My extreme political opinion is that no one should be allowed to own more than one property in which they do not reside.
Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
251–260 of 764 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#252Like another comment here mentioned, housing is complicated. People don't want to live in a random house in the middle of nowhere ('roof over your head'). Some people prefer to be homeless on the street versus getting to a roof over their head that they don't like. People want to live where they want to live (near family, jobs, culture etc) Take NYC for instance. Politicians try to address the NYC housing crisis from…
You're right that building more housing is the solution. But we don't need to get rid of unions or deregulate construction. The main issue is land use regulation [0]. We just need to let developers build. [0] https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/glaeser/files/why_is_manha...
Yup just "build more housing" simplistic to point of stupidity.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#253I definitely do. It's something that turns a basic necessity into a speculative asset, with a price distorted by the money poured into it. Airbnb is also a deeply harmful influence on housing prices. Imagine if we did the same thing with, say, water: privatized it and then "democratized" ownership of it. It's easy to get retail investors to buy things at inflated, speculative prices, so the price of water would go up…
> Imagine if we did the same thing with, say, water Hm, maybe we can do the same thing with Air. We can even keep the same name, Airbnb, but this time people are paying for the best air.
I have recently paid literally for that. In the mountain village where I was spending my holidays they charged me tax because of the air I was breathing. They called it 'climate tax' but the better translation is 'environmental tax'. And fun fact, unfortunately the air was not that clean neither because the place is very popular..
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not just pass a law saying only individuals can own property and they can only own one?
Because that means apartment buildings become illegal? Homeownership is all well and good, but sometimes you really do just need a place to live for a year or two, and having to do a full-fledged real estate transaction at each end of that period is a lot of friction.
The tax the poster proposed was a de facto ban which was my point. But even then it wouldn’t work because some land is more desirable than others and by encumbering land ownership you encourage those that own the more desirable land to extract as much value as possible.
The thing we are dancing around in this thread is do landlords largely determine the housing prices. I think not. I think it’s supply constraints and government subsidized mortgages. These are largely issues driven by regular home owners not landlords.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#255It's a natural first impulse, but it's wrong. What is the correct impulse is to be concerned about how lopsided most cities zoning is towards single family, as that is what is driving the market power that makes real estate profitable as a financial asset. If most of a city was zoned to allow up to multi residential highrises rather than most of a city being zoned for single family it would cut the appreciation abili…
The zoning argument is such a myopic perspective on the problem. The issue with housing affordability is across many communities, most of which have no issues with shortages of buildable land nor even shortages of housing. The primary impact on prices is from the demand side due to cheap credit from artificially low interest rates and speculation by large investors and small time speculators moving into real estate.
Do you have an example city? I'm curious because when there is lots of supply to meet demand why would prices go up?
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#256As others have mentioned the solution is to build more affordable housing… but where?! More unaffordable houses won’t solve the issue.
I think decentralization of work (WFH) will counter it in the long term. If you can work from anywhere then your housing options become limitless. I’ve lived in the country the last 15 years - absolutely no way I’ll live in pricy cities.
That said, people in the service industry will continue to suffer - I’ve heard of people commuting hours each way for work! Service industry and cities for that matter will have to get into real estate to provide community (I hope not dorms or projects) for workers.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#257Like another comment here mentioned, housing is complicated. People don't want to live in a random house in the middle of nowhere ('roof over your head'). Some people prefer to be homeless on the street versus getting to a roof over their head that they don't like. People want to live where they want to live (near family, jobs, culture etc) Take NYC for instance. Politicians try to address the NYC housing crisis from…
I would start by making property taxes substantially higher for non-owner-occupied property. If you are rent-seeking rather than residing on the property you should pay way more, maybe 4x or higher, in taxes.
Housing prices would crash and that would be the point; but everyone who owns property would be against it because they don't want to see their assets drop in value.
The counter-argument people make is "that would de-incentivize investment which would reduce the future housing supply". But I call b.s. on that. Residents would be able to afford new construction and maintenance if those things had lower price pressure.
It should raise the bar on an investor attempting to profit by owning property. They should need to do a substantially better job at maintaining and increasing the value of real estate to justify owning it instead of a resident.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
"our" neighborhood implies that you own it - so if you owned something, and sold it, how can you complain that someone (or gasp, a corporation) is buying when you're selling?
Quoted post unavailable.
Here are some of the guidelines for participating here:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies, generic tangents, and internet tropes.
Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#259[dead]
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#260Many of the causes of homelessness are anti-commodification: “This is a family friendly neighborhood, we don’t want high arise apartments here. You can’t treat real estate like a commodity, these are peoples homes and communities! We need to preserve our neighborhoods character!”
I live in Buenos Aires, Argentina and it got really tiresome to hear the same people complaining about rent costs and lack of housing also complaining about high buildings, new apartments in their neighbourhood, etc. It's so annoying, they want all the cakes and eat them too.