| rwcarlsen wrote:
| I've been trying to build a house for myself. Going through all
| the hoops is not only cumbersome and expensive - but nearly
| impossible. I've run into legal tiff's between the county and
| nearby city. The city wants me to pay $40,000 for a sewer
| hookup for a single family dwelling when the sewer line is
| literally right along the road in front of where we will build
| the house. This is because the city has a beef to pick with the
| county and they are charging me based on the size of my parcel
| rather than the number of hookups I need. My house is actually
| in the county (but in the city impact zone). So now I'm
| spending my time combing through legal records, state supreme
| court case rulings, etc. all relevant to my situation to try to
| get things resolved. Literally _everything_ is a fight. I even
| had to push and fight to get a build-right for the parcel -
| because it is currently zoned ag - which my country requires a
| max house density of 40 acres per house. I could rezone - but
| that would require _me_ to get permission of all my neighbors
| to rezone so that my new residential zoning would be contiguous
| with existing residential zoning. I 've had to fight to get
| permission to have an arch/rainbow driveway. Then I wanted to
| have an accessory dwelling, but ag zoning doesn't allow this
| either - never mind that this is totally allowed for all
| residential zoning types in the county and nearby city. And on
| and on. I've spent several hundreds of hours and tens of
| thousands of dollars trying to jump through all these hoops -
| and I haven't even started building anything yet!
| slashdot2008 wrote:
| There is lots of ag zoned land around me. nobody wants it
| rezoned to residential as that means more people and most
| people don't want more people around. People always buy the
| ag lots cause they are cheap and have low taxes if you have
| ag activity, and then want to build more housing on them than
| the zoning allows, because that is lucrative.
|
| just use a septic field instead of the sewer hookup if the
| county won't play ball. then they can't increase your sewer
| rates every year.
| ed_balls wrote:
| what if you just build it? What are the sanctions? Can you
| legalise it later?
| sjg007 wrote:
| They force you to tear it down. If you don't they will and
| charge you for it.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Also, the low supply of new houses already created a market for
| them to control. If there's already a bottleneck, then half
| your job is already done. Buy everything up, and continue
| buying new ones at a decent rate to maintain the bottleneck. A
| veritable housing OPEC controlling the outflow and production
| of homes. Sinister stuff.
|
| Congress absolutely needs to do something about this.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| In Queens and Brooklyn, before the Amazon NYC Headquarters was
| derailed, they had bus tours of Chinese investors, driving
| around, looking for for sale signs. It was crazy.
| tootie wrote:
| That has been very common for the last 30 years and AFAIK
| hasn't slowed down.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 30 years? That seems like a long time for China. Maybe the
| Japanese and/or Koreans?
| pempem wrote:
| 30 years ago was only the 1990s, its on track.
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| You lost me at the end. You lack political acumen if you think
| this is how politics works: " If there's a credible threat to
| build plenty of housing, they'll move on."
|
| The Yimbies supported Mayor Breed. She hasn't changed the
| political problems in SF that you're (for the most part,
| accurately) diagnosing here.
|
| The problem with most anti-activist government screeds like
| this is that they lack the same nuance and sophistication they
| would bring to, for example, commenting on a market analysis.
| I'm almost certain your position here is "end zoning." I'm fine
| with that. But it takes way more than shit posting, and the
| people who believe what you do are literally at the top of the
| city's government in San Francisco, and nothing has changed.
|
| You need a better understanding of politics and a sharper
| theory of change. Just applying your own premise to this
| comment, investors are actually relying on people like YOU
| failing to learn more about politics and failing to understand
| how to better communicate about politics. YOU are part of the
| problem, not above it.
| opportune wrote:
| I don't even understand this comment at all. So the solution
| to NIMBY activists controlling local government is to do...
| nothing? You know YIMBY is itself an activist movement right?
| Activist isn't a code word for "crazy left wing people I
| don't like", it just means people who are hyper politically
| active (moreover N/Y IMBY is not clearly demarcated on
| political lines IMO).
|
| All you have done is said the person you are replying to is
| an idiot for YIMBY but the only argument is that they support
| Breed. That's definitely part of the problem but in SF the
| board of supervisors also hold a lot of power and those are
| more important. Also, Breed is supported as a least-worst
| candidate.
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| If you don't understand the comment "at all," I suspect
| replying to you won't resolve the issue.
|
| >All you have done is said the person you are replying to
| is an idiot for YIMBY but the only argument is that they
| support Breed.
|
| That's not all I've said. Read slower.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Read slower"
|
| Write clearer
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| More clearly?
| ASinclair wrote:
| Since you understand politics so well you understand Mayor
| Breed can't unilaterally write housing policy. She has to
| work with the Board of Supervisors. The Board is dominated by
| a group of politicians that aren't really YIMBY supported as
| far as I know.
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| Since your reading comprehension is so high, you'll agree
| then that supporting yimby groups won't be sufficient to
| generate the credible threat that the original comment
| suggests will be sufficient to dissuade investors
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Since _yours_ is, you 'll see that the original comment
| didn't say it would be sufficient. Those were two
| separate sentences.
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| This is one sentence: "Support groups like
| https://yimbyaction.org/ if you want to 'stick it to the
| investors'."
|
| I'm done here. Feel free to defend bad activism or
| advance whatever incorrect semantic interpretation you
| have of our exchange.
| davidw wrote:
| I don't live in San Francisco, and our local YIMBY group is
| getting things done, thank you very much. We helped nudge our
| local representatives towards passing HB2001 in Oregon, which
| will add to the supply of more affordable homes. We've helped
| get apartments built locally. We speak regularly with our
| city councilors.
|
| It takes a lot more than being 'highly online' and YIMBY
| groups are doing that work.
| zamfi wrote:
| Now that duplexes are allowed, how long does it take to get
| one approved?
| davidw wrote:
| Still too long. The bill has not been fully implemented
| as cities have a few years to adapt it into their code.
|
| But you just keep pushing where you can.
| OldGoodNewBad wrote:
| You'll find outside Portland that this is extremely
| unpopular and will eventually be defeated. Why don't you
| keep your policies in your ruined destroyed burned unsafe
| city?
| jfrankamp wrote:
| I've found density laws wildly accepted, its a building
| boom in Newberg as people add ADU's and more housing. I
| don't know where you get your information, but if you own
| a home in a growth boundary in a small town in Oregon,
| its "Lets build an ADU" time like never before.
| OldGoodNewBad wrote:
| You're kidding, right? This flies contrary to what I've
| seen. Anyway Newberg is a suburb of Hillsburrito at this
| point.
| joshlemer wrote:
| Do you have any ideas to propose then, as actionable advice
| for activists to improve their effectiveness?
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| Yes. Do better than this: "If there's a credible threat to
| build plenty of housing, they'll move on."
|
| What's needed is a mainstream, national name-n'-shame
| strategy that identifies specific officials and offices
| that are causing the block in housing. Make the target
| highly specific and concrete, and ensure the messaging is
| big tent -- don't make it anti-municipal government. Make
| it anti-zoning.
|
| It's a waste of political bandwidth that most Americans
| know the name of at least one random House Rep that
| represents their partisan opponent either because Fox News
| or MSNBC, but none of us has any idea about the bureaucrats
| who are making terrible anti-housing policy decisions every
| day and driving up the cost of owning shelter.
|
| Read this article and tell me how the amount of pro-YIMBY
| energy hasn't yet turned this into a major, populist outcry
| against specific people and specific government agencies:
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/place/article/The-
| quest-...
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| And, at least in California, realtors will always push prices
| up. It's pretty much never in their best interest to lower the
| price. Even the buyer's agent gets paid a percentage of the
| sale price, so if they try to lower it they'd be essentially
| working against themselves. And this is without even accounting
| for all the schemes realtors create (like listing below market
| to get a lot of offers and create artificially high demand to
| put pressure on the top offers to increase their bids as high
| as possible, as well as make them waive their contingencies).
| icyfox wrote:
| Fun fact: Listings in California used to contain a unilateral
| offer of subagency by default. So _all_ realtors were legally
| bound to work in the seller's interest, even if a buyer had
| reached out to them in the first place. So you can imagine
| how often you would disclose your buying criteria to "your"
| agent only to have them utilize that against you.
| nopeNopeNooope wrote:
| That sounds insightful, but there's no point in screwing a
| buyer for a tiny today payday.
|
| Those agents work on volume, so if you think they're pushing
| you to not get the lowest price, it's so they can close the
| deal, not because their incentives aren't aligned with yours.
| If they're telling you to offer more, it's because they have
| better knowledge of the market and the game than you.
|
| They're banking on many commissions a month, not on the
| fractional share of that extra $10k you don't want to fork
| over.
| pdpi wrote:
| It's similar (if symmetrical) to the situation with
| recruiters -- most of their money comes from getting you an
| offer and you then accepting it. Negotiating a better
| salary gives them more money, but costs time that would've
| been better spent getting another person a job.
| svachalek wrote:
| The fact that they're focused on volume is exactly why
| their incentives are not aligned with yours.
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| Interesting theory. My CA realtor told me to bid below asking
| price and we got the house.
|
| Repeat business is a good motivator. We were happy with the
| realtor after our first purchase, used them to sell that
| property and again, in our second search and then recommended
| them to friends who made purchases. The marginal income they
| could have gotten by pushing us to a higher price are dwarfed
| by their combined earnings.
| nradov wrote:
| Blaming real estate agents is just silly. They're salespeople
| so of course they're going to try to maximize commissions.
| Ultimately it's up to the buyer to agree on the price or walk
| away.
|
| Listing prices are almost totally meaningless. At most
| they're just a starting point for initial negotiations.
| pwinnski wrote:
| This depends heavily on the market at the time, since there
| are pressures from multiple directions.
|
| All else being equal, 6% of a higher price beats 6% of a
| lower price. But 6% of a lower price today in exchange for an
| hour of work beats $0 if the buyer walks and is not so easily
| replaced, and it might even beat 6% of a higher price if the
| higher price comes after many additional hours of work.
|
| Over a long enough timeframe, the trend is toward higher
| prices, but it's not clear how much of a factor agents are in
| that, compared to many other factors.
| milkytron wrote:
| > Over a long enough timeframe, the trend is toward higher
| prices, but it's not clear how much of a factor agents are
| in that, compared to many other factors.
|
| I can't imagine agents would have much of an impact when
| compared to other causes of rising house prices. The way I
| see it, is that they are more of a kind of facilitator to
| increase the efficiency of the market, and don't have as
| much of a role in market behavior.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Some of this is changing - I've heard that Redfin agents (who
| are employees - they don't split commissions the way other
| brokerages do) get paid a bonus structure that's tiered based
| on _list_ price. So at the time they show you the house, the
| bonus they get if you buy it is already set, regardless what
| you pay for it. They still do have an incentive to show you
| more expensive homes, but they don 't have an incentive to
| jack up your bid during the negotiations so that they get 3%
| of a bigger sale price. They also get paid for a bunch of
| other activities (like giving tours, writing offers, typing
| up agent notes that you see on the website), so it's not a
| total loss for them if you don't end up winning the bid.
| reverend_gonzo wrote:
| See, I used to think that maybe with the different
| compensation structure, Redfin agents' interested might end
| up being more in line with the buyers. I ended up working
| with one, and realized that is absolutely not the case.
|
| First, yes, Redfin agents don't get commissions the way
| traditional real estates agents get commissions. However,
| Redfin agents do still want to close as many deals as
| possible. Also, while real estate agents have a tough job
| finding good leads (especially given that leads don't
| exactly keep buying property) Redfin agents do not have a
| tough time finding leads (they have one phenomenal website
| that just gives them constant leads). What it results in is
| that a good traditional agent will put in a lot more work
| to find an appropriate place for you, because not only do
| they rely on you buying through them, but more importantly,
| they rely on you being happy enough that you recommend them
| to other people.
|
| Redfin does not need your recommendations, as they've got a
| line out the door. So if anything starts getting difficult
| with your purchase, Redfin has no incentive to stick around
| and figure it out.
|
| I've bought three properties and made an offer that fell
| through on one, and looked around other times. I've tried
| both traditional agents and a Redfin agent, and will never
| again work with Redfin.
| nostrademons wrote:
| It works for a certain type of buyer, one who basically
| wants to drive the process themselves and just needs an
| agent for guidance. This described us pretty well, and
| many other Millennials. We basically just wanted an agent
| because we were househunting during COVID and needed one
| to literally get in the door, and to help guide us
| through the paperwork and process since we were FTHBs.
| Redfin was great for this; our agent didn't pressure us
| to buy or steer us toward any particular homes, then he
| had a bunch of useful information when it came time to
| negotiating and putting in an actual offer.
| reverend_gonzo wrote:
| So, I wasn't a first time home buyer and didn't hand
| holding. What I did need was an argent which was actually
| working for me, not just trying to close at all costs.
|
| I think in situations where the property doesn't have any
| issues, where you're just going in to buy a place, they
| can work out fine. Unfortunately you have no idea what
| kind of place you're looking at until you're trying to
| buy it.
|
| Every worthwhile agent will have a ton of useful
| information before and after you purchase.
| svachalek wrote:
| Yes, I have seen this too. It works against sellers too,
| in a cooler market; they are more incentivized to close
| quickly than to find the best price. Considering it's
| relatively trivial to list and find just about any kind
| of good these days, I just don't see the added value that
| agents bring to either side being worth much at all.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Prices are set by supply and demand. Realtors don't control
| that.
|
| Build 1-10 million 400 sq-ft studio apartments will solve the
| housing price problem.
|
| Existing inventory can cover families.
| beiller wrote:
| Supply and demand. I think of demand as people looking to
| live in homes, not investors. If that was the case, demand
| should have dropped off a cliff after covid when they
| closed the borders. Our countries have negative birth
| rates. Immigration is the only source of new people. So you
| must have come to the conclusion at this point that the
| demand is purely investment driven via speculation. Now see
| a problem with just building more houses? They will just
| keep driving speculation until it all collapses leaving us
| with many many homes that will be wayyyy too cheap. And it
| will collapse, investors are purely just trading with
| themselves at this point as less and less people are
| participating in the market.
| jakub_g wrote:
| Love CAVE and BANANA acronyms! Very good summary of world in
| 2021 (sadly).
| dvh wrote:
| DILDO (double income large dog owners)
| paganel wrote:
| > they know your neighbors will do the dirty work of
| artificially constraining the housing supply
|
| And then the same middle-class (mostly white, with some Asian
| mix on the West Coast) plays the "revolt game" of supporting
| the Afro-American and Latino US population, blaming the
| latter's condition only on racism, totally ignoring the class
| war now unfolding in the States of which they (said middle-
| class) are the "baddies" part. Absolutely appalling.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| This comment is too on the nose, but there is truth to it. In
| the hypocrisy of urban nimbys, oblivious to the fact that
| their actions directly contribute to income inequality.
| dionidium wrote:
| This explains why the price per unit is very high, but the land
| itself is valuable in the first place because there's high
| demand for it and that land would be _even more_ valuable if it
| were legal to build more units on it, which would lower the
| price per unit, but increase the overall value of the
| investment.
|
| This is what's called a win-win.
| srj wrote:
| Consider that:
|
| - Most American households own their home.
|
| - Homeowners vote at substantially higher rates than renters.
|
| - Home equity is one of the largest components of American
| wealth (roughly equal with retirement accounts).
|
| Taken together it's difficult to see how home values will be
| allowed to fall.
| dvdhnt wrote:
| > Most American households own their home.
|
| Do you have a reference for that? I'm interested to see how
| it breaks down. I have to assume this is true because of
| America's aging population.
| kregasaurusrex wrote:
| There's data released directly by the US Census Bureau for
| this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
| spoonjim wrote:
| After I spent my entire net worth plus a good chunk of my
| _future_ net worth on this house you can be damn right I'm
| going to vote to protect its value.
| zip1234 wrote:
| Gambling your entire net worth on a single hyper-local
| investment is not a good idea.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Sadly in many parts of the US, that is how one gets access
| to the best public schools -- via home purchases. Many of
| the best public schools are in districts w/o a large number
| of rentals.
| jMyles wrote:
| If "protect its value" means maintain and strengthen it,
| retrofit it against likely disasters, plant gardens and craft
| way to preserve the products, add off-grid energey
| infrastructure, etc., then that's great.
|
| If it means try to use the heavy hand of the state to prevent
| others from living their best life, then you aren't
| protecting anything; you're violently stealing the future net
| worth of others and making it your own.
| spoonjim wrote:
| It's all violent stealing back to the white people who took
| this land from its settlers at the wrong end of a gun. I
| got ripped off and I'm not going to be the bigger man and
| be the first person in this chain to say "it's ok, I don't
| mind losing a million dollars on this."
| starclerk wrote:
| Hyperbole doesn't help here. Legalizing four-plexes in
| your neighborhood will almost never knock a million
| dollars off your home's value. I bet it'd be hard to find
| many examples of upzoning causing SFHs to drop
| significantly in price anywhere.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| It is worthwhile to recognize that there is nothing unusual
| in this response, many homeowners feel this way.
|
| But then by same token we can also move to justifying other
| things, like not hiring people without CS degrees (I spent
| $xxx,xxx on my CS degree, I want to protect its value), only
| hiring other MBAs, only hiring people with prior experience
| in tech companies etc. - which can perpetuate and amplify
| inequality in opportunity among society.
|
| At what point do we move from that to a more altruistic
| viewpoint? I am genuinely not sure.
| kody wrote:
| There's "wanting to protect the value of your home" and
| there's "I'm going to vote NIMBY/BANANA and screw everybody
| else out of a place to live because I decided to 'invest'
| all my money in this house and expect it to be a nest egg
| that catapults me out of the working class." It sounds like
| the parent is in the latter category.
|
| Is the problem "losing value in my house" or "not realizing
| astronomical gains like my peers"? And if building much-
| needed housing _does_ decrease your house 's value then
| hey, maybe your house was overvalued at the price you paid
| and you made a bad 'investment'. Why punish everyone else
| and artificially strangle housing supply to cover your bad
| decision?
| [deleted]
| symlinkk wrote:
| "Screw you, I got mine!"
|
| The capitalistic attitude in a nutshell.
| AQuantized wrote:
| More like "I got screwed and I'd rather other people get
| screwed than get screwed further." Obviously not selfless,
| but I don't think the housing market is their fault.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Yeah why fix anything ever? If it was bad for me it
| should be bad for them too right?
| kody wrote:
| In fact, I'll actively try to make things _worse_ for
| them to try and eke out a little profit.
| rabuse wrote:
| Do you own/mortgage a house you're willing to lose what
| you put in?
| JAlexoid wrote:
| BANANA results in higher homeless rates, that means that
| denying any building anywhere... you're actively
| supporting increase in homelessness.
| CapmCrackaWaka wrote:
| Hmmm this just seems like a bad decision on your part. I
| bought my house in 2018 and it was expensive, yes, but
| definitely manageable on my salary. I definitely would not
| buy a house right now, especially if it required spending 'my
| entire net worth plus a good chunk of my future net worth'.
| jiux wrote:
| What key metrics do you observe when it boils down to
| determining whether or not you feel it is a good or bad
| time to buy?
| spoonjim wrote:
| Almost everyone spends more than their present net worth on
| their house. It's great for you that you didn't have to but
| I'm not in the minority.
| granshaw wrote:
| It's a vicious cycle - OP and others are forced to commit
| most of their wealth to own a home because of all the
| NIMBYs that came before them, and on and on.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Nah... That's just ignorance.
|
| It's like the American opposition to pedestrianization of
| blocks. Pedestrianized blocks increase local business
| footfall and increase high margin economic activity.
|
| New developments in your community increase value of your
| home, far better than restricting development.
| rabuse wrote:
| How's that? Genuinely curious.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Opposition to development hurts the homeowners value, a
| lot.
|
| The value of your home doesn't only depend on the fact
| that it's in a rich neighborhood with beautiful lawns,
| but the services and proximity to said services.
|
| NYC is desireable, not because it's a big city... but
| because you can get services there. Take away the
| services - you take away all of the value proposition.
| rabuse wrote:
| In my area, we have everything around us (big retailers,
| malls, nightlife, etc.) in the suburbs in a well-off area
| in South Florida. How would adding more houses appreciate
| my property's value?
| standardUser wrote:
| For most Americans, if you want to own property you drain
| most of your savings _and_ take on debt worth many times
| your annual income. If people did not do this the demand
| for real estate would crater.
| rcpt wrote:
| I'd say the tax advantages have a lot to do with it to.
|
| A portfolio of several thousand Prop 13 jackpots is a pretty
| good situation to be in.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Makes me wish that they would increase property taxes for
| multiple residence owners & make sure to include residential
| conglomerates.
|
| It should be that each additional house after the first has a
| tax penalty that increases on a logarithmic scale to make it
| financially unsavory for people to own more than one house.
| In an ideal world, owning multiple homes would be an
| ostentatious display of wealth and not a common investment
| vehicle.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The wealthy will just create a bunch of LLCs that own one
| house each.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Indeed-- like a lot of these things, it would punish
| upper-middle class families who inherit a cottage, but
| not affect anyone with >5 residences since at scale the
| work needed to evade becomes worthwhile.
| jnosCo wrote:
| There's already multiple rules for "primary residency",
| you could structure a progressive property tax off of
| that.
| jbigelow76 wrote:
| Then single family homes owned by LLCs should be taxed
| out the ass. I know it's a cat and mouse game, but if a
| corporation is the owner of a home that should be a dead
| give away that it should be taxed at a higher rate than
| for one owned by an individual.
| rcpt wrote:
| That's a lot more complicated than a land value tax.
|
| I know Californians are sickened by the idea that taxes
| could go up when the house you live in is worth more but
| this happens all over the world and it's honestly just
| fine.
| erikerikson wrote:
| Not only investment but also as a safe holding of value or
| shadow banking unit of account. Once you get enough money
| there's no safe place to keep it. While banks are relatively
| low friction, real estate ownership is like an account with the
| state, "guaranteed" by our attachment to the structure of our
| society and the government's "monopoly" on legitimate violence.
| bennysomething wrote:
| They know that the current government planning regulations mean
| that getting anything built is extremely difficult. They know
| that due to supply and demand that this makes property a wise
| investment. Blame planning regulations. I read recently that
| Japan and new Zealand scrapped various regulations and this led
| to stabilization / lower of property prices.
|
| Near me, someone is sticking up protest letters at bus stops
| complaining a developer wants to build flats. For heaven's
| sake, people need to live somewhere, please do build.
| spunker540 wrote:
| It probably didn't hurt that Japan has a declining
| population, so supply > demand
| Drunk_Engineer wrote:
| California and NYC have a declining population.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Just distorted number because of increases homelessness.
| Sarcasm , however, there is a bit truth to that.
| viscanti wrote:
| If you cherry pick data during COVID that's true. But it
| was the first year since 1900 with any decline and state
| forecasters say it's more to do with over 50,000 COVID
| related deaths and less migration from other countries
| (the largest source of population growth for CA for many
| years now) because other countries were locked down. As
| far as I know, no one expect that decline to be anything
| more than a very temporary thing.
| adventured wrote:
| California's population expansion clearly hit a wall back
| in 2017-2018, pre-pandemic. 2019 saw their population
| expansion de facto stop. The rate of growth has been
| dropping rapidly toward zero for much of the past decade,
| and they reached that line before the pandemic hit, it's
| not a new trend due to Covid.
|
| This decade it'll go negative. The exodus - a desperate
| flight from California's particularly horrible
| governments and epic mismanagement - will get worse yet,
| not better.
|
| Fewer people want to live in California and it's very
| obvious why.
|
| 2010 to 2020, California saw a 6% population expansion.
| The slowest decade of population growth in a century for
| the state. Year to year, it went from very slow growth at
| the beginning, to zero by the end. Next is a contraction.
|
| Texas by contrast saw 16% expansion in that time. It's
| booming and it's also very obvious why.
| majormajor wrote:
| > This decade it'll go negative. The exodus - a desperate
| flight from California's particularly horrible
| governments and epic mismanagement - will get worse yet,
| not better.
|
| "You can tell that the government has failed and nobody
| wants to live their by the fact that it's too expensive"
| doesn't really add up to me...
|
| Texas cities have lots of empty surrounding land to
| sprawl into further, which massively helps with supply
| and prices. This is not some magic feat of government.
| They're _less dense_ , not _more dense_.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Fled California a dozen years ago. I miss the weather,
| but otherwise glad to have left.
|
| Gang violence, over regulation, out of control prices,
| etc.
|
| Can't imagine going back with all this nonsense around
| legalizing shop lifting, segregation coming back.
|
| Let the downvotes start
| pempem wrote:
| It doesn't need to be downvoted. You identified yourself
| with your word choice.
|
| Separately I hate the over usage of the word "fled". No
| one was chasing anyone. In an age of basically yearly
| refugee crises in the world it's terrible to see its
| overuse.
| peter422 wrote:
| I'm sure the place you moved is perfect with no problems
| whatsoever. Just like California used to be back in the
| good old days before things changed.
| bsder wrote:
| Yeah, I note that these kinds of spammy comments used to
| always mention Texas.
|
| Now I note they don't mention Texas quite so much,
| anymore.
| cromwellian wrote:
| People leave California primarily because of housing
| prices, or because they are in industries which are
| leaving California because they're not longer growth
| companies (e.g. HP)
|
| First of all, the data actually shows that while 90-100k
| people moved from CA to TX every year since 2019, about
| 40-50k moved from TX to CA, and the demographics of the
| TX->CA move is higher income, educated earners, and the
| move from CA->TX is far less Silicon Valley elite, and
| far more from the central valley, and tends to be blue
| collar.
|
| Growth follows an S-curve, and in every major successful
| city in the world, be it NY, London, Seoul Shanghai, or
| Tokyo, eventually you run into a slowdown, as cost of
| living increases.
|
| A contraction in CA's population won't be bad, because CA
| is still brain draining the rest of the country and still
| receiving a higher chunk of investment funds compared to
| other states.
|
| https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2
| 019...
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/424167/venture-
| capital-i...
|
| Reducing the burden of non-growth industries by sending
| them to TX along with blue collar workers, while taking
| the lions share of immigration of people with advanced
| degrees, as well as the lionshare of VC investment, seems
| like a good trade.
|
| Honestly, Arizona is looking a lot better to me than
| Texas over the next decade. With 6 new state of the art
| semiconductor fabs under construction (2 TSMC, 2 Intel, 1
| Samsung, 1 NXP) totalling $50 billion, another $100
| billion in investment promised by TSMC, and the recently
| enacted $50 billion Senate semiconductor package, if
| you're looking for the next Silicon Valley, the Silicon
| Desert looks more like an early real estate opportunity
| than the Silicon Hills.
|
| I don't think California has much to worry about,
| everything that makes the state great: It's natural
| environment, weather, colleges, parks, industry nexii,
| it's diverse culture, food, wine country, etc is still
| there. I know you desparately want to run with the
| conservative talking points on taxes and regulations, but
| CA's population growth issues have little to do with
| "high taxes" as many conservatives claim. Median CA
| household income is $57k, the State effective tax rate on
| that income is 3.7%, which puts CA in the middle of the
| pack when it comes to state tax burdens. CA only really
| takes a big bite of you if you make a lot of money, but
| as I've already explained, CA has net positive migration
| of high income earners, and net positive business
| migration/creation too.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Along with huge portions of the rural midwest.
|
| It all has to do with meeting the demand where the demand
| exists.
| masklinn wrote:
| > so supply > demand
|
| Nope.
|
| Japan has a declining population, but the population keeps
| urbanising. So while there's hefty supply (literally
| millions of unoccupied housing inventory) in places nobody
| wants to live in, there is not in places where people are
| moving to (large cities).
|
| There's very regularly news and posts about unoccupied
| houses ("akiya") being literally given away by government
| and local authorities because even at auction for pennies
| nobody wants to bid on rural properties. There was one
| going through here just last week.
|
| Some prefectures are nearing 20% vacancy rates, but they're
| places like... well basically all of Shikoku which is
| largely mountainous and rural, and has been bleeding
| population at a rate of 5%/decade since 2000.
| adventured wrote:
| Yep.
|
| Japan's urban population is somewhere between stagnating
| and declining, not increasing. The contraction trend is
| even worse in most of their cities other than Tokyo.
|
| Simultaneously the _percentage_ of the population that is
| urban, is very slowly increasing.
|
| Those are two very different things. Their cities are net
| contracting in population. They're now nationally losing
| people faster than they're urbanizing. They're currently
| losing around a quarter of a million people per year
| nationally. Their cities are not expanding faster than
| that drop. And given their already very high urbanization
| rate (and very slow rate of urbanization increase), it's
| unlikely anything will significantly change in that
| regard. This decade will see either a mostly flat
| population trend in Tokyo, or a modest contraction. What
| it won't show, is a meaningful expansion, as their
| national population contraction gets worse.
|
| The pandemic put enough pressure on Tokyo that it
| actually contracted for the first time in ~25 years.
|
| February 25, 2021
|
| "Tokyo, Feb. 25 (Jiji Press)--Tokyo's estimated
| population fell by 662 from a year before to 13,952,915
| as of Feb. 1, marking its first year-on-year decline in
| about 25 years, the metropolitan government said
| Thursday."
|
| https://www.nippon.com/en/news/yjj2021022500969/
|
| However, if you go back further, you can see the trend
| was already toward decline. This is from 2019:
|
| June, 2019, The Guardian
|
| "Has Tokyo reached 'peak city'?"
|
| "One could argue that the world's biggest city has hit a
| sweet spot: a flatlining population, pervasive transit
| and little gentrification. But is 'peak city' even
| possible - and where does Tokyo go from here?"
|
| "Unlike many megacities, the world's largest metropolitan
| area has largely stopped growing, either in land or
| population."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/14/has-tokyo-
| rea...
| p_l wrote:
| Japan not so much scrapped various regulations as their
| regulations are just different - and nationwide.
|
| One of the effects of how their zoning classes work is that
| you don't have "residential-only" zones with no shops or
| other amenities - instead you have zones defined along the
| lines of maximum nuisance and with overlapping uses. You have
| a total of 12 zones, which start from "exclusively low rise
| residential" that are essentially low density houses that can
| be also small shops or offices + schools, to exclusively
| industrial zones that prevent residential or other
| construction - but it's a spectrum between them.
|
| https://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-
| zoning.htm...
| bennysomething wrote:
| I live in Edinburgh in Scotland. Best feature is tenement
| flats with shops or bars below. Old town is especially
| mixed use and it's brilliant because of it.
| [deleted]
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Every now and then I watch one of these Japanese "video
| walk" channels on YouTube and find myself despairing at how
| wildly better their land use is than in the US.
|
| Obviously some of that is to be expected of an island
| nation versus a continent-spanning one. And yet, so much of
| Tokyo seems like it's built at the scale of a small-town
| main street: Between the major roads with their skyscrapers
| sit networks of pedestrian-friendly streets with little
| shops and restaurants, often crossed by even smaller
| _yokocho_ which themselves have bars and flats. Quiet side
| streets intermix residential buildings and even single-
| family homes, and yet somehow these little districts are
| all linked up together into the world 's largest
| metropolis.
| nadagast wrote:
| This was one of the biggest things that struck me when I
| visited Japan. Their cities are just so much
| friendlier/better than 99% of American cities.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Obviously some of that is to be expected of an island
| nation versus a continent-spanning one.
|
| It has little to do with "island nation", most nations
| use mixed zoning, it's certainly the standard in europe
| (and recent developments are gravitating towards more
| mixed zoning e.g. Amsterdam's eastern docklands). It
| _could_ have to do with being an _old_ nation, but even
| then that 's not actually true, the US existed for a
| while before cars happened.
| te_chris wrote:
| NZ has not got anything near price stability. It's going
| mental as they all sell the same houses to each other over
| and over
| joe_the_user wrote:
| A neighbor was complaining just the other day about a
| developer want to build two houses on a sliver of land in our
| small historic town. I've got no reason to support this.
| There's space to build an apartment building near me but no
| one want to do that (a building, in fact, burned down a while
| back and hasn't been rebuilt).
|
| Neighbors want no development. Developers want to build more
| of the ubber expensive houses the neighbors want to protect.
| You need regulations that encourage dense, ideally very
| dense, housing. Enough dense housing and you can "preserve
| the character" (if not the home values) of the smallish
| towns.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Of course, those regulations to support dense housing need
| to be supported by other things; like money for streets,
| sewer, water, etc. If the town's streets are already
| crowded with traffic and it's sewer system can barely keep
| up, then building dense housing it going to destroy the
| town. And for a town that is already "in place", adding a
| bigger sewer system is hard. Widening streets is even more
| difficult because you'd need to buy up the land that the
| current builds are on. It's not as simple a solution as
| "build dense housing" makes it sound.
| babyshake wrote:
| What about throwing as much money as it takes to not only
| build new towns with dense housing in places where those
| towns don't already exist, but to make those new places
| to live much more desirable than a pre-planned new
| development normally would be? I imagine the political
| will isn't there. The answer to me would be an ultimatum.
| Either yes in your backyard, or a tax is levied for a new
| development that won't be total crap.
| markdown wrote:
| > I read recently that Japan and new Zealand scrapped various
| regulations and this led to stabilization / lower of property
| prices.
|
| I don't know about Japan, but that can't possibly be right
| about NZ. Nobody in our generation will ever be able to
| afford a home in Auckland.
|
| Land Value Tax sorely needed.
| beiller wrote:
| Same in Canada. I am in the top 3% of wage earners in the
| entire country and can not "afford" to buy. Average price
| is > 1 million. At > 1 million, a 20% down payment is
| required in cash. That would basically take my well
| balanced portfolio into pure real estate holdings not to
| mention a massive tax hit to sell 200k+ of my portfolio. I
| used quotes in afford because I could afford it, but I feel
| it would be a huge mistake
| kerng wrote:
| Another reason to consider: money printing and inflation
| joe_the_user wrote:
| If you could unravel all perverse effects of American localist
| planning and regulation, it would be great.
|
| But if the idea is just "let the developers build where they
| want and that solves everything", that idea is wrong.
| Developers don't want to build the dense, affordable house
| that's needed. Developers want to take advantage of the
| existing housing and housing expectation and build one bigger
| house or bigger development one ring out among the suburbs.
|
| What's needed is dense construction near to cities and
| regulations to support that. And "Yimby" and so forth aren't
| supporting no regulations, they're supporting pure developer
| friendly regulations, which won't do anything but give them a
| piece of the present perverse "gold rush".
| WalterBright wrote:
| Developers make money by building what people want.
| hilbertseries wrote:
| What is this nonsense? Yimbys are support upzoning property,
| so denser housing can be built. They support removing parking
| minimums so denser housing can be built.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Most places (where I live, Nevada City, for example)
| upzoning and reducing parking limits would just create
| problems. It's the actual central areas where you want to
| allow much greater density. A denser outlying suburb isn't
| a win.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Outlying suburbs should see an increase in the sorts of
| things that make them "places". Cafes, bakeries, bars,
| restaurants, offices, markets, schools, plazas,
| bookstores, and so on. Then they can further densify
| without automatically driving more commute traffic into
| the city.
| jeffbee wrote:
| If you want to fuck with landlords all you have to do is repeal
| your local zoning codes. Institutional money is pouring in
| because American cities have erected ridiculous barriers to entry
| in the housing market, making appreciation of home prices state
| policy. Repeal those barriers and make landlords poor again.
| alert0 wrote:
| That actually messes with single family home owners more. I
| would love to provide more housing and make more money.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't care. Landlords aren't "providing housing" they are
| just money conduits. It is demonstrably the labor of their
| tenants which provides the housing, and the pendulum needs to
| swing back in the tenants' favor for a while.
| [deleted]
| alert0 wrote:
| I think they are. They are purchasing an asset that others
| may not be able to afford and making it available.
| Additionally, they're funding construction of more housing
| wherever possible. Are tenants just money conduits for the
| corporations they work for?
| esarbe wrote:
| The superoverrich are currently drowning in money. They don't
| know what to do with their money anymore. That's how you end up
| with the ridiculous stock marked and the bitcoin surges.
|
| If just a fraction of that money were put to good use, society
| would benefit immensely. We could pay to improve public schools
| for example, or offer a public healthcare option.
| dang wrote:
| We've changed the URL from
| https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676 to
| the article it points to, in keeping with the HN guidelines:
|
| " _Please submit the original source. If a post reports on
| something found on another site, submit the latter._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| abfan1127 wrote:
| paying 20-50% over asking price is an interesting move. To make
| money on that over-pricing you have to price rent accordingly.
| The only way to keep rents up is to limit inventory. If you can't
| stop the building of new houses, what's their out?
|
| Sounds like a good time to exit Blackrock as your money manager?
| milkytron wrote:
| > If you can't stop the building of new houses, what's their
| out?
|
| Many areas have significantly slowed (or prevented) the
| building of new houses. Blackrock probably doesn't expect this
| to change. Supply is constrained and doesn't seem to be getting
| better. In their eyes, being in the market with a limited
| supply, high demand, and no major changes to supply production
| seems to be worth the premium.
| janmo wrote:
| I really wish there will be a Subprime 2.0 and this time without
| bailouts.
| motohagiography wrote:
| When you add the no-interest rate environment that creates price
| bubbles and mortgagtes where people never build significant
| equity, this destroys the ability of families to build wealth, it
| turns young people into urbanized share cropping serfs. I guess
| young people can look forward to owning nothing and being happy
| about it?
|
| The only people who can compete to own property in an environment
| like this are the extremely wealthy, or those of very independent
| means. This marks the end of opportunity for generations of
| working people.
| kerng wrote:
| The US is printing money which will lead to like a 10% inflation
| rate probably.
|
| Even now food is noticable more expensive.
|
| So, over the course of a few years these are good investments.
|
| For the same reason people (and Blackrock is interested or has
| already) bought Bitcoin.
| s17n wrote:
| This could be an interesting topic but a rant about cabals and
| the Great Reset is probably not the right starting point.
| briefcomment wrote:
| Call it what you want, but the obvious fallout of this is that
| valuable assets will be owned by very few people, and rented
| out. A tenet of the Great Reset is that "you will own nothing
| and be happy".
| [deleted]
| screye wrote:
| At a philosophical level, I am opposed to the idea of funds being
| able to hold onto property like a pure monetary asset.
|
| Past the primary residence, individual landlords have some
| plausible deniability for having a 2nd/3rd home. Maybe they want
| to return to the house one day. Maybe it is a vacation home. A
| lot of folks on HN are libertarian and believe in the power of
| the free market. When supply can be kept artificially scarce, the
| market stops being free. The Bay Area is a master class in this.
|
| Among developed countries, the US is uniquely incompetent at
| urban development. They've created unsustainable suburbs and made
| every attempt possible to destroy cities. What's worse, is that
| generations of this pattern have led to rosy eyed images of
| suburbs among the younger generation and a skewed perspective of
| what cities look like. I live in an international group home, and
| Americans are unique in their desire to stay in suburbs. The
| Europeans, South Asians and East Asians would all much prefer to
| stay near the 'happening parts', and even their choices of
| suburbs are far denser than 99% of US cities.
|
| Lastly, allowing foreign investors to snatch an essential and
| scarce resource from the hands of your own citizens is
| incompetence bordering on malice worth the dismissal of everyone
| involved. Trump did a lot of things wrong, but the US could learn
| some protectionism. (I am not even American)
|
| ________________________________
|
| I am usually more reserved in my opinion when engaging with
| people whose intellect I respect. But, this is an exception.
|
| [rant] I truly believe that the NIMBY & fans of American urban
| planning are as objectively in the wrong as one can be on a topic
| with as much emotional subjectivity as housing. It is a strong
| accusation, but people who still vehemently oppose densification
| of America are brainwashed , blinded by greed or both. [\rant]
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Twitter is an awful blogging format when your message takes more
| than one tweet. It makes you blend in as well, making it easier
| for fake news to spread - you aren't that different from a
| billion other accounts all saying striking things. At least with
| a blog, you have a more recognizable identity and the ability to
| write more than a few words at a time
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't complain about website formatting, back-button
| breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be
| interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then
| friendly feedback might be helpful._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27449544.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| We know. This sentiment is expressed literally every time a
| Twitter thread is posted to HN. Use threadreaderapp unroll and
| move on.
| WYepQ4dNnG wrote:
| I know this is an unpopular opinion, but houses should not be
| used as investments.
|
| Every person on the planet has the need and the right to live
| somewhere.
|
| Unfortunately the way it works today, allow a small fraction of
| the population to buy more and more houses at the expense of the
| majority of people who are constantly out bidden and forced to
| rent, thus fueling this circle. Landlord get richer, buys more
| houses and so on.
|
| The only way to stop this is taxes! Should not be convenient to
| buy houses for the sole purpose of renting them amount,
| especially for foreigners, see Denmark.
| ilamont wrote:
| I'm concerned not only about the Blackrocks, but also smaller
| investors fueled by cheap cash and wealth fantasies based on
| flipping and FIRE/4HWW. The depressed, small city in northern New
| York featured in this article (https://www.uticaod.com/in-
| depth/news/2021/04/07/vaccination...) has people buying houses
| sight unseen from other states, which might be a good thing if
| they intend to live there, create businesses, build up the city's
| tax base, and invest in the community. However, I am very
| skeptical any of that will happen based on the many reasons cited
| in the article.
|
| I can't see how this ends well.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| The middle class continues to get raped and fleeced by
| corporations while our governments do nothing. This is how
| America dies.
| kazen44 wrote:
| i wonder how long until social unrest truely takes hold,
| especially among young adults.
|
| standards of living have been going down in the past decade,
| while the government seems to think young people have nothing
| to moan about. not to mention the massive bill called climate
| change which is due sooner or later.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| I don't think there will be, at least not for several
| decades.
|
| Things are "bad" for many people in the country, but not
| third-world-country bad. People will be too focused on just
| meeting their basic needs. In what little free time they
| have, they will distract themselves with their phones that
| will tell/comfort them that the "other side" is responsible
| for the general malaise (instead of the collective rich
| elites).
| gpsx wrote:
| Mortgage rates have been falling for the past 40 years. Now they
| might start rising (emphasis on might). If they do, could that
| reverse the continuous rise of housing prices? That is how the
| bond market works, which has also seen rate drops and prices
| rises for the past few decades now.
| cletus wrote:
| Here's what we need: if the beneficial owner of a property is not
| a resident of that state the property tax rate should be
| punitively high. This includes any corporations or LLCs that own
| property.
|
| It's important that we have property as an investment vehicle...
| to a point. After all, that's where the pool of rental properties
| comes from. But this kind of national carpet bombing of housing
| supply by hedge funds is the last thing we need.
|
| As another example of what I consider a disgusting practice:
| hedge funds have bought up the trailer parks and then jacking up
| the rent. These houses are technically "mobile" but actually have
| limited mobility. Each move also damages the property. These
| should be owned collectively by the residents of the trailer
| park. But hedge funds know they essentially have a captive market
| to prey on.
|
| Much like when Goldman Sachs created an investment vehicle for
| wheat and then drove up the global cost to profit at the expense
| of actually killing people who couldn't afford to eat, I put this
| in the same category as disgusting and morally reprehensible. And
| while it's up to politicians to fix it, you can still hate the
| players.
| cnc102 wrote:
| Nothing to see here, the central committee has told us there is
| no inflation. Better discuss really important issues like
| pronouns and the patriarchy.
| habibur wrote:
| Sidestepping all the emotional comments. It's open market. Adopt
| to it.
|
| 1. Build more homes.
|
| 2. Sell to Blackrock or whatever at 2x or 3x your cost.
|
| 3. Profit!
| pixl97 wrote:
| Have you tried 1 in most places?
|
| No lot availability. No materials to build the house. No
| workers available to build the house. Etc.
| habibur wrote:
| Then the problem is NOT "Blackrock buying homes".
|
| It's elsewhere.
| briefcomment wrote:
| The problem is that Blackrock is taking advantage of "free
| money" to get in on this arbitrage while it can, while
| normal people don't have anywhere close to the same
| opportunities to take advantage of "free money". Naturally,
| Banks eat up all land and houses, and then "you will own
| nothing and be happy", as per WEF.
| Splendor wrote:
| And zoning laws designed to keep houses expensive.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Add in zoning and NIMBYs and getting anything built is a
| nightmare.
| igetspam wrote:
| I'm about 99% sure I'll get downvoted for this but how do I sell
| my house a pension fund? I have a house with a renter in it and I
| would gladly sell it to anyone who would buy it without having to
| displace the renter. Right now, I'm stuck holding it for a little
| while longer because the renter and I have an agreement.
| milkytron wrote:
| You could put it on the market and have contingencies that
| satisfy your agreement. As for selling to a pension fund
| specifically, I think that would be more work than it might be
| worth, and you'd probably be better off making it open to all
| types of buyers.
| igetspam wrote:
| Private buyers are usually looking for homes to live in and
| the one institutional buyer I've spoken to gives any existing
| renters the boot as soon as they take the title. The linked
| story sold an entire block of rentals as one lot. Maybe I'll
| get lucky and someone at a fund will see this thread and be
| interested in the idea.
| adflux wrote:
| I really wish we'd get some innovation in the housing market. 3D
| printing of houses or something could be epic. "Just" disrupt the
| current construction companies... It's clear they can't keep up
| with the demand right now.
| mirker wrote:
| Location matters too. I don't think the problem is making a log
| cabin in the woods.
| valeness wrote:
| I think the disruption will come from the civil planning side
| of the equation. When we can figure out how to build a city
| on the edge of Arizona that people actually want to live in
| then we can begin to leverage more efficient and automated
| building techniques like 3d printing houses and stuff.
|
| It takes more than houses; also entertainment, food,
| infrastructure, jobs, etc. Otherwise, you're 100% right,
| location is king and nobody wants to move away from a
| fun/profitable/valuable city to live in an abandoned mining
| town in Oklahoma just so they can own a home.
|
| As dystopian as it might sound, I wonder if there is some way
| to "crowdfund" or "preorder" a new township location.
| Everyone signs up, pledges like 1,000 USD or something with a
| lease extending at least 3+ years. And developers can use
| that money to build an entirely new township in a location
| with cheaper land. This might help alleviate the problems
| that come along during a cold start with requiring critical
| mass adoption before a location is desireable to live in.
| (Not suggesting this exact course because having an entire
| town owned by a single developer sounds like a capitalist
| hellscape; just thinking out loud, I don't know what the
| actual solution would be)
|
| I believe something similar is already happening with
| something like the Culdesac project. (I have no affiliation
| with this project, just so happen to live near it and have
| heard about it a few times) : https://culdesac.com/
| pentagone wrote:
| Like this?
| https://archive.curbed.com/2019/5/31/18639098/california-
| cit...
| valeness wrote:
| Yes, although in hindsight it's easy to say that was
| poorly executed. It looks far too big and tried to be
| more than it should have been in my opinion. I'm thinking
| more along the lines of small neighborhoods on the edge
| of a city that can provide stronger logistical support.
|
| Closer to Sun City Arizona.
|
| > ... This caught the eye of the FTC, which said the
| advertising was deceptive and ordered the city's
| developers to stop ...
|
| This is also an interesting point in the article. Was it
| actually a scam or just overly ambitious and poorly
| executed?
| adflux wrote:
| Sure, we can't print more ground to build on. But it's
| another cause of increasing real estate prices here in the
| Netherlands.
|
| Probably need to zone some of that agricultural land (60% of
| land usage in the netherlands) into housing, if we want to
| give young homeowners a chance at owning property.
| mirker wrote:
| Oof... trading food for shelter seems like a problem I
| wouldn't want to think about
| Ekaros wrote:
| Just take it from flowers...
| clucas wrote:
| Axios just had a little blurb about this:
| https://www.axios.com/housing-prices-construction-costs-8acb...
|
| The bottom line is that local land-use laws are murky and
| problems with local codes are very difficult to predict and
| control for at scale - and that's the way existing homeowners
| want it.
|
| It's interesting too that homeowners are such a powerful lobby,
| but without a single entity setting policy or giving talking
| points. It is, essentially, our culture. This is the way we
| want it to be. At least for now.
| f6v wrote:
| Isn't prefab a thing in the US? I have a hunch 3D printing
| won't solve the issue since you need not just walls, but
| plumbing, electricity, windows, doors, etc. Then again, imagine
| Blackrock or someone else just starts buying land. You're
| screwed anyway.
| kazen44 wrote:
| this,
|
| if half of Europe could solve their housing crisis after ww2
| thanks to plattenbau, so should the us.
| jsmcgd wrote:
| Lack of housing is not a technology or industrial problem. New
| homes can be made easily and relatively cheaply if given the go
| ahead.
|
| Lack of housing is by policy. By ensuring there are not enough
| houses ensures there is more demand than supply, which means
| higher housing prices, which means higher mortgages. The
| mortgage market is based on rising house prices. The banking
| industry is based on the mortgage industry. Low house prices,
| would mean a falling mortgage market, which means a banking
| crises. Given that the banking cartel has more influence on
| politicians than the populous, we have this current state of
| affairs.
|
| Remember, in the 1950s a new build home would cost about 1
| years salary. Now one year's salary might only buy a nice car.
| Building technology hasn't gotten worse, it's much better and
| cheaper. It's not the construction companies that need
| disrupting.
|
| Edit: Also I should say that that was the state of affairs
| until just recently. This recent move by Blackrock and the like
| is the prelude to massive inflation. They are abandoning paper
| assets (cash, equities etc) and investing in hard assets like
| housing, farmland and commodities.
| rmah wrote:
| _Remember, in the 1950s a new build home would cost about 1
| years salary_
|
| I'm afraid that is mostly a myth. This source
| (https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-
| inco...) shows that the home price to median household income
| multiple in 1950 was around 6, or about the same as now. It
| did fall quite dramatically during the late 1950's, going a
| bit under 5x by 1960 and nearing an all time low of just over
| 4x by the late 1990's.
|
| This other source
| (https://archive.curbed.com/2018/4/10/17219786/buying-a-
| house...) shows that median household income in 1950 was
| $3,000 and the median "home value" was $7,400. Which is still
| 2.45x. By 2000, the multiple had declined to 2.17. I suspect
| the media home sale price was substantially higher.
|
| Both sources show a surge in home prices during the housing
| bubble between 2000 and 2010.
|
| Note, you also get a LOT more house now than you did in the
| 1950's. Much much larger, much higher quality, many more
| amenities, etc.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| Blackrock is not abandoning anything or massively shifting
| strategy they have always been a real estate focused investor
| and have a multi decade history of residential single family
| investment. This is not evidence of coming inflation.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Except construction costs are insane nowadays, and there is a
| massive shortage of trade workers. Your theory could hold
| true if we just considered existing homes, but the costs to
| build a new home have went through the roof in the last
| decade.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| 66,781,000 Detached Single Family Homes in the US [0]
|
| $272,400 median home selling price in the US, 2020 [1]
|
| That's just over $18 Trillion for the entire US Detached Single
| Family Home market. I'd be interested to know how much Blackrock
| has budgeted for this fund (and how much of the spend is
| leveraged, and up to what number. And who else is doing the same
| type of fund and to what magnitude).
|
| Note that per Statista, the median home price is anticipated to
| increase from $272,400 to $324,000 between Q4 2020 and Q2 2022.
| That's a 20% increase in real estate over an 18 month period.
| Given that we're seeing this story now, Blackrock likely executed
| these purchases many months ago. Their fund is likely leveraged,
| making the potential profits huge.
|
| It looks like a very high-stakes play by Blackrock, which I know
| to be a hedge fund, so perhaps part and parcel of their business.
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/377896/owner-occupied-
| ho...
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272776/median-price-
| of-e...
| harambae wrote:
| >It looks like a very high-stakes play by Blackrock
|
| In what sense? That housing could collapse in price after they
| made a large investment in it (and since housing is a huge
| market, Blackrock could have leveraged up to a higher amount
| than typical)?
|
| Market cap of Apple is over $2 Trillion, they could have
| leveraged pretty far into this too.
| juloo wrote:
| Median != mean. Multiplying it literally means "The value of
| this particular house I know nothing about times 66 millions".
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| Well, that is true.
|
| Looks like the average is $368,400:
|
| https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_existing_singlefamily_home.
| ..
| nathan11 wrote:
| Probably worth pointing out this twitter account is promoting the
| idea that the 2020 election was stolen. To me that casts
| suspicion on their other assertions.
| [deleted]
| mrzimmerman wrote:
| They also push the idea of "The Great Reset" in that thread,
| which is another conspiracy theory that is tied up with FEMA
| putting people in camps in abandoned Walmarts, Bill Gates
| chipping us through the Covid-19 vaccine, and Q-anon.
|
| As soon as they brought up "The Great Reset" I found the whole
| thread lost credibility.
| devmunchies wrote:
| great reset is not a conspiracy theory[1]. however,
| attributing abandoned walmarts to the great reset is a
| theory.
|
| 1: https://www.weforum.org/great-reset
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| > "The Great Reset" in that thread, which is another
| conspiracy theory"
|
| Curious to see the argument _against_ "The Great Reset" tbf.
| dang wrote:
| This comment refers to the original URL,
| https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676,
| which we've since replaced with the article it points to (in
| keeping with the site guidelines).
| president wrote:
| Dismissing someone because they hold a viewpoint you disagree
| with is childish and dangerous to our society. By that logic we
| should all be dismissing CNN reporting because they were
| peddling Covington kids and russian collusion among other
| things proven to be false. We should all be striving to take in
| all sources of information and use our best judgement to judge
| and interpret them.
| mrzimmerman wrote:
| There is a host of terms used in that thread that point to
| the person as a conspiracy theorist. "The Cabal", "The Great
| Reset". These are terms used in the Qanon community
| constantly.
|
| It has to do with the person lacking credibility based on
| their own statements than them holding an opposing viewpoint.
| president wrote:
| I have no idea what those things are and I'll give you the
| benefit of the doubt but the twitter post referenced a
| wsj.com article. I don't think we should shoot him down for
| linking to a trusted source.
| mullen wrote:
| > Russian Collusion
|
| There is really strong evidence that there is Russian
| Collusion. The Muller report is full of actions by the Trump
| election team that point to them working in conjunction with
| Russia and Russian Agents.
| beervirus wrote:
| Do you cast aspersions like this on people who think the 2016
| election was stolen? They tend to be a lot more respected, but
| they're just as incorrect.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I haven't heard that one.
|
| 2000 election stolen? Absolutely.
| beervirus wrote:
| That seems unlikely. Here's one high-profile example:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-
| trum...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Wow, how is it I had forgotten the FBI Director, James
| Comey, announcing just days before the election that
| Hillary Clinton was being investigated?
|
| It's been a strange past 4 years....
| gfodor wrote:
| I follow this account and others like it because it allows one
| to be exposed to things like the idea that COVID leaked from a
| lab a year ago.
|
| Skepticism is warranted in all cases, of course, but I think
| it's extremely healthy to keep in tune with a variety of
| subcommunities who are in and of themselves skeptics of many
| mainstream narratives.
| TheCowboy wrote:
| Conspiracy proponents act like the lab leak theory being true
| is some game changer. It's the stupidest thing. Even if it
| wasn't leaked, China sure did a lot to mess up and exacerbate
| the early response to the pandemic for the world.
| Additionally, people have been critical of wet markets in
| China from early on, one suspected source of where it first
| spread to humans.
|
| I have no problem with investigating if it was a lab leak or
| anything else, but enough with trying to turn this into some
| political wedge issue that people wield as a cudgel against
| 'the sheeple'. Skepticism here isn't some neutral point of
| view.
| gfodor wrote:
| > trying to turn this into some political wedge issue that
| you wield as a cudgel against 'the sheeple'
|
| This thing you did here is mind-reading - nothing you wrote
| here is present in my original comment. You may be living
| in a small set of filter bubbles compared to the average.
| TheCowboy wrote:
| I changed "you" to "people" since I meant it in the
| general sense of how self-proclaimed skeptics treat this
| topic and say condescending things like this:
|
| > You may be living in a small set of filter bubbles
| compared to the average.
| gfodor wrote:
| Understood - I rescind my comment since the way it was
| written I interpreted it to mean you were accusing me
| personally of doing this.
|
| I am not sure why, if your original comment was properly
| interpreted the way I did, it would be unfair to posit
| the idea of you living in limited filter bubbles. It's
| nothing to be ashamed of since we are all continually
| being victimized by social media algorithms into being
| exposed to information they feel will drive changes in
| our behavior. Everyone lives in filter bubbles. I don't
| know how to properly engage someone with the idea they
| ought to consider they're in a particularly narrow set
| without them feeling attacked. The best I've seen in some
| areas of inquiry is a tool you can use to analyze your
| twitter account to understand the scope of news sources
| you interact with, but that's limited obviously given the
| domain constraint. Even then it's hard to convince a
| person they are living on a overly-constrained
| information diet.
| gfodor wrote:
| I will add, separately:
|
| > Conspiracy proponents act like the lab leak theory being
| true is some game changer. It's the stupidest thing.
|
| On the virus issue specifically, here are three mainstream
| narratives that have been largely up-ended, and if you were
| in tune with a variety of viewpoints you would have been
| exposed to for your own conclusions before they became
| mainstream:
|
| - "Coronavirus" was an immense threat and it was wise to
| prepare for it arriving and turning into a pandemic.
| Government actions to cut it off eg by banning travel was
| warranted. (Promoted in Jan 2020 in certain circles,
| discounted by consensus)
|
| - Being a likely airborne pathogen, wearing masks
| (particularly N95s) was wise. (Promoted from Jan, in March
| the surgeon general and others claimed there was no reason
| to wear masks.)
|
| - Given the proximity to the lab the idea this came from
| the lab was a worthy explanation worth investigating.
| (Promoted from March by my recollection)
|
| For me, I was wearing a medical-grade mask in stores and
| stocking up on supplies in January 2020 due to my exposure
| to this information with a relatively open mind. I don't
| discount the possibility that, given that I have advanced
| lung disease, this priming reduced my prior probabilities
| of catching and even dying from this pandemic. I was
| mentally a few weeks ahead of the narratives I read in the
| media throughout this pandemic and made a variety of
| decisions around risk management that were in conflict with
| what felt like the average consensus. This doesn't mean I
| was _confident_ in these theories per se, but when you 're
| forced into making risk adjusted decisions having a
| diversity of ideas swirling in your head opens the
| possibility of having a better risk calculus, esp if the
| goal is to be conservative.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| That's a broken calendar is right once a year situation.
| gfodor wrote:
| This is a false mental model because there is no singular
| calendar. If you are actually exposed to a variety of ideas
| there is no obvious, universal set of narratives you can
| point to as having a clean bisection between one or two
| 'calendars.' Tribalism does cause things to increasingly
| cut that way, but the mental model is still a false one.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| I don't understand how you can manage, honestly. The absolute
| swarm of conspiracies around COVID and the election
| overwhelmed me and i wasn't even trying to stay informed on
| them. Furthermore, even if i was trying to stay informed on
| them it seems like a full time job trying to discern the
| "maybe not entirely moronic" conspiracies to the completely
| batshit ones. Most are batshit, it seems.
|
| Sounds exhausting.
| gfodor wrote:
| I find that the times it is exhausting is when I've been
| overly attached to my own beliefs such that there's an
| emotional response to being exposed to claims in conflict
| to them. The best way to overcome this inhibitor to open
| mindedness in my opinion is to just ensure you have a broad
| exposure such that it becomes normal and unimpactful to
| read many things you strongly disagree with regularly.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| I don't know if reading about how someone is the devil or
| how vaccines put 5G computer chips in my arm will ever
| not be draining.
| lolc wrote:
| While I agree that it's healthy to keep a broad set of
| sources, I find that once a source has shown to be
| untrustworthy on some topic, I discount them on other
| topics too. There is a difference between having a
| certain worldview and twisting facts to your narrative.
|
| Unfortunately, a good chunk of the Republican party in
| the U.S. is happily ignoring facts around the last
| presidential election. There is little use in exposing
| yourself to their faux complaints. Much like it was not
| useful to read up on the "Russian connection" that was
| invented to attack Trump. So when people fall prey to
| these ideas, I discount their opinion. I stop reading
| them. No reason to willingly absorb noise.
| gfodor wrote:
| These people you mention aren't generating these theories
| nor am I suggesting we take their conclusions into
| consideration - my point is they have value as _relays_
| which are connected to networks you otherwise would not
| have access to, and as alternative _relevancy ranking
| algorithms_ over the set of published information. For
| example, this WSJ article gets an increased weight in
| being exposed to me as a side effect of not masking out
| this person who is promoting it based upon their own,
| more widely scoped, conspiracy theory.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Something else to be skeptical of: skepticism.
|
| A good amount of skepticism is great. Questioning everything
| is belligerent and actually close-minded rather than open.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| What you describe is called pseudoskepticism.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoskepticism
| [deleted]
| gfodor wrote:
| There's no objective measure for one to define what is a
| "good amount" of skepticism. The trap of using this as an
| excuse to shield yourself from people who have a higher
| level of conspiratorial or counter-consensus thinking than
| you prefer or have yourself is one worth trying to be
| mindful of. Claiming there are people who "question
| everything" is a yellow flag, imo, because that literally
| doesn't exist, though I know you were speaking
| hyperbolically. But having the capacity to bucket people
| into a group who "questions everything" despite the reality
| such a person literally cannot exist, may mean you are
| over-weighting this mental model.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| It sounds like you agree that there is a "bad amount" of
| skepticism but no way to measure that either?
|
| Then it is as easy for me to say you have fallen into the
| trap of being _overly_ skeptical but are using an excuse
| to shield yourself from people that would call you a
| raving nutter.
|
| I don't worry too much about finding a way to measure
| what a "good amount" of skepticism is. Like pornography,
| I know it when I see, er, smell it.
| gfodor wrote:
| No, I reject the over-simplified model in general, but my
| argument is that whatever terms you are, in your own
| model, using to mean "good" and "bad" and "too much" and
| "too little" are irrelevant to the question of, even if
| you could define them clearly, if you can also place and
| measure a valid threshold. Given the problem here
| specifically is the epistemological value of consuming
| views you currently disagree with, by setting yourself up
| as judge and jury of who is considered worth listening to
| you're just begging the question, regardless of your
| framework to act as said judge.
|
| At the end of the day, you have scarce attention, so
| there are necessarily heuristics you need to use to
| navigate information and consuming it due to opportunity
| costs. But my argument is that pegging some people and
| not others as "too skeptical" is low on the list of good
| heuristics.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I went on Zillow and looked at the house I'm renting (not in a
| major market) and it went up $28K in expected value in the last
| 30 days.
|
| Can't see buying in this market at all. Fully expect my rent to
| be raised after my 1 year lease is up.
|
| Who's improving what?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| At least you have somewhere to live. Our rental is being sold.
| There are no rentals in this county and few in the next.
|
| All of our jobs are here.
| Exuma wrote:
| Same......... I'm essentially being forced to buy as renting
| isn't an option and we can't move.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Sorry to hear that :-(
| pandeiro wrote:
| Aside from the distraction of the author's nuttery, the issue is
| probably the most salient one for the American middle class over
| the next century.
|
| Either very strong measures are imposed to limit / de-incentivize
| real estate speculation and hoarding, or the vast, vast majority
| of the population is entirely excluded from any kind of property
| ownership.
|
| And while simplistic 'conspiracy' thinking definitely is of a
| much lower value than rigorous analysis, there is IMO merit to at
| least acknowledging that the politically powerful class might
| overlap substantially with the rentier (property ownership) class
| and thus resist any such reform taking place. It shouldn't be out
| of bounds to speculate on the motives of powerful actors, even if
| it is obviously not the same as making evidence-based claims.
| dang wrote:
| This comment refers to the original URL,
| https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676,
| which we've since replaced with the article it points to (in
| keeping with the site guidelines).
| phpsuks wrote:
| I don't want to be that guy but I feel like Americans and
| majority of the democratic World have forgotten that the laws
| they keep criticizing are the ones THEY voted for.
|
| Protesting is fine but I never see voters take responsibility
| for their own bad choices. They are heavily influenced by so-
| called influencers and vote according to them instead of their
| own thinking. CA Prop 13 is something people of CA voted for.
| It is obviously working for majority of the people in CA. So
| whats the whining about? People of SF elected Boudin and are
| not signing enough recall petitions, surely its working for
| most people.
|
| Democracy doesn't guarantee utopia, their will be some people
| mad about the system. But they have to accept they are in
| minority. There is no conspiracy, voters need to take
| responsibility for their own wrong choices first.
| bityard wrote:
| A.k.a. The Carvana model. This is what Carvana and other "no-
| haggle, no-test-drive" startups are doing with the whole used car
| market in many areas. They aggresively buy up all the used cars
| in an area (or at least as many as they can) from dealerships and
| private sellers in order to make themselves the only entity with
| used cars for sale. Which they happen to be selling at 20% above
| true market value. But hey, you can buy the car from an app on
| your phone without the burden of haggling with a salesman or even
| a test-drive!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Which they happen to be selling at 20% above true market
| value.
|
| If carvana is not providing that value, then there should exist
| plenty of sellers that want a piece of that 20%, such as car
| dealerships and individuals themselves.
|
| This is a market with plenty of buyers and sellers, and low
| transaction costs. I see no reason why Carvana would be able to
| corner it.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I shop for used vehicles fairly regularly and don't see
| evidence of this. Prices are high right now but not because any
| one entity has a lot of inventory. Keep in mind that a healthy
| market for used cars encourages more owners to sell and get
| something new.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Middlemen leeching off of middlemen. Allow car manufacturers to
| sell directly to consumers and the problem will sort itself
| out.
| kami8845 wrote:
| In which areas does Carvana own all the cars for sale?
| rbg246 wrote:
| Wow crazed conspiracy stuff topping hacker news.
| cosmojg wrote:
| If only so many people didn't treat land and houses like
| investments, there wouldn't be such a disastrous hoarding
| problem. Henry George's Land Value Tax [1][2] seems like an
| obvious economic fix that would require a large fraction of the
| population to change how they think about land and natural
| resources, but most of them are invested in such a way (i.e.
| owning multiple houses on multiple parcels of land, often without
| renting anything out) that it is in their economic self-interest
| to block any such proposals. Although, I suppose this situation
| isn't unique. The world has long been doomed by coordination
| problems.
|
| [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-
| progr...
|
| [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
| matthoiland wrote:
| > Everybody works but the vacant lot. I paid $3600 for this lot
| and will hold 'till I get $6000. The profit is unearned
| increment made possible by the presence of this community and
| enterprise of its people. I take the profit without earning it.
| for the remedy read Henry George.
|
| - Billboard posted in an empty lot, Rockford Illinois, 1914
| jkubicek wrote:
| For remedy read this wikipedia page:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
| FredPret wrote:
| That's a common meme - that asset appreciation is unearned
| wealth.
|
| But it's not.
|
| That investor could've spent the 3600 on hookers and
| blackjack.
|
| Investors freezing their money in communities in the form of
| real estate or other investment is a key part of those
| communites becoming richer and more complex.
|
| There's a real risk of losing your money - there's no worse
| financial nightmare than holding real estate that you're
| trying to sell for years... but no-one is buying
| s_dev wrote:
| >that asset appreciation is unearned wealth
|
| I'm sure we can agree the vacant lot never improved itself.
| It's not unearned -- it's earned by the surrounding
| community improving things -- which make that lot more
| attractive.
|
| The incentives don't align. If that community was to
| massively regress e.g. unfavorable rezoning -- the value of
| that lot would plummet.
|
| However in this case it's likely to be partially addressed
| by paying land value taxes which disincentivizes leaving it
| vacant -- what Henry George was getting at and wasn't there
| at the time.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| How did the investor in that empty lot make the community
| richer?
| FredPret wrote:
| Speculative investment without asset improvements like
| that is the worst kind, but it still serves to stabilize
| prices for other investors. At worst, the speculator
| loses their shirt and a more capable capital allocator
| gets to work with the money.
| bradlys wrote:
| So.. investor helps other investors? Great. What about
| the common man?
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| It was used for blackjack and hookers.
| mactrey wrote:
| Any benefit is earned with a suitable definition of
| "earned"...
| alexgmcm wrote:
| It's a bit discouraging that over a century later the same
| problem still remains.
| selectodude wrote:
| Pretty sure a plot of land in Rockford, IL is still worth
| about $3600 though :)
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| I agree that we need to stop treating houses as investments,
| because they're a basic fundamental need everyone has.
|
| IMO, the problem could be fixed by having stricter laws
| prohibiting people who aren't residents from owning homes in
| another country. The requirement to become a resident is only
| to live in a country for over 6 months out of the year. Before
| that, you can just rent. We could also do things like limit the
| number of houses a person can own, and tax every house sale
| based on capital gains (even primary residences).
|
| However, another problem we have is that interest rates are too
| low, and there isn't enough construction. Those are harder
| problems to solve. I really think we should build more, but
| we'd need denser construction as well. What do you do if you
| need land to build and there's already a house there, or
| someone already owns the land? Maybe it's kind of silly to have
| this idea that a person can "own" a piece of this planet we all
| live on, but we probably don't want to live in a communist
| country where the government owns every home and everyone is
| renting either.
|
| As for interest rates, this is driven by our current economic
| policy and money printing. Maybe there's a way to somehow
| detach the interest rate used for mortgages from that in other
| areas. Surely, the government could print stimulus money and
| direct it where it's needed without interest rates being
| artificially controlled? The main problem with these near-zero
| interest rates is that they completely kill the free market. We
| keep zombie companies alive and we allow people to speculate on
| home prices endlessly. That's not natural. In a "true" free
| market, there's a natural equilibrium between offer and demand,
| both home prices and rents will fluctuate but they will balance
| out. My ex's parents bought a home in the 1970s, they only had
| high school education and were both making minimum wage. Said
| home is now worth over a million and out of reach of anyone not
| making 200K+ household income.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| Something like this would effectively bar any person born in
| India who tried to immigrate to the U.S. in the last ~5 years
| from ever buying a house, unless they got married to a
| citizen. Broad strokes, I agree that residency requirements
| might help with reducing speculative investment, but maybe
| phrased in terms of how long you're in the country, not
| literally permanent residency as a legal threshold.
| Cerium wrote:
| Not necessarily - for example in China foreigners are
| limited to owning one house. That limits speculation but
| does not provide hindrance for someone honestly trying to
| live.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| What's the "not necessarily" in response to here?
| Cerium wrote:
| That policies restricting who can buy homes will hurt
| immigrants.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| In general, of course not, but GP originally proposed
| specifically forbidding non-permanent residents from
| buying houses. How is that not hurting immigrants?
| Cerium wrote:
| The policy does not have to be binary - you can forbid
| non-permanent residents from buying more than one home
| instead.
| throw737858 wrote:
| In China nobody owns a house, it is just leased from
| government for 70 years.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| Yes I agree, I meant residency requirement, requiring that
| people live in a country for at least 6 months before
| buying a house, which could be done on a work or student
| visa.
| gowld wrote:
| "permanent" residency was your contribution, so there's no
| need to rebut it -- just don't propose it in the first
| place.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| I edited my comment, I had written "permanent resident",
| when what I actually meant was just "resident".
| OJFord wrote:
| So, also make holiday homes also illegal?
| [deleted]
| rafale wrote:
| Maybe if it's not in the middle of an urban area the rules
| don't need to be strict.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Or just tax them differently than a primary residence.
|
| Stable and long term living arrangements are something the
| government should be incentivizing so primary residences
| should be taxed minimally.
|
| Vacation houses and income properties should be taxed
| higher.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| Maybe? They are a luxury for the upper middle class, and
| you could easily rent one the same way you rent an airbnb.
| Those holiday homes do need to belong to someone though, so
| I suppose it makes no sense to outright ban own multiple
| homes, but we could structure it so that resale is more
| highly taxed, particularly resale after a short time (i.e.
| people "flipping" properties).
| gowld wrote:
| This is already a solved problem: property tax +
| homestead exemption.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Ok...we need more houses so tax the hell out of
| developers?!
|
| You need people to be able to build and flip properties
| without being taxed at all. The current taxes are carving
| a modest profit down to "not worth it" for a lot of
| people who could otherwise build and revitalize
| affordable housing.
|
| More taxes on home sales results in less homes for sale.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| IMO we should probably reduce taxes on house builders.
| Maybe even give them tax exemptions. Do what we can to
| increase supply.
|
| Speculators wanting to buy a house, redo the kitchen, and
| mark up the price 20% 6 months later though? We could
| just let older, unrenovated houses be cheap. That opens
| up deals to new home buyers. You can redo the kitchen
| after buying the house if you really care. You don't need
| some middle man to do it and mark up the house.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Lots of people _want_ to buy a move-in-ready house. Many
| don't know much about construction, don't know which end
| of a hammer to hold, can't afford to have a house sit
| idle for 3 months while a renovation happens, and want to
| have the "Apple" experience for one or two hundred a
| month more in their mortgage payment.
|
| That's the service flippers provide, IMO. (I'm not one
| but I think they're more helpful than not in terms of
| providing housing that owner-occupants want.)
| nitrogen wrote:
| There's flippers who truly restore a dilapidated house
| and help resuscitate a neighborhood, and there are
| flippers who put a thin veneer of newness on a rotting
| frame, bury the waste in the backyard, and then still try
| to charge the same as the first kind. We don't need more
| of the second kind.
| kaibee wrote:
| > but we probably don't want to live in a communist country
| where the government owns every home and everyone is renting
| either.
|
| Yes, like the famously communist state of, _checks notes_ ,
| Singapore.
|
| Sorry for the snarky reply, but I don't think calling the
| breaking of monopoly power/taxing unearned rents is
| communism.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| Is that how it works in Singapore? I know in China you
| lease land from the government for 50 or 100 years. I do
| think it's important to be open to ideas, and I think there
| probably ought to be redistribution of wealth, particularly
| when it comes to land ownership. That has to be balanced
| with some minimum set of rights so that people can't be
| randomly evicted because people in power want that land,
| and that when people are evicted, they receive fair
| compensation.
| jnosCo wrote:
| It's not so different than how the US operates, except
| the lease is called a deed and it's term is indefinite.
| The government can still take "your" land away if you
| stop paying taxes or they need it for something else.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| The most objectionable part of real-world communism is the
| authoritarianism that goes along with it. Singapore is
| extremely authoritarian.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Landlording is not the problem.
|
| Not everyone wants to own the place they live in. Lots of
| people plan on only being in a location for a year or two or
| four, and would rather just rent.
|
| Some people would just rather rent indefinitely.
|
| The problem is free handouts for homeowners in general.
|
| The handouts entice the landlords, because for the last 30
| years with the exception of 3 years (2005-2008) - housing on
| leverage has absolutely destroyed equities as an investment.
|
| If you got rid of the handouts, this wouldn't be the case.
| Then you wouldn't have people like Blackrock gobbling up
| houses. They'd just be buying equities (the things that are
| supposed to be investments?) instead.
| redleader55 wrote:
| Do you think the problem with money printing by governments
| is that people own houses in another country?
| seafoam wrote:
| Do not miss the bigger thing.
|
| A generation ago : trade policy => offshoring of shippable jobs
|
| This generation : monetary policy => institutional ownership of
| the common home
| gnopgnip wrote:
| The biggest thing preventing widespread adoption of a land
| value tax is the implementation. Someone still needs to decide
| what the land is worth, there isn't an objectively fair way to
| separate out the value of the land from the improvements.
|
| Or put another way, many of the same tactics can be used to
| distort/contest appraisals "dark stores" and deed restrictions
| that prevent other uses, but without an objective way to combat
| them
| _greim_ wrote:
| I recently went down the Geoist/LVT rabbit-hole myself. It
| strikes me as uniquely appealing across the political spectrum,
| since it reduces tax on wealth-creation AND redistributes
| wealth from the rich to the poor.
|
| Sadly, this very fact provokes enough superficial resistance to
| keep it out of the Overton window. Whenever it comes up,
| shouters on either side have plenty of ammo to blast it, saying
| things to the effect of "how could you propose giving the other
| side what they want!?!"
| notahacker wrote:
| It's less to do with appeal to people on the other side of
| economic divides, and more to do with the impossibility of
| selling "the great thing is that it incentivises your next
| door neighbour to build a high rise" and "sure, your parents
| will have to downsize because their pension won't cover the
| tax burden of the house they spent their lifetime saving for,
| but on the other hand it's great how many investors and
| companies don't have to pay any tax at all" to the average
| voter, who cares a lot more about such concrete matters than
| handwavy claims about efficiency or equity.
| _greim_ wrote:
| > the great thing is that it incentivises your next door
| neighbour to build a high rise
|
| This is more about NIMBY attitudes and zoning laws, which
| are separate issues.
|
| > their pension won't cover the tax burden of the house
| they spent their lifetime saving for
|
| An LVT won't tax the house, only the value of the land. If
| the plot itself is hyper-valuable, that's not a bad place
| to be, financially speaking. Beyond that, "won't someone
| think of the poor landowners?" doesn't strike me as a very
| compelling argument in this day and age.
| notahacker wrote:
| > This is more about NIMBY attitudes and zoning laws,
| which are separate issues.
|
| NIMBY issues and zoning laws are very much not separate
| issues when one of the chief selling points of LVT is
| building denser. It's a selling point the public aren't
| buying because they mostly don't want the value-
| maximising development next door, and being taxed _as if_
| they could develop it whilst still living in a zoned area
| so they can 't is obviously worse. Sure, an LVT can be
| designed with deductions and exemptions for land use
| restrictions (and would have to be), but that's conceding
| away one of its key purported advantages.
|
| > An LVT won't tax the house, only the value of the land.
| If the plot itself is hyper-valuable, that's not a bad
| place to be, financially speaking. Beyond that, "won't
| someone think of the poor landowners?" doesn't strike me
| as a very compelling argument in this day and age.
|
| "Let's ignore the poor landowners" is a much worse place
| to be if you're trying to win over the large portion of
| the electorate which owns some land, which in most cases
| is probably the second most valuable thing they own after
| the house they live in (which is separate from the land
| for tax valuation purposes, but not in the reality that
| if they can't afford the land it sits on, they're under
| pressure to sell their home) and not closely coupled to
| their current income. The general principle of Georgist
| efficiency is that people on low incomes relative to the
| value of the land their house are forced to sell and this
| should drive down land prices for everyone, but the
| prospect of devaluation or forced sale of very expensive
| stuff they've already paid for is even less appealing to
| voters than being taxed on next year's unspent income.
| (Also, the entities which own the majority of the land
| turn out to be both less profitable and more relevant to
| the cost of basic goods like food than the businesses
| liberated from tax)
|
| Regardless of whether you think these are not
| insurmountable problems for LVT or not, the thought of
| being caricatured as the guy who wants the tax system to
| force people to develop their homes into nice efficient
| apartment towers or sell in a great hurry to someone with
| deeper pockets is a much bigger concern for politicians
| than the thought people with different economic
| philosophies might actually agree with them for a change.
| dnautics wrote:
| You don't think geoism is just naive? This idea that the
| state can magically assign a value to property and not have
| it go sideways for the politically disenfranchised (the poor)
| is pure fantasy. If you haven't gone through the process of
| buying a house. I suggest trying it (especially during a
| frothy market), and each step of the way stop and think, "how
| would geoism get turned around to screw the poor".
| larsiusprime wrote:
| This is a fully general refutation of ANY system, because
| rich people game _every_ system, including and especially
| the current one. Why should the current one be favored?
|
| The trick is to find a system that, despite attempts to
| game it, has an incentive structure that isn't already
| explicitly tilted in favor of the rich. Geoism is one such
| system.
| dnautics wrote:
| I aver that it's more difficult for a rich person to game
| a decentralized system than a centralized one. A land tax
| necessarily concentrates an important axis of power into
| the hands of fewer people.
| _greim_ wrote:
| I'll give the standard reply here: this sounds mainly like
| a criticism of the current system. Are you specifically
| proposing some loophole in geoism that could be gamed in
| such a way to make things worse for the poor, beyond how
| things stand in the current system? Or is this more of a
| "things will end up badly for the poor no matter what we
| do" kind of sentiment? I can certainly understand that, but
| it isn't a good excuse for apathy.
| dnautics wrote:
| It concentrates an important axis of power (setting
| prices on a rivalrous good) into the hands of the few.
| That is necessarily worse for the disenfranchised. I
| thought that was clear from my comment, I guess not.
|
| My statement is not one of apathy, but a prediction of
| worse comparative outcomes with mechanistic backing.
| _greim_ wrote:
| Who are "the few" in this case?
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Poor people don't own property, though. So how could it
| disenfranchise them?
| dnautics wrote:
| In this case, I am saying that political
| disenfranchisement is the dominant reason for poverty,
| and how well meaning policies can wind putting in
| barriers poor people from owning property in the first
| place. I'm sure you can imagine how this closes the
| cycle.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Wouldn't the LVT reduce property prices, which
| counteracts that?
| dnautics wrote:
| > Wouldn't the LVT reduce property prices, which
| counteracts that?
|
| 1. Don't assume
|
| 2. If you are poor, which do you think is easier? A
| higher initial capital expenditure? Or a higher upkeep
| cost?
| fighterpilot wrote:
| It _will_ reduce property prices, ceteris paribus. The
| only ambiguity is if the extent is such that it fully
| offsets the opposite impact of higher upkeep cost from
| the perspective of a poor person. I don 't know the
| answer to that question, do you?
|
| Another factor: it'll encourage apartment construction,
| which will increase housing supply, which should help
| poor people.
| neilparikh wrote:
| > 2. If you are poor, which do you think is easier? A
| higher initial capital expenditure? Or a higher upkeep
| cost?
|
| Higher upkeep cost is the easier one. Many poor people
| have a steady an income, but no saved wealth. That's why
| there are many people able to pay 1800/mo for rent for
| years, and never able to buy their own home.
|
| And this would make LVT the better option for a poor
| person, since it would turn "buying" a home into
| "renting" the land from the state, along with buying the
| building, which is obviously possible (as seen by the
| existence of poor renters).
| dnautics wrote:
| > Many poor people have a steady an income
|
| I see you've not been poor.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It's never appealing to make a long time member of a
| community leave because they can no longer afford the land
| they've owned for years, because other people say "I want
| that"
|
| I move to a cheap, small town. I embed myself in the
| community and help build it up over decades. And then, at the
| peak popularity, in part due to my presence, I am forced out,
| because someone who has never been here says that they would
| like to live here.
|
| You don't see a problem with this?
| [deleted]
| _greim_ wrote:
| I guess I'm confused; how is this not a description of the
| current system? How are LVTs supposed to make this kind of
| thing worse?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| It may be in some areas, not in others - depending on how
| their tax system works. Prop 13(which has massive flaws
| and abuses) in CA is an example, as well as states which
| just generally have low property tax rates because they
| derive their revenue from other sources like income tax.
| skosch wrote:
| Most proposals in this direction (e.g. Glen Weyl's "Radical
| Markets", [1]) make reasonable exemptions for basic
| personal needs, so people don't get thrown out of their
| (modest) homes or lose their personal belongings
| unexpectedly. The point isn't to kick you out of your
| village, it's to make speculative investments in real
| estate unattractive.
|
| [1] http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s11222.pdf
| nitrogen wrote:
| _And then, at the peak popularity, in part due to my
| presence, I am forced out, because someone who has never
| been here says that they would like to live here._
|
| This is exactly what is happening in parts of Utah.
| Planners accounted for natural growth and a standard rate
| of in-migration, but there has been a flood of people from
| out of state forcing out the locals who made these places
| what they are by living in them for decades.
| rcpt wrote:
| You've obviously never seen a Nextdoor thread about rent
| control.
| kaibee wrote:
| > I move to a cheap, small town. I embed myself in the
| community and help build it up over decades. And then, at
| the peak popularity, in part due to my presence, I am
| forced out, because someone who has never been here says
| that they would like to live here.
|
| Why would you be forced out? Yes, taxes on the underlying
| land would increase because it is more valuable, but you
| would be able to move into a new property in the same
| community, as housing would increase in density. Now if you
| don't want to live in a denser community, that's fine, but
| you don't really have a right to prevent the densification.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| So I would need to sell the 2 BR single family home I've
| lived in for 30 years, and move to some other part of
| town to live in a 1BR apartment, because someone from
| some other part of the country can pay more in tax for
| the property I've lived on?
| sokoloff wrote:
| It sounds to me like GP's concern is that their LVT would
| go up (across the entire town) due to popularity and
| become unaffordable (forcing them out economically),
| rather than being concerned with increasing density.
| pydry wrote:
| It is kept out of the Overton window because the rich guard
| nothing more jealously than their unearned income.
|
| It's not like you or I get to decide what goes in the window.
| js2 wrote:
| The Economist is a fan:
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aeconomist.com+land+value+ta...
| snikeris wrote:
| I already pay a Land Value Tax to my town.
| Retric wrote:
| Land value taxes ignore the value of buildings constructed on
| the land. It's very different from current property taxes
| because it incentivizes density.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| The usual advocacy point is to reduce most of the other taxes
| and send the LVT way up. "We should have a land value tax" is
| usually meant to mean "most tax should be on land".
| tengbretson wrote:
| Wouldn't this accelerate the displacement of less wealthy
| home owners in neighborhoods that are being gentrified?
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Many counties in Texas have solved this by setting a 10%
| maximum year over year increase in property/land tax for
| people _LIVING_ in their homes. There are also locks and
| exemptions carved out for those over 65 and disabled
| veterans.
| krferriter wrote:
| Yeah there should be exemptions (i.e. standard
| deductions) to help low-income people (retirees with low
| savings, such as those dependent on social security or
| disabled, etc) and for people's primary residence.
|
| What we don't want is a 50 year old who fully owns a $2
| mil house and has $15 mil in the stock market and $1 mil
| in cash to be exempted from most property tax, but a 30
| year old with $200k total assets to be on the hook for
| the full property tax rate. That doesn't make sense.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| It will incentivize construction of dense housing, which
| distributes the same amount of land tax over a larger
| number of residents. People get displaced by
| gentrification because current policy encourages
| landlords to hoard old structures instead of building as
| much as possible.
| jlmorton wrote:
| I'm not aware of any locality in the US that has a pure Land
| Value Tax. There are a few localities in Pennsylvania that
| have a split value tax, with separate rates for land and
| structures.
| jdmichal wrote:
| There are definitely counties here in Florida that value
| land and improvements separately. But there's often no
| separation as far as how they're taxed. It's just all added
| together. Here's the listing for Tropicana Field, which is
| owned by the county and therefore qualified as "municipal"
| use:
|
| https://www.pcpao.org/?pg=https://www.pcpao.org/general.php
| ?...
|
| Just/Market Value: $108,535,551
|
| Land Adjusted Value: $46,160,000
| ljhsiung wrote:
| Only partially true. You pay a *property* tax, which does
| sometimes have a land component to it, but mostly is a tax on
| the purchase price of your home.
|
| A Georgist-style land tax proposes a tax on solely the land,
| so a 2000sq-ft lot is the same regardless of a $10mil home or
| not.
|
| This would require an appraiser that regularly re-evaluates
| the value of the land-- but we already do that! But with
| homes.
|
| Furthermore, a property tax still leaves open lots of tax-
| shenanigans. "Look, my home is actually worth half the
| appraised price, thus I should be taxed half." It's harder to
| do so with land, since you can't easily "hide"/play tricks
| with its value from a regulator.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Texas (what the original article in the original post
| revolves around) has the 5th highest property tax in the
| country and the urban areas have some of the outright
| highest property taxes in the country on a per city or
| county basis. This is both a land value tax and property
| tax.
| [deleted]
| wyldfire wrote:
| There's a distinction in [1]:
|
| > Common property taxes include land value, which usually has
| a separate assessment. Thus, land value taxation already
| exists in many jurisdictions. Some jurisdictions have
| attempted to rely more heavily on it. In Pennsylvania certain
| cities raised the tax on land value while reducing the tax on
| improvement/building/structure values.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax#United_States
| fighterpilot wrote:
| It's a Property Tax which is significantly worse than a Land
| Value Tax.
|
| Firstly it encourages urban sprawl, which is bad for the
| environment and bad for cost of living and housing access.
|
| Secondly it penalizes productive value add. Build something
| beautiful and you're punished for doing so.
|
| Thirdly it doesn't have the same logical justification as the
| Land Value Tax, which is to tax ownership of scarce, zero
| sum, excludable, naturally occurring resources that aren't
| the product of labor.
| camel_Snake wrote:
| You don't know that. There are places on the East Coast,
| namely Pennsylvania and Delaware that I can think of, that
| have implemented LVT. Normally they are hybrid approaches
| though.
| Aunche wrote:
| I'm pro-LVT, but I wish that people would stop conflating it
| with Georgism. The controversial part about Georgism is that
| _only_ land should be taxed. This might have been a reasonable
| position 100 years ago, but not in the digital age.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I've ranted about this before but CA Prop 13 not only makes
| housing a good investment, but one that you're extremely
| incentivized to hold onto forever and never move. Two people
| can be living in houses next to each other valued around 1.5m,
| and one of them will be paying 1/10th the tax. If anyone wants
| to buy a house, they have to first be able to afford the
| property, so the barriers to entry are so much higher for those
| who didn't have the foresight to purchase a home 40 years ago.
|
| It's not even residential that's the most disturbing though.
| One of the biggest beneficiaries of this tax break is Disney:
| https://www.ocregister.com/2010/06/03/disneyland-businesses-...
| plank_time wrote:
| You're saying that old people should be driven out of their
| houses because younger, richer people deserve to live in
| their houses. I'm sure your feelings will change as you get
| older.
| gowld wrote:
| Paying taxes on unearned gains is not "driven out of your
| house". You can keep the house and pay taxes on the gains.
|
| > I'm sure your feelings will change as you get older.
|
| Yes, this is the problem. Extreme self-interest and
| entitlement to massive windfalls.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| Prop 13 is a limits how much property tax can increase in
| a year. So hypothetically without prop 13 it would
| possible that the value of your house jumps 10x and then
| you're stuck with paying 10x the amount of property tax
| that year.
|
| I don't think we need to remove it completely but some
| adjustments like applicable only to a primary residence
| and not investment or commercial properties would
| probably go a long way.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| If the value of my home jumped 10x in a year, I would be
| ecstatic. Are you kidding?
| pzh wrote:
| If the value then drops 10x, you won't get your property
| tax refunded. If prices end up going up and down like
| bitcoin, you'd need to have some protection.
| TomVDB wrote:
| > If the value then drops 10x, you won't get your
| property tax refunded.
|
| That's right. And why would it?
|
| But also: your example is imaginary. When was the last
| time that house values dropped 10x or even 5x? It's
| counterproductive to make tax policy based on the extreme
| cases that have never happened.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| I'm planning on living in my house for a very long time,
| it's my home, not an investment. I don't want my home
| value going up 10x unless I'm planning on selling it. In
| this market, I couldn't replace my house if I sold it
| anyway.
| rcpt wrote:
| > it's my home, not an investment
|
| Oh great! I'll take one of those. Maybe two. Where do I
| sign up?
| secondcoming wrote:
| Why so? You don't see that gain unless you sell, at which
| point you'll probably buy another house that has also
| risen 10x.
| cronix wrote:
| In a lot of places, if not most, property taxes are based
| on the assessed "current market value" of your house and
| audited annually, which can change a lot from year to
| year. Property taxes are paid annually, not when the
| house sells. If the house goes up 10x in a year, the
| property tax also rises which makes it very hard on a
| fixed income when you're retired, especially when the
| gov't artificially calculates inflation at a lower rate
| so they don't have to pay as much in social security
| benefits to those seniors reducing their purchasing power
| over time.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Property taxes are supposed to cover your local
| government's running services - police, fire brigade,
| trash/sanitation, water and roads.
|
| Properly distributed, they should not be high.
|
| Property taxes are not a slush fund for the government,
| nor should they be deferrable. They are intended to be
| running expenses.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Shouldn't pass on to your heirs either.
| plank_time wrote:
| How are old people with no income supposed to afford
| capital gains taxes?
|
| And if house prices go down do they get a refund?
| mattmcknight wrote:
| Mark to market property taxes do go lower when
| assessments go lower.
| dnautics wrote:
| You don't get a refund for the intervening years of
| mania. Oh we're sorry we almost kicked you out of your
| house because everyone else was paying out the nose for
| houses because they speculated Amazon would build it's hq
| there that year so sorry about that. Here's your 50k in
| taxes back with interest.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| What has happened (at least in my locality) is in years
| of high assessment increases they cut the rates so the
| increase is buffered. They typically don't set the tax
| rate until they see how the initial assessments are
| coming in.
|
| The other program some counties around here do is
| property tax exclusion for low income seniors.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| In that scenario it sounds like the person "forced out"
| would have received a huge windfall of cash, and could
| ostensibly buy their same house back for much less than
| they sold it for at the height of the mania.
| dnautics wrote:
| > the person "forced out" would have received a huge
| windfall of cash, and could ostensibly buy their same
| house back
|
| Don't assume. That person had to live somewhere, possibly
| at equally inflated prices. Now add in the the cost of
| two unnecessary moves.
|
| > and if you sucked it up and paid the state? Maybe you
| had a sick family member that you were taking care of and
| the chaos of a move would have been too much to deal
| with. Sorry, chum. Bad luck of the draw.
| tzs wrote:
| Or working class people. For a large fraction of people
| if their taxes are going up faster than their wages are
| going up they do not have a reasonable way to get higher
| wages to pay for the tax.
|
| There is very little controversy over not taxing
| unrealized gains when it comes to income tax [1]. I'm not
| sure why doing the same thing for unrealized gains in
| property value is controversial.
|
| It's not like most of the things property taxes pay for
| are proportional to the value of the property. The
| changes each year in costs to provide roads, schools,
| libraries, police and fire, and utilities to my house and
| my neighbor's houses generally has little to do with the
| changes in the market value of our homes. So why should
| the taxes that pay those things be tied to market value
| of the house?
|
| More sensible would be to take the costs to provide the
| services the tax pays for, and divide it among the houses
| that receive the services, equally or taking into account
| usage (e.g., the amount for sewer might be proportional
| to the number of bedrooms). If we want it to be a
| progressive tax, apportion it according to the _relative_
| market values of the properties, but determine the total
| amount for the neighborhood solely by how much money the
| tax needs to raise to provide the services used by that
| neighborhood.
|
| [1] There is controversy over tricks and schemes used to
| effectively realize them while escaping taxation.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > It's not like most of the things property taxes pay for
| are proportional to the value of the property
|
| Exactly! The extraordinary taxes on property are a result
| of unfair distribution of cost of services. A city needs
| to collect for a budget of $X... so they distribute the
| costs the best they can.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| It's not a tax on the gains, it's tax based on the
| estimated current market value, which could go up or
| down.
| throw737858 wrote:
| Someone who owns a house in cali is a milionaire. I am not
| sure it applies to immigrant who just moved to California.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Someone who owns a house in cali is a milionaire
|
| I own a house in California. I have substantially less
| than $1 million net worth. Not complaining, to be sure,
| but it simply isn't even remotely true that all
| California homeowners are millionaires.
| plank_time wrote:
| The old person would have sold the house a long time ago
| because of the rise of their property tax. They wouldn't
| be millionaires. They would have to sell their home for a
| small gain and then rent for the rest of their lives. And
| since they are old they have no income so they need to
| keep moving to cheaper and cheaper apartments.
|
| Sounds like a great way to live a life, just because
| younger people feel like they deserve to live in their
| house.
| throw737858 wrote:
| > just because younger people feel like they deserve to
| live in their house.
|
| Well, they do deserve those houses. If we expect young
| people to work, pay taxes and raise new generation. This
| is yet another middle finger to young people. No wonder
| birth rate is in toilet.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > Sounds like a great way to live a life, just because
| younger people feel like they deserve to live in their
| house.
|
| At one point, I'm fairly sure all those old people you're
| talking about were young people who felt like they
| deserved to live in their house. The difference is that,
| well, they were able to. I don't think you're
| intentionally saying "You came of age after 1980, kiddo,
| so suck it," but that's nonetheless the outcome.
| Proposition 13 certainly isn't the only reason that
| housing prices in California have skyrocketed, and
| housing prices have always been more expensive here than
| the US median -- but the gap between the California
| median and the US median started increasing immediately
| after Proposition 13 was passed and just kept
| accelerating.
| tjr225 wrote:
| All people deserve to be housed.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| If their property taxes increased to the point where they
| cannot afford it, then that means that their property
| value increased significantly. Excuse me if I don't feel
| too bad for somebody who just reaped a massive windfall.
|
| The "won't somebody think of granny?" argument doesn't
| really work when advocating for a policy that
| disproportionately subsidizes non-grannies.
| tpmoney wrote:
| "Reaped a massive windfall" if and only if they sell
| their house. The problem is unless they're both looking
| to sell and move into a lower COL area, that doesn't do
| them much good.
|
| My house today is worth 2x what I paid for it a decade
| ago. Which is great except for the fact that housing
| costs around here are closer to 3-4x what they were a
| decade ago. Even if I wanted to sell, I couldn't find any
| livable housing for the same price within the same area.
| rcpt wrote:
| > if and only if they sell their house
|
| Buy. Borrow. Die.
| selectodude wrote:
| The greatest day of my life will be the day I owe the IRS
| $1 million dollars.
| nitrogen wrote:
| People generally buy a house because they want to live in
| it. The nominal value of the house does nothing to
| benefit them.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| That may have been the case when Prop 13 was sold to the
| public, but at this point it's mostly being used to
| accumulate wealth, not keep people on fixed incomes in
| their lifelong homes. If that was the goal, there is a much
| better solution - let the elderly accumulate the tax bill
| against the value of the house, and collect from the estate
| when they pass.
| plank_time wrote:
| When houses get sold, capital gains need to be paid. This
| is nothing new.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Meanwhile, in many neighborhoods, the older, wealthy,
| established residents are paying 1/3rd the taxes needed
| to support infrastructure and services, compared to
| newer, younger residents who are trying to establish a
| nest-egg and raise families without the benefits the
| older generations had. There is no one solution that will
| work for every neighborhood, but prop 13 is economic
| warfare on the young. Portraying it as young tech
| millionaires against poor, old retirees is not true for a
| large portion of those affected here in the present.
| plank_time wrote:
| Citation otherwise this is just your biased anecdote.
|
| There's plenty of turnover in California on par with
| other states. If prop 13 were somehow so powerful a
| factor not to sell, you would see a lot less house sales
| which you don't.
|
| In my city, half the houses were sold in the last 20
| years which sounds pretty good to me. The idea that
| property taxes are frozen to 30 years ago and governments
| are starving for money is fiction.
|
| In places like Toronto where property taxes get assessed
| every year, the property taxes 1/3 for an equivalent
| house price.
| TomVDB wrote:
| Not if the house gets sold by a kid after their parents
| died. At that point, the capital gains tax basis gets
| reset.
|
| In the current tax climate, we will never sell our
| houses. It's an amazing way to transfer wealth while
| avoid capital gains.
|
| And if they don't want to sell, the kids keep the
| original prop 13 tax limitations as well. The current
| housing policies and tax system is a disaster.
| [deleted]
| jhart99 wrote:
| I think this is something that is really under
| appreciated. When there is inherited property, the cost-
| basis is reset to when the parents died and the Prop 13
| basis is also inherited now if it becomes their primary
| residence. This is a huge advantage for those people who
| happen into this sort of situation.
| s17n wrote:
| Except that prop 13 tax rates can be inherited.
| rcpt wrote:
| the California Tax Postponment Program protects low income
| seniors and the disabled. They have 0 risk of being
| displaced by property taxes no matter what.
|
| Prop 13 is wholly unnecessary
| ska wrote:
| Something like prop 13 isn't the only way to avoid that.
|
| Some jurisdictions allow you to defer property tax
| indefinitely in the form of a lien against the house which
| seems like a reasonable way to do it.
| plank_time wrote:
| Some of my neighbors are seniors who are on social
| security. Their houses were bought for about $160k in the
| 1970s. Which is expensive back then. Now they are worth
| $2M but they have no intention to move. Where would they
| live? And how can they afford the $30k/yr property tax?
|
| What stops people from selling their homes isn't prop 13,
| it's the ridiculous rise in house prices in the last 15
| years. It creates no mobility. Stop bitching about Prop
| 13, that is a lazy and short sighted and wrong
| explanation for house prices. Look at the inventory these
| days. It's low because no one wants to sell their homes
| because where are they going to move to?
| krferriter wrote:
| The law should take into consideration those cases and
| not charge them $30k/yr in cash for property taxes if
| they don't have the money in cash to pay it. One solution
| mentioned elsewhere is a lien against the inflation-
| adjusted value appreciation of the house.
|
| The solution isn't to let wealthy older homeowners get
| away with not paying proper property taxes though, which
| is how it is now.
| ska wrote:
| You misunderstand - the whole point of the scheme is they
| don't have to pay the property tax. It gets (partially or
| entirely) accumulated in a lien against the house, and
| the seniors stay as long as they want.
|
| When they choose to sell, or their estate sells, the
| property tax is settled first from the proceeds of the
| sale.
|
| I'm saying this scheme is in place in other locations to
| address the same problem you describe, and seems to be
| working better than prop 13 (at solving that).
| epistasis wrote:
| > And how can they afford the $30k/yr property tax?
|
| The suggestion is to make them no pay that annually in
| cash, but rather on the future gains of the house.
|
| Their house (or rather, the land) is going up in value
| _far_ more than that per year. Asking them to forgo a
| fraction of their speculative real estate gains, when
| they never even plan to access it (according to you),
| does not make sense.
|
| So what it seems like you are really saying is that they
| deserve to have full speculative real estate gains
| accessible to them, just because they are wealthier than
| younger people and were able to get into the capitalism
| game earlier. That due to their unearned wealth, that
| they did nothing to create, that comes purely at the
| expense of others being able to live in the area because
| land is zero sum. They should have to pay less just
| because they have greater power? Absolutely not.
|
| Saying "I'm so wealthy that I can't pay taxes, and I'm
| not willing to even delay paying taxes until sale" is
| fundamental wrong-headed.
| jonfw wrote:
| Where would they live? With a budget of 2 million
| dollars- they could own an extravagant home practically
| anywhere in the US while pocketing hundreds of thousands
| of dollars.
|
| I have no idea why people who are living off of social
| security should be in the most desirable housing in the
| entire country
| potta_coffee wrote:
| Why should they be forced to sell a house that they
| earned and paid for?
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Why should they get services, that are paid by people
| with no money?
|
| Also - they wouldn't be paying $30k per year. If you had
| a rational government cost distribution among people in
| the area, you wouldn't need to charge people $30k just in
| property taxes.
|
| And then - they also haven't paid their fair share of
| taxes in decades, so why do they get to be in a highly
| privileged position?
|
| Imagine if I didn't pay any income tax for 50 years -
| would you excuse me, if I turned 60?
| jonfw wrote:
| Nobody is forced to do anything. They can certainly
| leverage their significant equity in the home to pay
| those taxes, they can take a lien like many other states
| allow for in these situations, etc.
|
| But frankly I don't understand why a retiree who is
| living off of social security would sit on a multi
| million dollar asset, rather than cashing out and
| increasing their standard of living many times over by
| moving. And I don't think they are a victim by having
| generated 10-20x returns on their home
| TomVDB wrote:
| > Where would they live? And how can they afford the
| $30k/yr property tax?
|
| With proposition 19, approved in last election, seniors
| can move to a different place and carry their original
| property taxes with them.
|
| https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_19,_Proper
| ty_...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > You're saying that old people should be driven out of
| their houses because younger, richer people deserve to live
| in their houses.
|
| Believing that tax bills should be equal doesn't imply
| that; one can believe in equal taxation of same-value
| property and not think that property tax should ever
| _force_ people out of property they own. Deferrable-by-
| default property tax (either entirely or increases above
| base year) are _better_ than assessment increase limits at
| avoiding people being forced out, but do less to transfer
| wealth up the to already-wealthy elites.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Or maybe property tax shouldn't be a thing... Or be
| substantially smaller.
| yongjik wrote:
| I own a house in East Bay, and paying >$10k/yr of property
| tax. While I don't mind tax in principle, it greatly annoys
| me that I'm paying much more than my neighbors just because
| I bought it a few years ago.
|
| And why would my opinion change when I get older? Prop 13
| won't do shit to lower _my_ taxes, I 'll have less income
| and still be paying through the nose, because the city
| needs money and half of its residents are paying virtually
| nothing. If anything, I'll be even crankier about the whole
| situation.
| krferriter wrote:
| It's a pyramid scheme, people newly entering the housing
| market radically subsidize the asset values of those who
| entered before them.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > And why would my opinion change when I get older? Prop
| 13 won't do shit to lower my taxes
|
| It will, in real terms, since the assessment increase
| limit is the lower of 2% _or_ the rate of inflation each
| year, guaranteeing that over the long term the assessed
| value and tax go down in real terms.
|
| Which isn't to say your opinion should change, just that
| the self-interest equation does.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| That's BS. If I pay $10k in property taxes(excl school
| taxes), that means I cannot invest that money into
| something more tangible. Thus depriving me of working
| investments to subsidize wealthier individuals is worse,
| than steadily increasing taxes.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| That taxes compete with other potential uses of money is
| obviously true, and equally obviously irrelevant to the
| discussion of whether Prop 13 will or will not lower your
| real tax bill over the time you own a home.
| delaynomore wrote:
| >why would my opinion change when I get older? Your
| opinion might change if property price around East Bay
| continue to appreciate and your new neighbors are paying
| even more.
| rcpt wrote:
| A pitch copied straight from pyramid scams.
| jedberg wrote:
| This was a red herring when prop 13 was passed, and is a
| red herring now. 49 other states don't have prop 13, and
| yet seniors aren't priced out of their homes.
|
| There are plenty of other solutions. Some states allow you
| to just pay the same amount each year and put the
| difference as a lien on the house until you sell. Some
| states have something like prop 13, but it is applied to
| entire counties. ie. They allow the entire county to raise
| their income from property tax by 1% annually. So
| everyone's home gets reassessed for its value and then the
| tax rate is set so that the whole county goes up 1%. This
| means that in some cases people's property taxes actually
| go down if one area had a massive increase in value.
|
| Every other state figured out a way to avoid this problem.
| California just loves its "rent control for the wealthy"
| which is what Prop 13 is.
|
| Prop 13 is the single worst law in California and must go.
|
| And I say this as someone who owns multiple properties in
| CA, and in fact for one of them, the profit comes entirely
| from the fact that the tax rate was set in the 70s. If I
| had to pay property tax on the current value, I'd just sell
| it because there would be no profit to be had. And in my
| primary home, my neighbors subsidize me by paying twice
| what I do even though their homes are worth less. And I
| subsidize my neighbor who has been here since the 60s and
| pays 1/10 of what I do for the same services.
|
| And if you're still really concerned about old people
| losing their homes, at least support getting rid of Prop 13
| for all non-primary homes. There is absolutely no reason a
| rental property should be protected from property tax
| increases.
| wwweston wrote:
| > This was a red herring when prop 13 was passed, and is
| a red herring now. 49 other states don't have prop 13,
| and yet seniors aren't priced out of their homes.
|
| Prop 13 is bad in at least half a dozen ways, but I'm not
| so sure this problem isn't coming elsewhere or even is
| absent. It seems to me California may have experienced a
| leading edge of metro dynamics that are going to come for
| other states soon.
|
| > everyone's home gets reassessed for its value and then
| the tax rate is set so that the whole county goes up 1%.
|
| That's interesting.
|
| > And if you're still really concerned about old people
| losing their homes, at least support getting rid of Prop
| 13 for all non-primary homes
|
| I think something like this is right (and wasn't this
| attempted by proposition a few years ago?). Residence-
| first real estate policy needs to include tax that
| increases on the number of properties owned (and maybe
| even more steeply in a supply constrained market).
| jedberg wrote:
| > and wasn't this attempted by proposition a few years
| ago?
|
| Yes, in the last election. And sadly it was defeated
| because as usual with state propositions, the side with
| the most money (developers in this case) were able to
| convince the public with inaccurate propaganda.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I think something like this is right (and wasn't this
| attempted by proposition a few years ago?).
|
| No, a much more limited reform that would have effected
| _some_ , but not all, commercial and industrial property
| (but not any, even non-primary, residential) was, and was
| defeated.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Residence-first real estate policy needs to include tax
| that increases on the number of properties owned (and
| maybe even more steeply in a supply constrained market).
|
| People might try to get around this by forming
| corporations or trusts that hold max one property each.
| There is really no need to count how many other
| properties someone holds. Just do a re-assessment every
| year and ratchet up the assessed value on all housing
| that the owner does not occupy, including vacant property
| and renter-occupied. Seems a lot simpler.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| If a corporation own a property - that it should pay the
| full tax, no exemptions. Primary residence clauses must
| never apply to corporations
| jedberg wrote:
| It's pretty easy for the taxman to detect such
| shenanigans. There are a bunch of corporate laws that
| only apply when certain limits are met, like minimum
| revenue or 50 employees, etc. It's illegal to form extra
| corporations to get around those rules, and the
| regulators usually catch on.
|
| I'd be especially easy in California because every
| foreign (out of state) corporation has to register with
| the state and tell them who the beneficial owners are. It
| would be fairly easy to trace it back to actual people.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > You're saying that old people should be driven out of
| their houses because younger, richer people deserve to live
| in their houses. I'm sure your feelings will change as you
| get older.
|
| Or maybe, make it so that property tax increases are
| limited but only if the owner:
|
| 1. Is past retirement age 2. The owner lives in the
| property. 3. The owner does not have the means to pay the
| normal property tax rates.
|
| This is how most other States' solve this problem. Instead
| of freezing property tax rates across the board, they
| narrowly limit property taxes of old residents that don't
| have the means to pay the normal property tax rate.
| krferriter wrote:
| What you're suggesting is that the solution to the
| problem should be targeted at the actual problem trying
| to be solved.
|
| Seems like a lot to ask, so clearly the best way forward
| is to just continue shoveling more wealth onto the
| already-wealthy at the expense of people entering the
| workforce and housing market, and even then still not
| actually solving the original problem we sought out to
| solve in the first place.
| thehappypm wrote:
| These poor millionaires!
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Or, anyone who didn't have the foresight _to be born_ 60+
| years ago _and_ buy land in their early twenties.
| throw737858 wrote:
| California used cheap migrant work force for decades, but
| that stream is drying up. This pyramid scheme is one of
| reasons.
| Lammy wrote:
| > CA Prop 13 not only makes housing a good investment, but
| one that you're extremely incentivized to hold onto forever
| and never move
|
| AKA "segregation with extra steps"
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I've ranted about this before but CA Prop 13 not only makes
| housing a good investment, but one that you're extremely
| incentivized to hold onto forever and never move.
|
| Not "never move", just never _sell_. When you are ready and
| able to upgrade to a new home, you convert the existing one
| to a rental property with rents to cover costs with a
| suitable risk premium (but don't worry about additional
| profit), and then benefit from the appreciation and
| protection from full-value reassessment on both properties,
| rinse and repeat as needed.
| offsky wrote:
| This assumes that you don't need the equity in the first
| house to get the mortgage on the second house.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| No, the price has gone up so much you remortgage and get
| cash out to buy the next place.
| erentz wrote:
| Prop 13 is so ridiculously unfair and distortionary. I wonder
| is there a way to legally challenge Prop 13 on the basis that
| it confers a kind of durational residency benefit (see
| Shapiro v. Thompson)?
| rcpt wrote:
| Yes.
|
| https://harvardcrcl.org/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/10/2018/11/...
|
| Norlidger v. Hahn (worth a read
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/90-1912.ZD.html)
| didn't make it but also didn't address the Fair Housing
| Act. Prop 13, especially the extensions that preserve tax
| rates through bloodlines, disparately impacts minorities
| even though that wasn't the explicit intent of the law.
| Turns out that intent doesn't matter on issues of race so
| there's legal precedent to overturn the law.
| foogazi wrote:
| Prop 13 biggest beneficiaries are corporations.
|
| > so the barriers to entry are so much higher for those who
| didn't have the foresight to purchase a home 40 years ago.
|
| 40 years ago it was still expensive to buy otherwise everyone
| would have bought, including the investment funds
| [deleted]
| jeffbee wrote:
| 40 years ago a home in the Bay Area cost about 3x median
| income. Now it is more than 10x. Buyers in 1981 benefitted
| enormously from high interest rates. I know they whine
| about it now, but objectively it was a massive windfall for
| buyers.
| foogazi wrote:
| > 40 years ago a home in the Bay Area cost about 3x
| median income. Now it is more than 10x.
|
| Interest rated have fallen 10x
|
| > Buyers in 1981 benefitted enormously from high interest
| rates.
|
| They didn't benefit from paying more for a money loan.
| They benefited from being able to refinance on always
| lower rates, and the corresponding rise in asset price
| fighterpilot wrote:
| If it's marketed as a revenue neutral tax, where all the
| savings are passed on to middle-income earners through income-
| tax cuts, you might have some success.
| deevolution wrote:
| Part of why I like bitcoin is because the artifical digital
| scarcity should in theory reduce pressure from the housing
| market by attracting speculators to a much more liquid, low
| maintenance, and secure asset. Just anecdotally, I feel more
| inclined to invest my money into bitcoin than real estate. I
| wonder if there are others like me?
| andrepd wrote:
| Georgism in general, that is not only LVT but also analogous
| concepts for anything which ought to be commons (natural
| resources, pollution, etc) would go a long way into solving a
| significant amount of issues.
| debacle wrote:
| If the population is increasing, then land and, to a lesser
| extent, housing are investments.
| flyingfences wrote:
| If the population is increasing _and population density is
| prevented from increasing_ then housing is a good investment.
| debacle wrote:
| Americans want to live in 2500+ sqft homes with long
| driveways, no sidewalks, etc. Like it or not, that's the
| modern American dream.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| My theory is that bank loans are to blame. When we say someone
| has "bought" a home, it's rare that they've actually bought it,
| rather they've just signed a contract promising that they'll
| pay back a huge sum of money they don't have over a long period
| of time. This creates a market of buying and selling of -- in
| the words of Mark in The Wolf of Wall Street -- fairy dust. Big
| numbers like PS500k, PS600k are thrown around that nobody
| actually has.
|
| The ability to loan large amounts of money like this detaches
| people from the actual buying power of their money and the
| price of the property they're buying. Two grand in the bank is
| a nice amount of money. A two grand price increase on a
| property amortised over 20 years is considered to be nothing
| because the repayments are almost the same.
|
| The solution to bring prices back down to ground level in my
| view is to end mortgages. Require the money up front and
| therefore force prices to drop until an equilibrium of
| affordability is reached. Needless to say this will never
| happen because the people who have the power to push for this
| are the ones benefiting from the status quo.
|
| NB: I am not an economist.
| patrickthebold wrote:
| Strong disagree. If that were the case only the wealthy would
| own homes. Available financing certainly pushes the prices up
| a bit as more people can buy homes, but homes really are
| often worth 500-600k, if you simply do a comparison to
| renting, and probably even more so if you factor in inflation
| risk, interest rate risk, and the equity gained in the house.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| The sweet irony, that in the end privatized pensions created a
| sort of socialism via capitalistic means, more thoroughly central
| integrating every economic branch then lenin could ever have
| dreamed for.
|
| Poisoning innovation and competition, by simply owning whole
| industry sectors, and demanding "rock-steady" profits without
| disruption.
|
| Investing in ever larger centralization schemes aka disruptions
| were external organizations protected enterprise-profits. (Taxis)
|
| Eating even the black-market, by dragging "dead-money" from tax-
| havens and criminal enterprises into investment bubbles like the
| housing market.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Yup, post-covid is just like pre-coivd. Private equaity,
| investors buying up homes, and home prices keep going up. Nothing
| changed except higher prices and less supply. It goes to show how
| the media, who since 2012 have been calling housing a bubble and
| imploring people to sell, have been wrong. I remember someone
| sold their home in 2012 in the Bay Area for what at the time was
| a lot ($1.2 million). I bet he regrets it now.
| RGamma wrote:
| Over are the days where supply and demand controlled allocation
| of resources to get the goods to every man, woman and child.
|
| Big demand, lack of workers? Price and pay rise _to meet the
| challenge_. This part of market economy always made sense to me.
| Like a muscle growing stronger in response to increased exertion.
|
| Now the wealthy have decided that this is way too boring because
| what good does it do them if people actually attain wealth for
| themselves? There'll be no motivation to run faster in their
| hamster wheels to create more wealth to be siphoned off.
|
| Works as intended.
| nimos wrote:
| Thanks to the Fed for low interest rates and constant QE. Can't
| wait for tomorrow's inflation numbers - just kidding they'll
| juice the numbers like they always do with hedonic adjustments so
| they can pretend the standard of living for the middle class
| isn't in decline.
| logicslave wrote:
| Reminder:
|
| All the wealth inequality was created by government money
| printing. They claim they are printing money to help the poor,
| but are really making them worse off
| world_peace42 wrote:
| How can anyone read and conclude that the US is anything other
| than dying and on life support? Our government is ran by
| corporations, and it is not going to change. Not to say that we
| have some cyberpunk future ahead of us - that looks a bit too
| optimistic at this point. As much as I personally despise
| communism, it's hard not to admit that the Chinese have a much
| superior government (not that they're even communist at this
| point) to our own. Larry Fink and most of his associates should
| be getting the "Jack Ma treatment".
| rmah wrote:
| _How can anyone read and conclude that the US is anything other
| than dying and on life support?_
|
| Perhaps by looking outside the window? By walking around your
| town/city? By driving to nearby locations? By talking to people
| and asking them about their lives rather than their opinion of
| the lives of other people they've never met? By trusting what
| you see more than than drivel spouted by tin-foil hat loons?
| bradgranath wrote:
| What's with the link to the weird Twitter rant about The Great
| Reset?
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| A bit late to the convo, but we literally just signed over the
| contract of our house in Austin.
|
| 5 days on the market, 4 offers, 1 family, 1 family trust, 2
| investment firms. All offers 20-50k over asking, 0 conditions.
| igetspam wrote:
| I hope that holds. I have a buddy/tenant that is waiting for an
| IPO this month. When it finally drops, he'll know what he can
| afford and then he'll start house shopping. I likely won't be
| able to have my house on the market until August.
|
| Congratulations!
| mc32 wrote:
| If they're paying 20-50% above asking, does that mean they're
| expecting inflation to subsidize their borrowing to buy these
| houses?
| ibdf wrote:
| So... if I have fundrise investments and one of the investments
| is the house I sold them... then technically I still own part of
| my house?
| calebm wrote:
| Real estate is a good hedge against fiat currency.
| xapata wrote:
| > Home equity is the main financial element that middle class
| families use to build wealth, and black rock, a federal reserve
| funded financial institution is buying up all the houses to make
| sure that young families can't build wealth.
|
| Faulty logic. First, though historically people have used home
| equity to build wealth, that hasn't been the best method of
| building wealth. Most of those people would have been better off
| continuing to rent and investing in the stock market instead.
|
| Second, building wealth through alternatives to home ownership
| may be better for a large portion of the population that finds
| the very fact of their residence decreases the value of a home
| relative to other homes.
| wffurr wrote:
| >> Most of those people would have been better off continuing
| to rent and investing in the stock market instead.
|
| It's hard or impossible for individuals to get 5 to 1 leverage
| at low interest rates for investing in stocks.
| [deleted]
| xapata wrote:
| But the only reason you'd want 5-to-1 leverage on a house
| would be to have a hope of keeping up with stocks. Also, it'd
| be 4:1, right, if you're doing 20% down?
|
| Home values are believed to be less risky. Accordingly, they
| appreciate more slowly. To make them a good investment, you
| take leverage until they approximate the risk/return ratio
| you desire.
|
| Remember, there are huge buyers like BlackRock out there that
| make the market efficient. If home prices drop to the extent
| that investing in a house is better than the stock market,
| then the investors swoop in and the prices go up until the
| two asset types are equivalent (including the fact that one
| generally borrows to buy a house).
| fastball wrote:
| One of my "out there" political ideas is that because land is a
| zero-sum game, corporate entities should not be allowed to own
| it. Only real people (or specific entities which are a collection
| of real people) who are permanent residents of the country in
| question should be allowed to own land. And from there, there
| should be an upper limit on how much any one individual is
| allowed to own.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Sadly, archive.is is blocked in some countries
|
| For a smaller, simpler, Javascript-free, ad-free page
| curl https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-
| days-the-buyer-might-be-a-pension-fund-11617544801 \ |grep
| -Eo "(<p.*<\/p>)|(<h[12].*</h[12]>)|(<a href=.[^{].*</a>)" \
| |tr -cd '[ -~]' > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm
| rootusrootus wrote:
| If they are paying over asking price, this just means sellers
| don't fully understand the market. No investor is going to
| persistently overpay.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| related:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1402434266970140676.html
| vmception wrote:
| About time the real estate market got more efficient
|
| I was always turned off by how slow and illiquid that market was
| sp527 wrote:
| This is just phase one. The real money will get made when they
| start artificially constraining housing stock. In my area
| (central NJ), the big player is Berkshire.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Yes.
|
| This just happened to me. I put my home up for market %15 over
| market - was offered cash that same day by an investor. I didn't
| use an Agent to list (this is my 3rd home sell) and set my own
| buyer agent compensation on the MLS. Anyhow, they seem like pros.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| The article fails to mention that Blackrock has been buying up
| homes since the 2008 crash. This was a very very long play given
| that they started this when housing was destroyed 13 years ago.
| thinkingkong wrote:
| Lots of houses are bought in blocks as well. In denser parts of
| cities or in areas near major throughfares, land assemblies are
| fairly common. These take all the properties and bundle them into
| a new property worth way more.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/aBK10
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| The problem is the government mandated houses be piggy banks for
| middle class people, all but allowing large institutional
| investors to take advantage of the rule system put in place to
| protect and increase prices: low interest rates, local control of
| land use (to kill new supply), etc. It was a side effect to allow
| others to benefit from the scheme.
| phpsuks wrote:
| Its fine to blame gov for somethings but for low supply?
| Really? NIMBYs are the only ones restricting supply in the Bay
| Area. They are the voters too and millenials don't vote as much
| on such non-trivial issues.
|
| As for CA prop 13, also voted by people. Don't like it? VOTE
| AGAINST IT. Else, stop complaining. The system is working
| exactly as voted by the people who vote. If this is such a big
| issue then why are people consistently voting for them?
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Favorite part:
|
| """ Thats right!
|
| FEDERAL RESERVE FUNDED FINANCIAL INSTITUTE.
|
| Let that sink in for a minute. Got it? They're using your tax
| dollars to fuck over the lower and middle class, and its
| permanent. Not 1 Pres. administration of bullshit. This is a
| fundamental reorganization of society """
| [deleted]
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Sure, but that should be land held in the commons, not private
| home ownership.
|
| Private homeownership is just LARPing owning real capital to
| placate a new conservatized middle class, completely
| inefficient as rising prices cannot spur more land production
| and in fact preclude intensification use since the middle class
| homeowners don't have real capital to convert to apartments
| (even if zoning was relaxed), and historically tied up in all
| sorts of racist shit to boot (redlining, covenants, etc.).
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| One way that the govt can keep the economy stable is for the
| Federal reserve to just give the big banks money they call it
| 'injection'. It's framed as 'lending' but at extremely low
| interest rates.
|
| The expectation is that the banks will lend this out to
| companies to stimulate the economy.
|
| Apparently instead of loaning this money out to to
| small/medium businesses big banks have mastered operating
| small/medium businesses at scale and are combining their
| banking with asset acquisition.
|
| So banks having endless capital essentially given to them
| from the government in our tax dollars...while also having
| asset and business branches in their own closed system
| ultimately leads to massive banks owning the world.
|
| People think the government is on their side but it's not.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/econom.
| ..
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/081415/under.
| ..
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Private homeownership is just LARPing owning real capital
| to placate a new conservatized middle class
|
| If you don't own real productive capital and depend on it
| broadly ad much as sale of labor, you aren't even in the
| middle class to start with, your in the working class--just
| LARPing, to use your term, being part of the _petit
| bourgeoisie_.
|
| Of course, LARPing as a member of the _petit bourgeoisie_ is
| the perennial pastime of a substantial portion of the upper
| income segment of the proletariat, especially the proletarian
| intelligentsia.
|
| > rising prices cannot spur more land production
|
| Sure they can, both literally (artificial land is a real
| thing, and its production is spurred by demand running into
| supply constraints) and more importantly economically (as
| "land", the valued commodity, isn't just raw square footage
| of the dry surface of the earth, but a product of access to
| infrastructure which makes it economically useful.)
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I personally define middle class as the people with most of
| their wealth in the form of their home. So yes
| traditionally those people would be considered part of the
| working class as you say. I don't disagree.
|
| (My division is supposed to reflect how those people _do_
| behave, whereas the traditional Marxist one is supposed to
| be how they _should_ behave based on the real relations
| behind the smoke and mirrors. That 's fine, different
| categorizations for different purposes.)
|
| For the second part, well, we'll need to abolish SFH zoning
| and related things, which is very unpopular because it
| would undermine landowner's speculation in the short term!
|
| (It's especially annoying because taller buildings would
| lead to more valuable land area in the end, just cheaper
| floor area.)
|
| So nevermind there are efficient market-based things to do,
| like everyone rents land from the state at auction which
| pays out universal dividend. Our land markets are popular
| precisely because they are a speculative mess!
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| I wish you didn't change your comment because I liked your
| original question.
| aazaa wrote:
| > The country's most prolific home builder [DR Horton] booked
| roughly twice what it typically makes selling houses to the
| middle class--an encouraging debut in the business of selling
| entire neighborhoods to investors.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-...
|
| I see no future for this model.
|
| The reason is simple. Individual buyers avoid high-rental areas
| because they know the renters will depress home values. This sets
| up a reinforcing cycle. The neighborhood fills up with renters
| with no incentive to invest in the costly maintenance required to
| keep properties attractive. Landlords have little incentive to
| invest in long-term improvements, either.
|
| Tragedy of the commons. Step by step, the neighborhood slides
| into the abyss.
|
| So let the Blackrock's of the world buy up entire neighborhoods
| and turn them into rentals. As soon as the inevitable mean
| reversion happens in house prices, these home rental businesses
| will be toast.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| I thought HN had a policy of doing direct links to articles?
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-...
| devmunchies wrote:
| the twitter thread has several links
| bostonsre wrote:
| Anyone want to start some kind of kickstarter like company where
| funds are pooled for different projects that have a target plot
| of land with a layout for a future city? Investors could get to
| submit bids for sub plots for future houses and the project could
| start when some predefined minimum is met. All of this
| NIMBY/artificially constrained housing supply stuff functions as
| tons of glass ceilings for those trying to rise up and follow the
| american dream.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| This _just_ happened to me. Put my home on the market by myself
| without an agent - priced it 15% over market - got a corporate
| cash offer that day 5% more than _THAT_ listing. Cash, no banks
| and little closing fees. Without agents this is an insane savings
| and price. We do have a pool and those are fought over.
| mycentstoo wrote:
| Pass higher property taxes, further lower deductions based upon
| wealth of buyer, and build build build.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Twitter is a bad blogging platform.
| 908087 wrote:
| Surely we could have found a better source for this information
| without giving free engagement to an unhinged QAnon cultist?
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Buying up houses is a play/bet on inflation.
|
| If you expect inflation on the currency, and can buy a more
| stable asset on leverage then the inflation eats your loan. Taken
| to the extreme you basically get the asset for free.
| twirlock wrote:
| Definitely doubling the capital gains tax for these kinds of
| institutions will help the working class achieve homeownership.
| dnautics wrote:
| Corollary: if you're buying a house, your competing bid might be
| a pension fund.
| ritikgeeks wrote:
| The implementation of a land value tax is the most significant
| barrier to widespread adoption. There is no objectively fair way
| to separate the value of the land from the value of the
| improvements, thus someone has to decide what the land is worth.
| Alternatively, without an objective mechanism to oppose them,
| many of the same strategies can be used to distort/contest
| appraisals,.https://apkwind.com/showbox-apk/ "dark stores," and
| deed restrictions that preclude other uses
|
| https://apkwind.com, https://apkwind.com/spotify-premium-apk/,
| https://apkwind.com/blackmart-alpha-apk/
| fukmbas wrote:
| Bubble will pop soon
| abrowne wrote:
| At least in Minneapolis, everyone who's buying a remotely
| desirable family house is paying a lot above the asking price,
| although what I've seem is more like 10-15%.
| deathtraphomes wrote:
| My personal experience. With mega rental companies.
|
| I moved into one of Invitation homes a few years ago. Looked nice
| when we drove up, didn't think about why all the windows were
| open when we signed paperwork.
|
| Their negligence nearly killed my family, and left us with life
| long injuries. The gas line was leaking natural gas, improper
| installation? the furnace and stove were emoting lethal levels of
| carbon monoxide. Detector was defective.
|
| A portion of the AC fell into the kids room. One wall got so hot
| it burned my wife. Only reason we didn't die is smell was so bad
| we nearly always had all windows open.
|
| At every stage they lied and did what they could to cover up
| problems.
| yabones wrote:
| Things went off the rails at the end...
|
| > Well, the banks are controlled by and in bed with the same
| cabal buying everything up. You think this will be corrected by
| market forces when it is a financial and political pincher
| movement pushed by the same cabal that stole the 2020 election &
| hid COVID Truth? You are fucked.
|
| https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402449561864577024
|
| IMO, weakens the entire 'thread' and makes it much less
| trustworthy, even though I do believe this about institutional
| real estate investors. 'Feudalism' might be a bit extreme, but
| this will definitely impact the middle class in a very real way.
| lettergram wrote:
| The main reason the homes are being bought up is the lumber and
| steal costs. Right now, it would cost me $500k to build a house
| that last year would cost me $190k. Real quotes I got for a
| possible build. More details on what I'm seeing here:
|
| https://austingwalters.com/stagflation-is-here-monetary-infl...
|
| With that being the case and the dollar appearing to be
| weakening, it makes since for them to buy anything they can.
|
| Those homes they are buying for $300k would cost $500-$600k to
| build...
|
| Regarding the great reset - here's a Bloomberg article on how
| to navigate it:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-31/how-to...
|
| It's real and it's here.
| mgarfias wrote:
| We are refraining from building a deck due to lumber prices.
| Maybe next year.
|
| Or I buy a mill and cut my own lumber. I've got plenty of
| trees I can take down and use.
| duderific wrote:
| The point about lumber is accurate. We are getting a fence
| built for our house, and our contractor says the lumber has
| gone from $12 a board to $28 a board over the last few
| months. He's had to revise his estimates upward lest he lose
| money on the job.
| nradov wrote:
| Your numbers are off for most areas. There has been inflation
| in construction material prices, but that's only one part of
| the total price of building homes. The other major components
| include land prices, labor, and permits. So costs could have
| only doubled from $300k to $600k in areas with very cheap
| land and permits where materials make up the dominant share
| of the total cost.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah what the heck happened there.
|
| "same cabal"
|
| Everything is a grand singular conspiracy to someone these
| days. Happens on HN too, every few bad news type post has some
| accusation that whatever outcome was because of a conspiracy.
| jtdev wrote:
| Consider that you may be far too trusting if you're not
| considering conspiracy as a possibility at this point...
| duxup wrote:
| I would argue exactly the opposite.
| philistine wrote:
| A conspiracy means that the truth about something is
| different from what we currently know. JFK, moon landing,
| flat Earth.
|
| Where is the conspiracy with banks buying houses en masse?
| They intend to turn every middle class family into a
| permanent renter and take any profit of the housing market
| for themselves. This is exactly what's happening.
|
| We can simply say that this problem is more important than
| people believe, or that the media does not talk about it
| enough because it's difficult to write about. But there's
| no conspiracy here.
| jtdev wrote:
| con*spir*a*cy k@n-spir'@-se> n.
|
| An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or
| subversive act.
|
| Like, maybe the Fed is conspiring with the gov. and big
| banks to fleece the American people of their real estate
| assets...? Have you no ability to question things?
| lliamander wrote:
| Well, to be fair, there was a _self-decribed_ cabal of sorts
| that worked to change election laws, curtail protests, and
| pressure social media companies leading up to the 2020
| election.
|
| Whether what they did was in any way illicit or undermines
| the integrity of U.S. elections is of course up for debate,
| but the fact that a secret coordinated effort of powerful
| people "conspired" (if you will) to influence the outcome of
| the election is I think well established.
|
| https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
| duxup wrote:
| That's not fair, that's just some unrelated thing...
| cronix wrote:
| Yeah, different cabal.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Cabals really should coordinate better to avoid
| confusion.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Is it time to disrupt cabals?
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Where's Y Cabalnator when you need it?
| lliamander wrote:
| _I_ didn 't claim it was all the same cabal. However,
| it's very likely there are some actors with membership in
| both.
| lliamander wrote:
| It was a conspiracy that the original twitter thread
| brought up, and you seemed to be criticizing
| conspiratorial thinking in general.
|
| My point was that, of the conspiracies mentioned by the
| original user, the conspiracy to influence the 2020
| election was openly acknowledged by its participants.
| p_j_w wrote:
| The crazy thing is that no grand conspiracy is required, this
| is just a function (and an entirely predictable one) of the
| ever increasing levels of wealth inequality that we see. No
| political "pincher" movement required, it's just people with
| money finding ways to use that money to make more money.
|
| As an aside, this isn't a username I expected to ever see
| again.
| duxup wrote:
| Agreed. Most of this is just obvious motivations to do a
| thing.
|
| Recent HN article about the SCOTUS and CFAA ruling was full
| of folks who felt that CFAA must have been some
| corporatism-ish conspiracy to pass (Computer Fraud and
| Abuse Act) a law back in 1986 and then criminalize basic
| policy rules as a serious crime. And yet apparently they
| just chose not to do that at any sort of scale...
|
| Rather, the most logical explanation is that some folks
| made some bad choices when it came to applying that law,
| because it was convenient for them.
|
| As far as my username, duxup loves you.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge.
| Often attributed to George Carlin.
| ceres wrote:
| >this isn't a username I expected to ever see again
|
| Mind if I ask what you mean by this?
| p_j_w wrote:
| duxup was a fairly prolific user on kuro5hin
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuro5hin).
| dang wrote:
| This comment refers to the original URL,
| https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676,
| which we've since replaced with the article it points to (in
| keeping with the site guidelines).
| maxwell wrote:
| And that guideline often results in confusing, disjointed
| comment threads.
|
| Enforcing banal, insigificant titles diminishes meaningful
| discussion hinged on the actual _point_ of the submission.
|
| Strangely, but anecdotally, the titles that I see getting
| changed are ones involving race, state actors, or
| corporations.
|
| What these moves feel like is censorship of story title that
| mention, for instance, Black people, the Chinese Communist
| Party, or multinationals like BlackRock.
| dang wrote:
| > _often results in confusing, disjointed comment threads_
|
| It can, which is why I posted replies to the relevant
| comments in this thread. It's still usually a net win,
| though, to replace a secondary/derived source with the
| article it's derived from, especially when the
| secondary/derived source is adding sensational spin.
|
| > _Strangely, but anecdotally, the titles that I see
| getting changed are_
|
| I think you may be getting bit by what I call the notice-
| dislike bias [1]. You (i.e. all of us) are much more likely
| to see, and to put emphasis on, the changes that you
| dislike or disagree with, and to de-emphasize, or simply
| not notice in the first place, the ones that seem normal or
| ok. This leads to false feelings of generality [2]. Your
| comment is well above the median in quality because you at
| least said "anecdotally"; most users who post general
| claims about HN don't seem to consider that there may be
| any bias in such perceptions at all!
|
| From a moderation perspective I can tell you for sure that
| there's no singling out of any topics over others when it
| comes to applying the title guideline. Of course, titles on
| divisive topics are more likely to be inflammatory and
| therefore linkbaity, and thus 'hit' the guideline, but
| that's a skew in the data, not the moderators.
|
| As for "censorship", that word has gotten diluted to the
| point that it seems to just mean "change I disapprove of".
| You can use it to describe HN title edits if you like, but
| I think it's a bit of a stretch.
|
| [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=tru
| e&que... - it would be great to find a less lame name for
| this, but it's the best I've found so far
|
| [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=tru
| e&que...
| meowster wrote:
| There's an achive link in the top comment, and I think
| replying to that with the original URL would help rather than
| making fact of the change burried in the comments, but I
| can't reply to that archive link post.
| dang wrote:
| When users post those paywall workaround URLs, we sometimes
| disable replies (when we see them), because usually the
| replies repeat the same old tedious argument about paywalls
| that has been off topic for years
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).
|
| We could turn that off so you could post the originally
| submitted URL, except I'm not sure that there are
| significant subthreads getting distorted by this change. I
| already put that URL at the top of the ones I saw, like the
| GP.
| bplatta wrote:
| Ok, cabal is a strong word and the election stealing/truth
| hiding is certainly off the rails in my opinion as well.
|
| But here's some perhaps interesting information on top 5
| shareholders of largest US banks [1]:
|
| JP Morgan Chase: Blackrock 6.4 Vanguard 4.7 State Street 4.5
| Blackrock 2.7 Blackrock 2.5
|
| Bank of America: Berkshire 6.9 Blackrock 5.3 Vanguard 4.5 state
| street 4.3 Fidelity 2.1
|
| Citigroup: Blackrock 6.1 Vanguard 4.5 State Street 4.2 Fidelity
| 3.6 Capital world Inv 2.4
|
| Wells Fargo: Berkshire 8.8 Blackrock 5.4 Vanguard 4.5 State
| street 4.0 Fidelity 3.5
|
| US Bank: Blackrock 7.4 Vanguard 4.5 Fidelity 4.4 State Street
| 4.4 Berkshire 4.3
|
| So although yes this does go off the rails a bit, not
| unreasonable to question the (possibly perverse) incentives
| banks face given their ownership. Book by Eric Posner and Glen
| Weyl called Radical Markets explores those incentives a bit.
|
| [1] Jose Azar et. al. Ultimate ownership and Bank competition
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers/cfm?abstract_id=2710252
| kasey_junk wrote:
| It's worth noting those Black Rock holdings are almost
| certainly through indexed mutual funds and ETFs.
|
| If you calculated the ownership across all banks in the US
| Blackrock would not own nearly so high a percentage.
| notahacker wrote:
| Also worth noting they have similar ownership stakes in
| other public companies for the same reason, and somewhat
| limited leverage over any of them because they can't
| threaten to pull their investment
| selectodude wrote:
| Blackrock also owns over 6 percent of Apple. I wonder if
| this "great reset" includes buying everybody's iPhones.
| beforeolives wrote:
| Aren't most of these holdings through funds? It's not
| Blackrock, Vanguard or Fidelity that's holding those shares,
| it's people and institutions who are investing in their
| funds.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Vanguard in particular is just a bunch of different mutual
| funds and ETFs. It doesn't do hedge fund type investing.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| That's a necessary point, but who really has the power?
| What is the chance that the investors will pull out,
| especially if they are making a profit?
| nilsbunger wrote:
| Blackrock Vanguard et al have tremendous influence as
| shareholders even if it's via an index fund... see what
| they did to Exxon Mobil a few weeks ago!
| rkimb wrote:
| Exactly right - BlackRock and other large indexers have
| no legal obligation to follow the recommendation of an
| independent adviser (like ISS, Glass Lewis) in a proxy
| contest, even for a passive fund. In most cases they
| passively anticipate the index provider's (S&P, Russell,
| MSCI, etc.) moves for corporate actions, but management
| elections for the board and executives are much more
| subjective as they don't influence the position itself
| (note that the manager can sometimes also be the index
| provider, like BlackRock = iShares). The smaller index
| managers almost exclusively follow the proxy adviser's
| recommendation because they don't have the resources to
| analyze board decisions for ~8,000 different companies.
| TheCowboy wrote:
| People using "The Great Reset" as a pejorative tend to have
| their views deeply rooted in right-leaning garbage conspiracy
| theories. Surely there's a better source for what Black Rock is
| doing than this person's Twitter thread.
|
| > Only the worlds largest asset manager and the leading
| proponent of The Great Reset.
|
| https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402437638423035906
| paulpauper wrote:
| I think an objective case can be made that Covid has
| irrevocably changed the economy in way that has created new
| winners and losers, without it being part of a grand
| conspiracy.
| anthony_romeo wrote:
| I agree with that. Of course, this does not necessarily
| imply that a large people will not choose to believe in a
| grand conspiracy regardless of whether or not such a
| conspiracy actually exists.
| secondcoming wrote:
| While I don't know what the tweeter understands by 'The Great
| Reset', it actually is a thing [0]. What's your understanding
| of it?
|
| [0] https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/
| samizdis wrote:
| There was this in the FT [1] just over two weeks ago,
| "BlackRock bets on UK retirement housing", but it's about
| investing in building for defined sectors (retirement,
| student accommodation etc) and also shared ownership:
| _Separately, BlackRock Real Assets is funding the PS362m
| purchase of 3,000 shared-ownership homes by landlord Heylo
| Housing._
|
| The article was archived shortly after publication [2].
|
| I've not seen anything about buying up existing private homes
| at a big mark-up, though.
|
| [1] https://www.ft.com/content/0d965c11-936e-4467-b98f-f4d34f
| ae2...
|
| [2] https://archive.is/AgiIg
| xdennis wrote:
| What conspiracy? "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy." is
| something they said.
| bvinc wrote:
| The conspiracy, which was not mentioned in this thread, but
| is all over youtube and twitter, is that the WEF is somehow
| going to reset everyone's wealth to zero and enact
| communism.
|
| A video where futurists predict that you'll rent almost
| everything instead of buying it, isn't the same thing as
| evidence that the WEF is enacting communism.
|
| Let's try to be clear about the nuance and details of what
| we're talking about.
| anthony_romeo wrote:
| Who is "they"? Some article in a newspaper? A handful of
| researchers and futurists?
|
| Edit: Got it. It's from a list of unsurprising predictions
| from [at least] the marketing department of the World
| Economic Forum. Thanks.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Here is a link to the since-deleted Tweet from the World
| Economic Forum: https://web.archive.org/web/2020091911290
| 6/https://twitter.c...
|
| They pulled the Tweet, and they pulled the video, but
| here, you can read the Forbes article: https://www.forbes
| .com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s...
|
| Right in that first paragraph: "I don't own a car. I
| don't own a house." The title is "Welcome To 2030: I Own
| Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better."
|
| Frankly, I don't care if the people noticing this lounge
| around in period-authentic SS uniforms at night, what's
| true is true, no matter who picks up on it.
|
| And it's a trend along with the "hey, those bugs, you
| should try eating them!" articles that are so
| breathlessly hyped.
|
| Now, it says "You WILL own nothing and you WILL be
| happy." This wasn't just some rando blogpost, it went
| through a lot of editorial eyes and hands. _Will_ is very
| interesting. It 's not optional. There's no choice
| involved.
| breadzeppelin__ wrote:
| WEF also still has a 'the great reset' section on their
| official website https://www.weforum.org/focus/the-great-
| reset. WEF is essentially all those billionaires that
| meetup in davos every year
| Telemakhos wrote:
| It was a social media video put out by some of those
| "researchers and futurists," namely the World Economic
| Forum. You can find copies of the original video on
| YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aztvWxRKqDQ The
| thing that makes this more than just a crackpot
| futurist's prediction is that the World Economic Forum
| actually does gather together government and business
| leaders from around the world and serves as a site for
| networking among them. This is the sort of networking
| that Assange called "conspiracy" in his early essays:
| powerful people exist in connected graphs that allow
| them, whether well-meaning or conscious of ill intent, to
| act to prop up authoritarian power structures and repress
| freedoms. And so you end up with world leaders repeating
| the World Economic Forum's discourse of a "great reset."
| Here is Justin Trudeau via Global News explaining how the
| COVID pandemic provides "an opportunity for a reset" that
| is primarily economic:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2fp0Jeyjvw . Trudeau is
| an "Agenda Contributor" at the WEF:
| https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/justin-trudeau .
| So, when the WEF puts out a social media clip claiming
| that society is changing to replace ownership with
| rental, a fundamental change to the existing wealth
| distribution in favor of corporations over individuals,
| you know that world leaders like Trudeau are heavily
| involved with those same futurists. That's what separates
| their predictions from those of, say, Robert X Cringely.
| jsnk wrote:
| World Economic Forum had a tweet with about 2 min long
| video describing the near future this way. I believe the
| tweet was deleted last year.
| lliamander wrote:
| It was from a series of predictions made by the WEF in
| 2016 about life in 2030[0].
|
| The claim of many is that the WEF wants to bring about a
| world in which the vast majority of people don't have
| ownership.
|
| Reuters "fact checks"[1] this claim by saying that it was
| merely a prediction, and that it isn't actually a goal
| listed on their website.
|
| I find the fact check unpersuasive. The WEF says "you
| will be happy" about not owning anything. That they would
| even think that reveals something about the values of
| that organization. If that is part of what they would
| consider to be a happier world, why would they not push
| for it (in private, if not in public)?
|
| [0]https://www.facebook.com/worldeconomicforum/videos/101
| 539205... [1]https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-
| wef-idUSL1N2MR1UU
| tootie wrote:
| It's pretty clearly just a provocative list of
| predictions and not a call to action. It's like a
| commercial from 1995 saying "You'll have a phone in your
| pocket everywhere you go". They're predicting it will be
| a major trend that consumers adopt because it will makes
| sense when it comes. It's not even that crazy of a
| prediction. There's loads of shit in my house that I use
| maybe once a year and I wouldn't mind sharing with others
| via drone.
| lliamander wrote:
| An NGO comprised of the world's wealthiest corporations
| telling the rest of us that we will "own nothing and be
| happy" is a bit cheeky, to say the least.
| refulgentis wrote:
| It feels like this analysis is missing something, ex.
| have you had any property rights taken away in the
| ensuing 5 years? If discourse hinges on a 2 minute
| YouTube video and refusing to accept any downplaying of
| it, what hope does discourse have? There's approximately
| infinite two minute YouTube videos
|
| edit: -4 in 7 minutes, anyone have tips on exactly how
| you are allowed to discuss any of this without wholesale
| accepting it?
| lliamander wrote:
| > edit: -4 in 7 minutes, anyone have tips on exactly how
| you are allowed to discuss any of this without wholesale
| accepting it?
|
| It is against the rules to complain about downvotes.
|
| Someone else disagreed without receiving similar
| downvotes.
|
| Your downvotes are probably because of statements like
| "and refusing to accept any downplaying of it". It's not
| that I would refuse to accept any downplaying, just that
| I don't find the ones offered to be persuasive.
|
| If you focus on attacking the argument at hand, rather
| than on the mental state or character of those you are
| arguing with, you will have more success.
| refulgentis wrote:
| it's not against the rules to complain about downvotes,
| common misconception! I know you didn't know and this
| isn't a commentary, or question of, or related to, your
| mental state or character.
|
| I'm genuinely unaware what part of the unedited tweet
| includes the factors you mention, namely questioning
| mental state or character. Reproduced here, I can't find
| anything, I'm trying really hard:
|
| It feels like this analysis is missing something, ex.
| have you had any property rights taken away in the
| ensuing 5 years? If discourse hinges on a 2 minute
| YouTube video and refusing to accept any downplaying of
| it, what hope does discourse have? There's approximately
| infinite two minute YouTube videos
|
| I recognize that the edits include the factor you
| mention, those edits occurred enough after an unusually
| high number of downvotes, and the scored has rebounded
| since. Note this has nothing to do with anyone else's
| mental state or character, nor questioning it, or in
| anyway intended to relate to it.
| divs1210 wrote:
| WEF said it themselves, then deleted it after backlash.
| StandardFuture wrote:
| I believe it was a video that the World Economic Forum
| put out on their YouTube in 2020. I am not sure if they
| took it down or not since then.
|
| Related: https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/
| 2016/11/10/s...
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Generally speaking, I think it's a reference to this
| video with predictions of the future. Whether or not it
| was advocacy for that outcome is the subject of debate,
| but it does appear to be an actual WEF video. https://www
| .facebook.com/worldeconomicforum/videos/101539205...
| briefcomment wrote:
| WEF's official video [1]. They took down the article they
| had on this topic, probably due to backlash [2].
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBBxWtKKQiA
| [2]https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/shopping-i-can-
| t-real...
| refulgentis wrote:
| No offense, and I'll take the downvotes for being blunt,
| but this is political nonsense that doesn't belong on HN:
| people aren't going to to buy into a particular group's
| Proper Noun'd Concept off _obvious_ hyperbole (who
| actually thinks property, as a concept, is going away)
| that was apparently erased once it was used to hyperbole
| and wish a Proper Noun political concept into being.
| briefcomment wrote:
| They likely believe they don't need our buy in.
| refulgentis wrote:
| To be clear, that framing was chosen to _politely_
| continue discussion.
|
| I like walking in and out with a clear head from threads,
| voting behavior changed, and you're always going to get
| downvoted through the floor for disagreeing. Might as
| well know it was because of that, than because you were
| incurious or impolite.
| briefcomment wrote:
| I didn't downvote you if that's what you're implying. I
| don't downvote anything.
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| People and organizations with wealth are dumping their money
| into the stock market or real estate because the dollar is
| being intentionally devalued.
|
| Your complaint is the label? Great Reset sounds apt.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| There are many things that would make great labels if not
| for the history or people associated with them. I would
| love to make a "Fox News" that shares news about foxes...
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| Uh, have you listened to their podcast? [0] The discussion of
| the great reset is not rooted in conspiracy theories, but
| rather direct quotations uttered by extremely problematic
| individuals who have a broad history of sketchiness,
| corruption, and warmongering.
|
| I take strong issue with your careful labeling of those with
| whom you disagree as all leaning in one direction
| politically.
|
| [0] https://pod.link/1517364006
| TheCowboy wrote:
| The Great Reset is predominantly used by conspiracy Twitter
| and it isn't close. It is blown out of proportion relative
| to its original context, and amounts to sloppy punditry
| trying overfit an interpretation of the world. One of its
| least helpful usages is as a weapon against debate/policies
| that attempt to address collective action problems such as
| climate change.
|
| It kind of reminds me of what was done with "New World
| Order", which people seem to be moving on from since the
| conspiracy pundit predictions haven't been realized (e.g.
| no world authoritarian government yet).
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| You keep changing your terms. First it was right-wingers,
| now it's conspiracy Twitter. What is "conspiracy
| Twitter," and what does it have to do with the right wing
| of US political discourse? Why are we conflating these
| terms so willingly?
|
| I made direct reference to "The Great Reset," itself,
| from the very purveyors of it - the WEF. There's no need,
| nor any value, in trying to conflate my response to you
| with this strawman group you're forming.
|
| > (e.g. no world authoritarian government yet)
|
| Your interpretation of the world is highly specious. Have
| you been in a coma for these past 1.5 years?
|
| > One of its least helpful usages
|
| Very interesting choice of words, _least helpful_. Seems
| to me like you have a strong ideological alignment with
| the goals of the World Economic Forum.
|
| See, it's so easy to flip your entire script and end up
| presenting the exact case being made by the conspiracy
| theory people. The New World Order fanatics could see the
| WEF as their fictitious enemies moving on to a new
| strategy, specifically _because_ there is now an
| authoritarian government established. And it could be
| seen as a sloppy form of punditry, overfit atop a very
| specific and narrowly-targeted interpretation of the
| world, making the conspiracy people all the more mad that
| more people don 't see things their way. Because there
| could be "real collective action," if more people did see
| it their way.
|
| Under those considerations, I would be naive to be any
| less skeptical of your position, than I am of the
| conspiracy theory strawmen you're establishing here.
|
| The actual "The Great Reset," pursued by the WEF is
| concerning specifically because it seeks to align
| economic interests globally, forcing them into a densely-
| regulated system through negative incentives. It forgoes
| and utterly mocks the notion that knowledge ought to be
| distributed, decentralized, and localized. There are not
| just huge economic concerns here, but ethical ones as
| well. Wars will be fought over the disagreements spawned
| from the aims of these zealots.
| II2II wrote:
| I was going to say, people need to learn how to make a point
| and leave out extraneous claims since those extraneous claims
| usually attack the credibility of their legitimate points ...
|
| ... but the urge to ignore my own advice is too strong since
| the extraneous claim is a huge head-scratcher. Doesn't this
| person realize the person who lost the election is a real
| estate developer? I realize this isn't the same thing as an
| investor, but it is close enough in this case.
| rbg246 wrote:
| The whole thread is off the rails, just conspiracy and rumour
| cortesoft wrote:
| If you think that was disturbing, check out the substack linked
| to the twitter account. Full on nut job.
| world_peace42 wrote:
| I clicked it. Looks like he's a Republican and a Christian
| (and has pretty standard opinions for that intersection) who
| likes to write long political essays. Are you sure he's a nut
| job, or could you possibly just be a bigot?
| rfw300 wrote:
| If that guy's views are typical of the class, that says
| more about the class than anyone judging the guy.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| After 500k COVID deaths and the events of January 6th, I
| now consider anyone spouting these sorts of delusional
| right-wing conspiracies to be potentially dangerous
| sociopaths who need to be addressed accordingly. Nut job is
| too kind.
|
| We can no longer afford to play along, pretending that
| sedition and lies are acceptable because they are just
| normal "conservative opinion".
| sidlls wrote:
| Nah, having views that divorced from reality is crazy,
| plain and simple. It's also dangerous, as the ongoing
| insurrection against the US government shows. It's not
| bigotry to call them out for how outlandish and insane
| their beliefs are.
| world_peace42 wrote:
| Nothing is bigotry if there are enough bigots. And, as
| everyone knows, HN is a one-party site, so I'm not
| expecting many upvotes.
| rrose wrote:
| the idea that HN is a liberal-only site is... not correct
| sidlls wrote:
| Yeah, democratic partisans are terrible, too, and just
| about as divorced from reality.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Yes, except the Left is in control of the establishment.
| Through Hollywood, the media, and academe (all
| notoriously Left-leaning), it has elevated its own
| conspiracy theories and prejudices to the level of
| respectable opinion or fact. Except for a few minor
| politicians, stuff like QAnon remains little more than an
| inconsequential wacky belief, regardless of what the
| fear-mongering rags try to say.
|
| Crazy ideas come about naturally, but the political
| opportunists know when to fan the flames of those ideas
| if it benefits them. You don't necessarily need a central
| planning committee to benefit from insanity.
|
| In the case of COVID, the sad tactic that's used to
| discredit anyone, even highly respected people in
| medicine, when they depart in the slightest from the
| flaky "official narrative" is to either silence such
| people immediately across all friendly channels, ridicule
| them, or to dredge up some completely preposterous claim
| and poisoning the well, etc., essentially claiming that
| anyone who disagrees with the official party line is like
| the guy who believes that lizard people run the world.
|
| Nothing you can really do about it. You can't pry the
| scales from people's eyes, especially if they like them
| just where they are. I'm pretty sure the inner coating on
| those scales is reflective.
| iso1210 wrote:
| > has pretty standard opinions for that intersection
|
| If that's true, that's a major problem that the US needs to
| solve
| [deleted]
| burkaman wrote:
| The first post calls for a nationwide armed militia to
| protect "conservative" society from its fellow
| "progressive" citizens. I don't know if this is standard,
| but it is not a good idea, and it is not bigoted to call it
| crazy. Anybody anywhere in the modern world who calls for
| an armed force to be created explicitly in the name of "God
| Almighty" (or some synonym of that) is crazy.
| kev_tech wrote:
| Yea, he's a nut job.
| chki wrote:
| These are literally two out of the first four paragraphs I
| read when clicking on that link:
|
| >Dearest Friends & Fellow Americans,
|
| The eminent trial of our Age is upon us. Those whose
| courage fails them now, who shrink from the fight, and sit
| idly while the very foundations of our nation collapse
| should sit in shame; but those that stand boldly by the
| Constitution deserve the eternal thanks of all mankind.
| Malignant tyranny, like other pogroms of the past, are no
| simple feat to overcome; Yet we know also through the
| trials of history that the greater the force of evil, the
| more august the achievement.
|
| > The Malignant States, the Federal Government, and the
| Tech Politburo have avowed to create and enforce a
| progressive establishment that places Marxist Race
| Doctrine, Anti-American Sentiment, and Western-averse
| Cultural and Governmental Practices at the forefront of
| legal and social policy and have declared that they will
| fully enchain the American populace to this destructive
| course.
|
| Edit: I hope that nobody thinks that's still "Christian and
| Republican", right? Even if you're extremely critical of
| current developments it's certainly crazy to call those a
| "pogrom".
| cosmojg wrote:
| And? Honestly, these are pretty damn tame. I don't
| understand the point you're trying to make.
|
| While I personally disagree with at least one of the
| statements you quoted and some other ideas held by the
| author, many of the ideas presented in the posted Twitter
| thread still stand. Ad hominem attacks are worthless in a
| discussion of ideas.
| chki wrote:
| >Ad hominem attacks are worthless in a discussion of
| ideas.
|
| Some of the conspiracy theories are part of the twitter
| thread. It's entirely reasonable to discuss these here,
| especially if the thread and account get this amount of
| attention.
|
| >Honestly, these are pretty damn tame.
|
| Comments like this one make me seriously fear for the
| political system of the United States. If that's "tame" I
| do not know what isn't.
| woodruffw wrote:
| COVID denialism, election denialism, and "The Great Reset"
| are high profile crank subjects. Being a conservative
| Christian doesn't make you a crank; those things do.
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| I don't believe X00,000 died from Covid-19. If I believe
| Covid-19 exists, am I still a Covid denier?
|
| I feel like absolutist language such as x-denier is
| designed by stupid people to avoid debate.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Yes. That's a crazy belief.
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| Expand?
| chki wrote:
| It's completely unreasonable to look (for example) at the
| situation in Brazil and question the enormous death toll
| of COVID-19.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Even just looking at excess deaths immediately shows the
| scale of the pandemic. Some weeks during December, there
| were 25,000 additional people per week dying compared to
| the typical year. What do you think was causing this if
| not Covid?
|
| Over 680,000 additional deaths in 2020/early 2021.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.
| htm
|
| Talk to a single doctor that was on the 'front lines' of
| this - a family member was signing 20 death certificates
| per week for people dying of horrible respiratory disease
| with positive Covid tests. One person at one hospital
| overwhelmed with the quantity of death. What was it if
| not Covid?
| pandeiro wrote:
| Agreed, I use euromomo to look at total mortality across
| Europe and it's difficult to deny that something was
| killing lots more people than usual last spring and
| winter (northern hemisphere).
|
| However it can also be the case that COVID deaths (and
| hospitalizations as well) may be over-reported. We have
| recent reports that seem to be pointing strongly to this
| possibility.
|
| [1]: Alameda County revising COVID deaths downward by 25%
| - https://oaklandside.org/2021/06/04/alameda-countys-new-
| covid...
|
| [2]: Research in CA suggests COVID hospitalization in
| children overcounted by 40% -
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/study-number-of-
| kids...
| mikeyouse wrote:
| So you think that "something was killing lots more people
| than usual" but that the few isolated cases of counties
| overcounting Covid deaths are systemic and that there was
| no reciprocal data issues?
|
| What precisely do you think was killing all of those
| extra people who were showing up in ERs with respiratory
| distress?
| throwawaysea wrote:
| It isn't as crazy as you might think depending on how far
| you want to take it. My charitable interpretation of the
| comment you're replying to is that they believe COVID is
| real and does cause deaths, but that the number of deaths
| is not as high as what is claimed.
|
| As an example of why that isn't "crazy", consider that
| recently a major Bay Area county in CA revised their
| COVID counts downward by 25%
| (https://www.foxnews.com/health/california-county-cuts-
| covid-...) because they had previously included deaths of
| anyone infected with the virus, regardless of whether the
| virus was a direct or contributing cause to the death.
| This is in a state that took the pandemic very seriously,
| had lots of governmental organization around it, and
| 'believes in science'.
|
| People have been raising concerns about how deaths are
| counted throughout the pandemic, but they've largely been
| ignored, despite it being a legitimate line of
| questioning. They were always told "there are standards",
| which isn't really a convincing argument, given that
| there have been a non-zero number of proven instances of
| over-counting. You could argue that excess mortality is
| the metric we should look at, and that may be appropriate
| in some countries where such data collection is rigorous.
| But the way excess mortality is tracked is also
| inconsistent between different nations, and outright non-
| existent in most nations.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| No, it's still crazy. Data quality is the reason I only
| stuck to the US figures.
|
| The "Official" death count due to covid in the US so far
| is 586,000. Excess mortality indicates 680,000.
|
| Believing that "the real" number is somewhere
| substantially below that is not "skeptical" it's just
| silly.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| From a purely logical viewpoint, it is a bit hilarious
| that you consider the objectively most outlandish of
| these beliefs to be the only non-cranky one. Although it
| is, admittedly, the most viable one socially.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't think truth/outlandishness is all that closely
| related to whether a particular belief is a crank-y one.
| For example: horoscopes are fake, but I don't think that
| people who believe in horoscopes are cranks, per se. Or
| unfalsifiable claims: plenty of people have crank and
| non-crank views about things that just don't adhere to
| proof/disproof.
|
| To put it another way: a lot of religious (particularly
| Christian) views amount to metaphysical claims that we
| can't really falsify. That's maybe sufficient to make
| them "irrational" in a narrow analytical sense, but
| insufficient to label them as crank-ish.
| rajin444 wrote:
| Claims about covid and the election can't be
| (realistically) falsified by an individual either. You're
| just disagreeing on whether you should trust a study
| author / politician more than a priest.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't understand this point. I'm saying that whether or
| not a particular subject is a "crank" one is not closely
| related to either its truth value _or_ whether that truth
| value is even ascertainable.
|
| I haven't made an argument for _why_ the ones I 've
| listed are actually crank subjects; I consider those
| granted and I'm not particularly interested in justifying
| them.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| The things you listed form a cluster of beliefs that
| gullible, uneducated, and often toxic people flock to,
| and that makes those positions quite unattractive even
| ignoring their respective merits, which are not great.
|
| What I take issue with is the lack of symmetry. For every
| COVID denialist, you have a zero-COVID enthusiast. For
| every election denialist, you have an impending climate
| catastrophe doommonger. For every great reset conspiracy
| theorist, you have someone who believes we live in a
| meritocracy. Each of the latter positions is as merituous
| as their counterpart, but the former are treated with a
| disproportionate contempt.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Respectfully, I think calling "The Great Reset" a 'crank
| subject' is itself a sign of conspiratorial thinking, or
| in the least, misleading/false information. I often see
| people label discussions of "The Great Reset" in this
| way, but that ignores the reality that the World Economic
| Forum literally branded their 2020 meeting as "Great
| Reset" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Reset). If
| the WEF isn't a familiar name, it's because you might
| have heard it previously referred to as "Davos", a
| meeting of many powerful and influential people.
|
| When such a group meets to discuss society-wide changes
| and pushes their positions publicly, I don't think that's
| a "crank subject". That's simply a legitimate story that
| others may wish to discuss and raise concerns about.
| Critique about WEF/Davos isn't new - it has been
| described as an undemocratic forum previously, because
| it's a set of powerful people deciding how they want to
| shape the world outside of any national or international
| political process. This isn't conspiratorial thinking, it
| is literally the way the WEF is set up and operates. See
| the following paper for a critique, which mentions that
| WEF members downplay the importance of this forum and
| that their public exposure hides all that takes place
| privately: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/do
| cument.html?re...
| woodruffw wrote:
| "Crank subjects" are not subjects that are themselves
| fundamentally outlandish or unreal: they're subjects
| _picked up_ by cranks and integrated into conspiratorial
| worldviews. Davos is a real summit that happens every
| year; it 's also a crank subject because cranks integrate
| it into their NWO and similar theories.
|
| Your own Wikipedia link says this neatly:
|
| > According to The New York Times,[1 1] the BBC, The
| Guardian, Le Devoir and Radio Canada, "baseless"
| conspiracy theories spread by American far-right groups
| linked to QAnon surged at the onset of the Great Reset
| forum and increased in fervor as leaders such as U.S.
| President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin
| Trudeau[1 2] incorporated ideas based on a "reset" in
| their speeches.[1 3]
| waheoo wrote:
| You're just going by the comment above aren't ya there
| bud?
|
| The great reset is something that was discussed in the
| open, even if it is pretty lol. Covid lab leak looks
| highly likely at this point, multiple governments around
| the world are now owning up to the bullshit they fed us
| we knew were lies all along, fake news msnbc is literally
| on the record promoting propaganda against trump and
| purposely downplaying if not dismissing any news that may
| potentially help the man. While not widespread, nor
| anywhere near enough to tip the election, voter fraud was
| very real, every instance of it was dismissed and ignored
| when some of it very much needed further investigation.
|
| Oh and those peaceful protests never were.
|
| This is me, a liberal.
|
| I'm not a Republican or a crazed conservative, I just
| have by eyes open and don't give a crap what tribe you're
| on.
| world_peace42 wrote:
| I remember last year when believing COVID may have come
| out of a lab made one a crank. It was only on certain
| news channels or specific papers. Of course, let's also
| assume there are no widespread liberal beliefs (the world
| is going to end in 12 years) that should label someone as
| a crank.
| bosswipe wrote:
| Conspiracy theorists were right about so many things last
| year like hydroxychloroquine and 5g. So we should totally
| trust them now that Biden and scientists have decided to
| look more closely into the lab-leak possibility.
|
| /s
| rrose wrote:
| "the world is going to end in 12 years" is not a
| widespread belief, liberal or otherwise
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I believe that this claim refers to some of the more
| extreme climate alarmists. Claims that at least sound
| like this have in fact been made.
| rrose wrote:
| yeah, i know that's what it refers to, but it is a straw
| man. Nobody actually thinks the world is going to
| literally end in that short of a time frame, and the
| existence of claims vaguely like this still don't mean
| its a widely held belief.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, if it's not widely _held_ , then it shouldn't be as
| widely _said_. Saying it when everybody knows it 's not
| true just makes you look like a nut case who's lost touch
| with reality. People who make such claims do their cause
| more harm than good.
| [deleted]
| crypto-cousin wrote:
| Do you ever think about how crank "denialisms" are
| usually believed by small percentages of the population,
| but this time with COVID and the election it's nearly
| half? Isn't that strange?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| It's certainly sad. I guess you could call it strange,
| but not entirely unexpected given how proud many are
| about being uneducated.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Most people who voted for Trump believe Trump lost to
| Biden.
| iso1210 wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2021/may/24/republicans-...
|
| > May opinion poll finds that 53% of Republicans believe
| Trump is the 'true president' compared with 3% of
| Democrats
|
| > About one-quarter of adults falsely believe the 3
| November election was tainted by illegal voting,
| including 56% of Republicans, according to the poll.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| An online-only poll of 700 people is not particularly
| compelling.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| This happened with the previous election too. For one,
| Hillary literally claimed Trump stole the election and
| called him an 'illegitimate president', adding to that
| widespread belief:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-
| trum...
|
| Democrat voters didn't accept that Trump legitimately won
| the 2016 election:
| https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/334972-poll-
| dems...
|
| Half of Democrat voters believe that Russia literally
| tampered with _vote tallies_ to help Trump in the 2016
| election:
| https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-
| reports/20...
|
| Such sentiments continued even a couple years after the
| election: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-
| russia-poll-idU...
|
| Let's also not forget that the Democrats formally
| challenged election results in 2000, 2004, and 2016 - all
| the recent presidential elections they lost:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/opinion/democrat-
| republic...
| tzs wrote:
| Actually, your second link doesn't say what you think it
| says. It says that people believe that Democrats believe
| that, not that Democrats believe that. Yes, it seems a
| weird thing to poll about.
|
| Your fourth link is misleading. You've picked a link from
| a moment in time when Barr had released his summary of
| the Meuller report but Meuller's criticism of Barr's
| summary as being inaccurate had not been released.
| dnadler wrote:
| The "whataboutism" argument doesn't refute the initial
| claim. It's simply changing the subject and is
| effectively surrendering the point.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I'm not refuting it. I am pointing out that this is a
| pattern with much precedent, and is not restricted to
| Republicans or conservatives. A number of comments in
| this discussion seem to be ascribing belief in improbable
| scenarios to one political side. If anything, I would say
| that election denialism is a tit-for-tat game that is now
| reflecting back the same disbelief that was shown in
| prior elections. Furthermore, the GP comment suggested
| that half of the population holding a "crank denialism"
| is something new. My evidence shows it is clearly not
| something new.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| It doesn't refute it but sums up well the American
| political culture.
| mech422 wrote:
| I clicked it, read some of it.. I think he's all 3
| RIMR wrote:
| It really was a bad end. Pretty much describes how capitalism's
| natural end will fuck us over, and then decides to throw in
| some support for the billionaire landlord president he liked...
| ghostwriter wrote:
| > capitalism's natural end
|
| where's Capitalism and where's Federal Reserve funded
| institutions that represent the big deep state aiming at
| controlling all aspects of your life.
| tootie wrote:
| It went off the rails at the beginning. After the WSJ article
| about how pension fund managers are buying homes as investment
| vehicles, he immediately veered into fantasyland citing only
| blogs or his imagination. The Great Reset has a homepage and it
| has nothing to do with anything he's ranting about.
|
| https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/
| kristopolous wrote:
| Conspiracy theories are the new urban folklore.
|
| They get disconnected from their origins, repackaged and
| repurposed like a durable material.
|
| "Cabal" traditionally is a dog-whistle for the antisemitism
| conspiracy about why the Nazis claim they lost WW1.
|
| It's been durable. Lots of uses of cabal these days shed those
| nazi roots and repurpose it to just mean "those corrupted by
| wealth and power". It's still really, extremely close to a very
| dangerous form of anti-semitism, but it's possible for one to
| exist without the other.
|
| It's really fascinating how transitive these lies are and how
| they can be composited like higher level programming objects to
| form essentially different flavors of insanity. I wish humans
| weren't like this but eh, don't know how to change it
| helen___keller wrote:
| And here I thought the paranoia surrounding urban real estate
| prices over the past decade was bad (Remember the countless
| pieces about foreign investment dollars, induced demand causing
| gentrification, empty condo buildings, et cetera?)
|
| Now urban money has started spilling out of major urban centers
| during covid, and demand for space has had a major uptick no
| less, so the rest of the country is experiencing a fraction of
| the insane price growth that major cities have seen for two
| straight decades.
|
| Yeah, it sucks. No, your "evil investment money" thesis is still
| wrong, or at best misleading. It's essentially supply and demand
| (added with some inflation and supply shocks), you can either
| hope demand goes down or your city can plan to add more supply.
| Those have only ever been the two options.
| manishsharan wrote:
| A 100% capital gains tax on residential properties unless the
| seller claims that property as their sole residence for last 5 +
| years.
|
| That should fix it.
| [deleted]
| commandlinefan wrote:
| This hurts people who already own houses, too - property taxes
| are assessed on the appraised value of the home, which is a
| function of what the similarly-sized houses in your area sold for
| most recently. My property taxes have increased 10% every year
| for the past several years (and it would have been more if not
| for a legislative 10% annual cap). I worry that there will come a
| day when I've paid off my mortgage but won't be able to afford to
| pay the real estate tax any more.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I really don't see how you're complaining -- the value of your
| home is going up way more in absolute terms than the property
| tax you're paying.
|
| If you don't have cash, take out a small mortgage on the house
| to pay the property taxes. You'll still come out ahead in the
| end.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| It's still a pain. And once you bought a house, you might
| like to think of it as an unmovable good (literally, in many
| languages). Now your cash flow doesn't permit you to live
| there.
|
| Also, with low/zero IR, PV of tax payments is infinite, it's
| not like increasing house price is offsetting that.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| That was a joke, right?
| sagarm wrote:
| Why is it a joke? Your property value went up
| significantly, you are in fact a winner. Why should you get
| to shirk your responsibility to your community?
| sethammons wrote:
| re-pasting from an earlier comment of mine:
|
| I say it is unjust for a fixed income senior citizen or
| disability insurance recipient to have their property tax
| base grow to a point where they must flee their home of
| decades. The callus answer is to force the person to sell
| and take their gains and move so a younger person with
| higher wages can afford their once-home. I think it is
| unjust to remove an older, less abled, and less
| employment-opportunitied person from their environment.
| sagarm wrote:
| They could take an loan against the unrealized gain on
| their asset if they'd like to continue living there. If
| they'd rather sell and keep the cash, that's their
| choice. Letting them both keep the windfall and
| shortchange their community doesn't make sense.
|
| In addition, California (and I suspect other states) have
| a means tested property tax postponement program that
| allows low income homeowners to defer taxes until they
| move out, sell, refinance, or die as a substitute for
| obtaining a private loan.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You seem to have missed my original comment.
|
| Any senior citizen who owns their home (mortgage all or
| mostly paid off) can take out whatever size mortgage
| necessary to pay property taxes. Since it's backed by the
| house's larger value itself.
|
| Who's making them "flee their home"...? That would only
| happen if it's already mortgaged to the hilt, but then
| they're already on the verge of losing it anyways.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Property taxes do not have to go up because the assessment goes
| up. I have had assessments go up, but the tax rate go down
| because the town did not increase its budget.
|
| In the long run it probably will though, since higher land
| values will probably cause increases in wages and other costs.
| But it does not have to be proportionally as much as the land
| value increase.
| gadaprog wrote:
| I am not a tax expert, but my understanding is that each
| State sets their own formula for property taxes.
|
| In every state I have lived in, the first factor of that
| "property tax formula" is always "Assessed Value" of said
| property, and then the formula continues from there based on
| a slew of criteria (property type, exemptions, etc.).
|
| So you are correct that "Property taxes do not have to go up
| because the assessment goes up." but it is misleading since
| property tax is generally going to go increase if assessment
| increases and all other factors are held equal.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is more accurate to say property taxes are going up
| because government expenditures go up. That might be partly
| caused in the long term due to increases in land prices,
| since the services your taxes pay for are performed by
| people that may need to buy land, but it's not a 1 to 1
| relationship in the short term.
|
| I have seen tax rates drop from 1.25% to 1% and the
| opposite also happens when the tax collections come up
| short.
|
| I can give an example. I used to have land in NJ a few
| years ago, and the total property tax went up year after
| year. If I recall, the tax rate went from ~1.5% to slightly
| above 2%, and the assessment barely went up. The property
| tax went up due to government expenses coming in higher
| than expected due to all the debt NJ is in that was not
| counted as debt (underfunded DB pensions). In fact, I lost
| money on that land because it was worth less since
| prospective buyers know the property tax will continue to
| rise, so they have to budget for that.
|
| On the other hand, I had land in FL at the same time, which
| has appreciated a lot and was assessed for more. But the
| total property tax paid stayed more or less the same, since
| the tax rate came down since the government's expenditures
| did not move as much, and/or were offset by new payers.
|
| The property tax formulas have more to do with what
| proportion of the government's expenses is each land owner
| liable for, but the total tax collected does not need to
| rise in step with total land value increase.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| The government has a claim to your property. The government
| is strongly influenced by lobbyists. The government is also
| gerrymandered.
|
| The government always needs more money.
|
| Why would your property taxes not continue to go up
| endlessly?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > Why would your property taxes not continue to go up
| endlessly?
|
| IIUC, you're arguing that we should expect that ^^^
| outcome, because of the political/economic dynamics you
| mentioned earlier.
|
| My understanding is that, except in towns/cities undergoing
| gentrification, U.S. municipal property taxes are pretty
| constant (modulo inflation).
|
| So it sounds like the outcome predicted by that theory
| probably isn't happening. Wouldn't this cast doubt on the
| theory?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > My understanding is that, except in towns/cities
| undergoing gentrification, U.S. municipal property taxes
| are pretty constant (modulo inflation).
|
| Yes, except for places _experiencing increasing real
| property values_ , real property taxes aren't increasing.
|
| But the discussion was about places with sustained real
| property value increase, so that generality is
| irrelevant.
|
| The scare scenario is still wrong, but for different
| reasons.
| harambae wrote:
| >Yes, except for places experiencing increasing real
| property values, real property taxes aren't increasing.
|
| Unless you're referencing the California instances in
| which Prop 13 protects homeowners from increases of more
| than 2%, I'm not sure what you mean. Nationwide property
| taxes increase over 5% YoY, while general inflation was
| far less [0]
|
| [0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/homeowners-are-
| facing-the-...
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/244983/projected-
| inflati...
| digitaltrees wrote:
| Your conclusion is based on a series of questionable
| premises and you assume causation that doesn't necessarily
| follow. What support do you have for saying that because
| the government is influenced by lobbyists and
| gerrymandering that necessarily means property taxes will
| go up endlessly.
|
| In fact the evidence is that property taxes don't go up
| endlessly they are actually highly stable when adjusted for
| inflation. Further many states don't have property tax, or
| expressly cap them.
|
| Finally everyone always needs more money, individual and
| companies included. Why should government be any different.
| Governments are just human organizations like any other.
| They just have a different role and responsibility.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Why would your property taxes not continue to go up
| endlessly?
|
| I do expect them to go up endlessly, but I expect for
| everything else to also go up endlessly (in nominal terms).
| asdff wrote:
| Depends on where you live. In CA property taxes are assessed on
| the appraised value of the home when you bought it. If you give
| the deed to your kids they can pay taxes at this rate as well.
| Plenty of homeowners and landlords in CA are enjoying their
| locked in 1976 tax rate today. It used to be you'd help your
| kid get a job at you or your friends company, now you just hand
| them the deed of the dingbat apartment your father built on the
| lot of your former single family home in the 1970s before that
| was illegal, and they are set for life without ever having to
| work a job again. Getting 5 units of people paying market rate
| for a 1 bedroom means you are making over 6 figures.
| dv_dt wrote:
| This is why CA has prop 13 which limits increases to property
| taxes from year to year specifically because CA had seem
| property boom/bust cycles kicking people out of homes because
| of irrational real estate prices.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Well, no, California has Prop 13, because wealthy investors
| in property used constructed images of that scenario to build
| support for a law to transfer more wealth to the already
| wealthy, not because its was a real problem (and, even if it
| was, Prop 13 doesn't focus on dealing with that problem.)
| dv_dt wrote:
| There are problems with prop 13, but it does prevent people
| from being kicked out of their owned homes for temporary
| market conditions that are out of their control.
|
| Imho the problem was that the politics of the day got it
| passed to cover commercial properties too, when it really
| should just cover primary residences. And not secondary
| homes or rental properties.
| rcpt wrote:
| The California Tax Postponment Program prevents
| displacement of low income seniors and the disabled. Prop
| 13 is wholly unnecessary.
| dv_dt wrote:
| These programs often have terrible red tape and even
| awareness problems. They also ignore people who aren't
| seniors but may be going through temporary rough spots. I
| prefer to have the prop 13 rules fundamentally built in
| an applied to all primary residences as a measure to
| provide a more universal stability of a home.
| rcpt wrote:
| > These programs often have terrible red tape and even
| awareness problems.
|
| Prop 13 is $30B (billion!) per year. Surely there are
| cheaper ways to fix the "red tape" and "awareness
| problems",
| xsmasher wrote:
| I would prefer that prop13 did not apply to commercial
| property, and that it only applied to the first 500k of
| home value.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| > not because its was a real problem (and, even if it was,
| Prop 13 doesn't focus on dealing with that problem.)
|
| California politicians were working on solutions to the
| property tax problem for years. The same year prop 13 was
| on ballot, something else was on ballot to fix the problem,
| which would have done a much better, targeted job - but
| unfortunately big money poured into prop 13 and that got
| passed.
|
| My parents bought a new house in 73, and by the time prop
| 13 passed it was worth around 3x the purchase price. They
| both worked in tech and were close to having to sell their
| house (they had 4 kids).
|
| It was a real problem, prop 13 was just a bad solution.
| sagarm wrote:
| Towns normally set the property tax rate to meet their
| budget, so appraisals increasing across the board would not
| increase you property taxes.
|
| Prop 13 leads to perverse outcomes like subsidizing slums and
| trust fund kids while penalizing new homeowners and people
| improving their property. It's also simply unjust for two
| neighbors with similar properties to pay different rates
| based on their age or even ancestry.
| sethammons wrote:
| I say it is unjust for a fixed income senior citizen or
| disability insurance recipient to have their property tax
| base grow to a point where they must flee their home of
| decades. The callus answer is to force the person to sell
| and take their gains and move so a younger person with
| higher wages can afford their once-home. I think it is
| unjust to remove an older, less abled, and less employment-
| opportunitied person from their environment.
| sagarm wrote:
| I replied elsewhere: nobody is having to flee anything.
| If they would rather sell and keep gains rather than
| spend them to continue living there, that's their choice.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Property taxes in most of america are a made up number. The
| county needs $X and levies Y% in property tax and the auditors
| use a formula to solve for $Z, which is the value of an
| individual home. This is exactly why, all over the country,
| you'll find houses that just sold for $500k which have an
| "appraised value" of like $120k. Property taxes are dictated by
| the size of $X, not really the value or volume of houses.
|
| Some areas have legislation that prevents property taxes from
| increasing at too fast a rate. In those regions, the formula is
| changed a bit so that newer residences are charged at a high
| initial rate.
| nomoreplease wrote:
| > Property taxes in most of america are a made up number.
|
| Except in States that have property tax and no income tax,
| the appraised value is close to the sale value, usually
| slightly under.
|
| So in a 500k example, the appraised value is something like
| 450k (or more). Then your property tax might be 2% of that
| appraised value, which results in a $9,000 property tax bill
| every year, even when you retire.
|
| If speculative buying drives up the price over 10 years, it
| also drives up the appraised value and also your tax bill
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Even with the artificial constraints in many places, in the end
| property tax should generally be relatively independent of
| property value in absolute terms. E.g. in Oregon we have a 3%
| cap on assessed value, and that probably helped some people for
| a couple years early on after the law was passed, but over the
| longer term it doesn't really matter. The only effect assessed
| value has is on the size of your particular slice of the total
| tax revenue.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Arkansas has a petition going around right now to axe property
| taxes completely. I believe other states do not have property
| taxes already as well.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I agree, the unwashed masses can all send their kids to
| private schools and hire their own security as do I.
|
| (Wow, I don't understand the public sometimes.)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's a popular notion for the redneck crowd.
|
| It never happens because it the math just doesn't work out.
| State/local revenues boil down to: property taxes, sales/use
| taxes, excise taxes, fees and income taxes. The big revenue
| streams are property taxes (schools, towns), sales taxes
| (county/state), and income taxes (state). Fees mostly sustain
| individual programs and have limited revenue potential - you
| can't make a fishing license $1000.
|
| So when you get rid of property taxes, you get rid of local
| control of the levy, which sounds great until Little Rock
| doesn't want to provide state funds to pay your football
| coach $200k. Even in a middle of the road state like
| Arkansas, the pressure to meet Medicaid and other other state
| program dependencies would make it difficult to fund local
| government. You'll have a revolt if try to levy a 20% sales
| tax.
|
| The talk radio answer is "shrink the government!". That means
| layoff cops, firemen, close schools and libraries, eliminate
| school sports and close public resources like parks,
| libraries and suspend things like street lighting. That will
| make reactionaries happy, but employers will leave.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| That makes sense but 14 states allow local governments to
| enact their own income taxes. This seems like an easy fix.
| The problem with property taxes is that they're taxing
| wealth which is not creating monetary value which can be
| used to pay the fees.
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| Your language seems a bit elitist, even for me.
|
| Nonetheless, the content of what you said seems reasonable
| and sound. Thank you for helping me understand this.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Sorry if I came off a little strong. I used to serve on a
| school board. Things would get intense sometimes.
| tzs wrote:
| All US states currently have property taxes [1].
|
| [1] https://learn.roofstock.com/blog/states-without-property-
| tax
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This hurts people who already own houses, too - property
| taxes are assessed on the appraised value of the home,
|
| Actual asset values increasing aren't a harm, and there is
| basically no place in the US with property taxes high enough
| that them increasing due to market value can possibly offset
| the utility (and realizable benefit) of the increase in value,
| even without the (common, if not usually as ridiculously low as
| California's) caps on annual assessment increases that assure
| that properties that don't change hands are systematically
| undertaxed when rapid sustained market increases occur.
|
| Modern financing provides plenty of ways to access equity, so
| this is very much a non-issue. Though its an issue the
| property-rich like to pretend is real, because it supports
| policy that cuts them more breaks and makes things that much
| worse for everyone else, e.g., CA Prop 13.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| This can be fixed somewhat by excluding primary residence from
| such taxes (essentially a tax-free allowance of 1). This cuts
| at hoarding real estate as investment, is a nice extra tax on
| people buying second homes, and doesn't (directly) affect 99%
| of homeowners who only ever own one house.
|
| I'm not sure I support land taxes etc. but this at least deals
| with your objection.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| So the people who live in an area shouldn't be the ones
| paying the taxes to support the area?
|
| Someone else should pay the taxes for them?
|
| Either your tax would come entirely from income - huge
| handout to homeowners / cost to non-homeonwers - regressive.
| OR your sales tax would be so crushing that no one would ever
| buy anything in your community.
|
| Or you could live in a fantasy land.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| If it's sarcasm I detect in your otherwise fine post, it
| doesn't add to the content.
|
| There are many ways to fund the local area. UK has explicit
| "council tax", based on property value, but not as a fixed
| percentage, rather more linked to the percentage of the
| house value - so your tax bill doesn't double just because
| other peoples houses appreciated. These are paid for all
| houses, and go to the local government. I think this is
| indeed one of the main sources of income for local
| councils.
|
| But for example for capital gains tax, which goes fully to
| the central government, primary residence is excluded.
|
| This means that people buying property as investments end
| up paying CGT but not ordinary house owners. If investment
| properties are rented out, it is the renters that pay
| council tax, as the actual inhabitants of the properties.
|
| There are so many ways to skin a rabbit with taxes, you
| could tailor it pretty well to discriminate between
| homeowners and investors.
| cpwright wrote:
| This totally depends on the jurisdiction. In NYS, your taxing
| authority (town, school district) has some levy that is
| approved. Your share of the levy is roughly your property's
| assessed value divided by the total assessed value of
| properties in that taxing jurisdiction. There are some
| complicating factors like when a taxing authority like a school
| district spans multiple assessing authorities (like a
| town/city); but the basic concept is sound.
|
| I was very surprised when I learned other places charge you
| some fixed fraction of the property value; and as that value
| goes up the budget of the municipality goes up.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's almost never a worry that plays out. Property taxes are
| usually a levy, allocated prorata based on total assessed
| value.
|
| If your taxes are going up dramatically as values rise, that's
| either a sign of issues with equalization rates (the
| county/town/city needs to periodically reassess), or that other
| areas in the jurisdiction are declining relative to value. You
| often see that in cities where property values often mirrors
| the old "redline" maps... gentrification gets you million
| dollar condos, but two blocks away some tenement is declining
| in relative value.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > My property taxes have increased 10% every year for the past
| several years
|
| How I know you don't live in California.
|
| You would love Prop 13 then that has capped the amount that
| property taxes can increase per year.
|
| Be careful though, your public schools and other services paid
| for by property taxes are going to suffer as the cash flow
| dries up....
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| Strange argument considering public schools (and in general
| _many_ public services) in CA are in terrible condition.
| Maybe I'm missing the point though.
| nradov wrote:
| CA school funding per student is above the national median.
| If some schools are in terrible condition then it's due to
| incompetent management, not lack of funding. Conditions in
| my local CA public schools seem reasonably good.
| asdff wrote:
| CA cost of everything is above the national median, no
| surprise dollar spent per pupil is higher. If it were the
| same that would mean teachers are making significantly
| less and who knows what other compromises. Prop 13
| changed a lot about how schools are funded (local vs
| state) and has lead to some challenges in certain
| districts relative to others, and it took decades for
| education funding to reach parity with pre prop 13
| levels.
|
| https://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/op/OP_998JCOP.pdf
| mercutio2 wrote:
| Huh?
|
| He's making the argument that what you observe is a direct
| effect of Prop 13.
|
| You may disagree, but it's very much not a strange
| argument.
|
| Prop 13 kneecapped the ability for municipalities to fund
| themselves in the way they traditionally do in the US, and
| public services got vastly worse.
| zbrozek wrote:
| Yet somehow total tax burden for those in the state is
| well above other places, including those with functional
| public services. I wish it were easier to figure out
| where the money goes.
| Cicero22 wrote:
| It's a good thing that the value of your house is going up
| though, right? I suppose it might be upsetting to have to sell
| your house if it becomes too expensive, but that's a really
| nice problem to have imo.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > have to sell your house
|
| Not particularly, if every other house is too expensive for a
| normal person to afford.
| rcpt wrote:
| You do realize that once you sell the house you'll have
| money which can be used to buy a different house, right?
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Once you can't afford to pay the GOVERNMENT any more because
| property taxes have skyrocketed out of control I'm sure a
| private company will be happy to swoop in and buy your house
| out from under you.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| So you'd rather have an inefficient use of property that sits
| languishing just because some one owned it in the past? One
| of the benefits of taxing property is that it encourages
| productive use. Use it or lose it. The increasing velocity of
| property transfers helps increase economic activity.
| danans wrote:
| There is another way it hurts homeowners: the high cost of
| housing increases the cost of upgrading and maintaining the
| home you own, mostly via the construction labor market -
| because the workers need to pay for the roofs over their heads
| too.
|
| Therefore, just keeping the depreciation of your house at bay
| ends up becoming expensive. If you are lucky enough to enjoy
| DIY work like I do, you can avoid this somewhat, but the moment
| you need to do any major renovation that you don't have the
| time and skills to do yourself, it costs about the same as a
| purchase.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Is it somehow crazy or unpalatable to say that there should be a
| law against institutional investors and corporations from owning
| residential real estate that was built for owner-occupiers? Bc
| there should be a law and it should have been passed by congress
| _yesterday_.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I chuckled at the headline because financial planners have always
| said that owning real estate for renting out was a more reliable
| source of retirement income than anything else. However, it is
| annoying at how some places where there is strong demand, there
| are few new projects going up. I personally have been amazed at
| how much new housing has been (and is currently being) developed
| in the "south bay" (which are the communities Mtn View,
| Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and San Jose.
|
| Ever since mixed commercial/residential started getting approved
| we've had over a dozen large re-developments of lots that were
| purely commercial/industrial into mixed residential / commercial.
| The entire AMD and former Spansion campuses have been re-done
| this way and produced both hundreds of new homes and several new
| commercial leasing opportunities. Sunnyvale's revised downtown
| went from 100% commercial to 50 / 50 commercial and residential.
| So that is pretty amazing to me.
| coverband wrote:
| This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why would an entity
| trying to maximize profits pay an extra 20-50% to purchase an
| illiquid asset?
| Faaak wrote:
| I suppose when your investment horizon if 40+ years (and
| interest rates are low), you can afford you have a longer ROI ?
| mantas wrote:
| Sort of like investing crazy money into startups. Big bets
| hoping to get a once-in-thousand-years cashcow.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Make enough bets and it works out.
| krona wrote:
| It's the least risky asset on the time horizon that they're
| operating on.
| RGamma wrote:
| Not that risk really matters much because Blackrock is too
| big to fail anyway.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Reaching for yield. People will need housing, and assets are
| inflating because there's more capital chasing fewer returns.
| Lock up housing assets, you're locking in returns.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| They have so much money there's nothing really left to spend it
| on.
| briefcomment wrote:
| Once you own all housing, what's to stop you from increasing
| rents?
| recursive wrote:
| Presumably your own desire to maximize revenue. If you charge
| a rent that your tenant can't afford, then you get nothing.
| briefcomment wrote:
| If you own all options and the renter needs to have some
| sort of housing, they'll pay anyway. The end result is that
| the owner will start collecting a larger percent of the
| renter's earnings.
| mullen wrote:
| When you make housing too expensive, people just get up
| and move. People are not surfs and are not trapped or
| stuck living in a house they can't afford. It might not
| happen overnight but populations do migrate due to
| housing costing too much.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > When you make housing too expensive, people just get up
| and move.
|
| Not when all the jobs in that household are here.
|
| > People are not surfs and are not trapped or stuck
| living in a house they can't afford.
|
| They are when all the jobs in that household are here.
|
| > It might not happen overnight but populations do
| migrate due to housing costing too much.
|
| People who are facing homelessness this year aren't
| thinking about market corrections that are decades away.
| recursive wrote:
| I'd give up housing before food. There's a limit to how
| high that percentage can be.
| briefcomment wrote:
| The point is that landlords will be able to suck up the
| income that you spend on non-essentials and luxuries.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > I'd give up housing before food.
|
| Lack of food can be fixed in a day. Lack of housing can
| be impossible to overcome ever.
| recursive wrote:
| I don't get this.
|
| Both things _could_ be fixed in a day. Also, both of them
| _could_ be impossible to overcome ever. What 's the
| distinction you're trying to draw. If it comes down to an
| acute situation where I had to choose, I (and most I
| think) would choose to eat. I understand in the real
| world, there probably wouldn't be such a clear choice.
| sagarm wrote:
| Regulatory backlash.
| briefcomment wrote:
| We're waiting
| sagarm wrote:
| Rent control has been instituted or strengthened as a
| response to rising rents in cities across the country.
| foobiekr wrote:
| The move BlackRock will do, based on their history, is to
| incentivize increases in adjacencies to drive value. What I
| mean by that is that they will, for example, encourage new
| office complexes in locations favorable to their new rental
| domains. Think SF bay area's natural and warped logic
| locating massive complexes on the peninsula or ST instead of
| Fremont/San Jose.
| briefcomment wrote:
| Right, but the greater the share of the market you own, the
| less you have to invest in making your offering more
| attractive, and the more you can start simply increasing
| rents.
|
| They along with others are trying to build a
| monopoly/oligopoly in housing. Naturally we would expect
| regulations against this, but the fact that it's going this
| far is a bad sign.
| randomfool wrote:
| Since land is a limited asset they can effectively corner the
| market in specific regions and gain pricing power, allowing
| them to turn that 20% purchase price premium into a hefty
| profit.
|
| Cities can counter this by allowing more new construction but
| backfilling Single Family Residences requires land and that may
| not be readily available within certain commute distances.
| rkangel wrote:
| It's slightly more complicated than that because what they'll
| do is keep the properties and rent them. There being few
| houses to buy increases the demand for rent, and cornering
| the rental market means you can control rent prices.
| tptacek wrote:
| There is no analysis anywhere that suggests Blackrock is
| poised to corner the rental market.
| opsecweather wrote:
| They certainly get better mortgage rates than their middle-
| class competitors or maybe they just buy it outright which
| would save $100k's in the long-run.
| rmah wrote:
| It doesn't make sense because the headline and linked tweets
| misrepresented the facts of the WSJ article it sourced its info
| from. I quote "Blackrock is buying every single family house
| they can find, paying 20-50% above asking price and outbidding
| normal home buyer..." and then he links to
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-sell-a-house-these-days-...
|
| The general thrust that institutional investment groups have
| increased their purchasing of single-family residential homes
| over the last decade is true (around 20% to 25% of all such
| transactions now, IIRC). And it may be true that such buyers
| are pushing up home prices in many areas. I haven't done any
| analysis of that so I cannot comment on it.
|
| However, the tweets are ... not quite correct. First off, the
| transaction in the article was a deal where Blackrock purchased
| a set of 124 _rental properties_ that was already owned by an
| institution (D.R. Horton). It was this complex
| https://www.amberpineshomes.com/floorplans. The seller is
| quoted as saying "We certainly wouldn't expect every single-
| family community we sell to sell at a 50% gross margin", which
| isn't the same as 50% above asking price. Various groups bid on
| the complex and, from another linked article, all bids came
| within a few % of each other. Any seller would hope to sell
| with some sort of positive gross margin. The seller's statement
| indicates that 50% may be high for residential real estate and
| thus is an indicator that the market in that area is quite hot.
|
| The average price per home in the deal was $258k. Perhaps a bit
| high given the average size in the complex, but... If you
| examine the location (because real estate is all about
| location), we're talking about a small town outside of Houston
| that has grown in population from 56k to 91k between 2010 and
| 2019. The median family income there in 2016 was $60k. So this
| looks like a high growth area with upside potential.
|
| The buyers are probably making a bet that the homes there will
| see substantial appreciation in the future because of this
| growth. The seller probably either wanted the cash injection,
| didn't want to manage rentals anymore or otherwise prioritized
| some short term concerns over long term asset yields.
|
| To sum up, the people at Blackrock is not stupid. They won't
| pay a premium everywhere. They'll only do it in areas where
| their analysis shows that they will make it back along with a
| substantial profit. Is this good for society as a whole?
| Perhaps not. But that's not their problem.
| etempleton wrote:
| In my neighborhood the bank owns a house and has owned it since
| it was foreclosed upon about three years ago. The house is
| completely falling apart. It is unlivable. The house is tarpped.
| Apparently also filled with mold. The yard has rotting wood and
| weeds that are taller than my head. And no one will do anything
| about it.
|
| The city will fine the bank $100 for each infraction and that is
| it. The bank could care less.
|
| I am not sure of the bank's end goal, but I suspect they are
| waiting for it to be a total loss, get insurance money, and then
| sell the property as land, which is worth now about what they
| paid for it anyway.
|
| Meanwhile the local housing market is extremely supply
| constrained with houses going for over listing price and yet, the
| bank is not listing it because they think they can get more if
| they let it fall apart.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Very strange. Typically banks try to sell foreclosures ASAP to
| the extent that most go the 'short sale' route where they just
| force a sale. Given it has been only 3 years and it's already
| inhabitable; something probably went very wrong preventing it
| from being sold. It's possible the previous tenants just
| destroyed it... it's really surprising how bad some people
| treat their home.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| How often do people trash a previously un-trashed residence
| on the way out when being evicted or foreclosed? I suspect
| it's much more common behavior than anyone wants to admit.
| etempleton wrote:
| When I was looking at homes a year ago we looked at a few
| foreclosures and they were usually pretty rough. Not always
| because someone was destructive on the way out, but because
| there was something else wrong in that person's life and
| the house became a reflection of that.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Typically banks try to sell foreclosures ASAP to the extent
| that most go the 'short sale' route where they just force a
| sale.
|
| Short sale (which is generally not forced, but is usually
| win-win for the borrower and bank, so often ultimately
| approved after the bank convinces themselves that denying it
| won't let them extract more from the borrower) is typically
| favored for many reasons including the fact that (while there
| may technically be liability) borrowers who are foreclosed
| upon have very little incentive _not_ to damage thr property
| to the extent that it enables them to extract even miniscule
| additional value, so things like stripping resellable (even
| at small fractions of the value they provide in the house)
| materials like pipes, wiring, and notionally-permanently-
| installed fixtures is extremely common.
| etempleton wrote:
| It was in pretty bad shape before the foreclosure. The
| person's health was failing. They probably could never
| comfortably afford the house. The deterioration has only
| accelerated since the foreclosure.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Maybe they suspect that a developer may want that land.
| Faaak wrote:
| I'm sometimes afraid of these "mega-corps" that have the effect
| of really changing things. Sometimes in a bad way. Sadly, once
| you've got money, you can earn much more. What the limit to
| t->infinity ? One single corp dominating the world ?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Isn't that the problem in game economies as well? Making
| virtual money begets making more virtual money leading to
| exponential growths. Some games solve it by making items more
| expensive for hoarders. In real life we pretend that growth
| inequality does not exist.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| I like the thought experiment of taking that to its absurd
| logical conclusion.
|
| I'm sure there are some fun ones. Eg, Once a single corporation
| is in control of everything, and everything that comes in is
| profit and everything that goes out is a loss then the only
| missive left is to cut all losses, no? How do we do that? Burn
| the planet? Can't lose if there's nothing _to_ lose.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Welcome to Costco, I love you.
| desktopninja wrote:
| Sigh. They know land is the real wealth. And since current buying
| generation does not know this, it's ripe to snap up. In addition
| it is very hard for the current generation to even own. This is
| were I detest free market economy because it creates such an
| unfair situation. And this leads me to think things like houses
| should be capped. Everyone should be able to have a piece of land
| and a home. Corporations can lease land from cities but should
| never own. The idea here is simple, corporations cannot be
| treated the same as an individual human.
| est31 wrote:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1402434266970140676.html
| sergiotapia wrote:
| @dang: Why did you change the URL from the original twitter
| thread?
|
| https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676
| otterley wrote:
| Link to actual article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-sell-
| a-house-these-days-...
|
| (Also, the article is now over two months old.)
| dang wrote:
| We've changed the URL to that now. Thanks!
|
| Submitted URL was
| https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676
| deegles wrote:
| So can we expect to see stories about Blackrock lawyers showing
| up at HOA meetings?
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