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San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

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Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#61

Post by VintageCool »

pfooti wrote: post #58

Legit thought experiment and not a troll, because I'm curious about thinking through this. What happens if legislation is passed that more or less prevents people from owning property that's not their primary residence? Like: if you don't live in it more than 190 days a year, you pay a really high property tax on it. I've always thought a big part of the landlord - tenant issues around rent control, fair market housi…

My opinion is that San Francisco's housing problems are at root a case of demand vastly exceeding supply. The solution is to produce more housing. This would happen naturally when demand exceeds supply, except that San Francisco has an excess of regulations that prevent construction of new homes and new apartments and a strong political coalition opposed to the construction of new housing.

Adding more restrictions on housing helps no one.

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#62

Post by brk »

0xffff2 wrote: post #60
pfooti wrote: post #58

Legit thought experiment and not a troll, because I'm curious about thinking through this. What happens if legislation is passed that more or less prevents people from owning property that's not their primary residence? Like: if you don't live in it more than 190 days a year, you pay a really high property tax on it. I've always thought a big part of the landlord - tenant issues around rent control, fair market housi…

Have you ever bought a house? I have. I do not want to go through that process every time I move. Plus, while I have purchased a house before, it ended up being foreclosed on and I certainly couldn't get a mortgage now (and I shouldn't... I can't afford a mortgage). I would be pretty SOL if owning a house was a prerequisite for not being homeless. How is commercial property treated? What prevents a company building a…

I've bought a few houses, the process has generally been simple and painless (other than the physical moving of stuff part, which is the same for own vs. rent).

My last few vehicles purchases have involved significantly more paperwork and signatures than my most recent property purchases.

What is it about the process that you've had issues with?

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#63

Post by chimeracoder »

pfooti wrote: post #58

Legit thought experiment and not a troll, because I'm curious about thinking through this. What happens if legislation is passed that more or less prevents people from owning property that's not their primary residence? Like: if you don't live in it more than 190 days a year, you pay a really high property tax on it. I've always thought a big part of the landlord - tenant issues around rent control, fair market housi…

> What happens if legislation is passed that more or less prevents people from owning property that's not their primary residence? Like: if you don't live in it more than 190 days a year, you pay a really high property tax on it.

That already exists in a way - there's the concept of a primary residence tax deduction, which is (more or less) what the name sounds like.

It varies widely by jurisdiction, (not just country, but state and local government as well), but the idea of trying to differentiate residents from landlords in tax policy is nothing new.

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#64

Post by 0xffff2 »

brk wrote: post #62
0xffff2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever bought a house? I have. I do not want to go through that process every time I move. Plus, while I have purchased a house before, it ended up being foreclosed on and I certainly couldn't get a mortgage now (and I shouldn't... I can't afford a mortgage). I would be pretty SOL if owning a house was a prerequisite for not being homeless. How is commercial property treated? What prevents a company building a…

I've bought a few houses, the process has generally been simple and painless (other than the physical moving of stuff part, which is the same for own vs. rent). My last few vehicles purchases have involved significantly more paperwork and signatures than my most recent property purchases. What is it about the process that you've had issues with?

Our experiences differ vastly. Granted I've only bought one house and it was 8 years ago. Maybe things have gotten better in the intervening years?

My experience buying cars has involved signing maybe a dozen pages, while my experience buying a house involved signing form after form after form (most of which I didn't really know the purpose of) for literally hours. I'm certain I spent more time just signing paperwork to buy my house than I've ever spent on the entire car buying process from the time I walked into the sales guy's office after the test drive to the time I drove off the lot.

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#65

Post by Kalium »

mtviewdave wrote: post #16
geebee wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an excellent point. I live in an R1 neighborhood, but a buddy of mine lives in a SFH in an R2. He would technically be allowed to convert his SFH into two 3bd/2ba apartments, he could sell one of them, and profit so much that he would cover his entire mortgage with lots left over. While he'd still face permit challenges, this has been done (legally, with all required permits) on his block. However, this remain…

>This is why I think that SF's opposition to new development isn't really driven by property owners who wish to maximize the dollar value of their asset. I think it's rooted more in a very preservation minded populace [...] and a deep suspicion of redevelopment projects that they worry will tear out the soul of a community and replace it with something corporate and soulless (plenty of that has happened). Even worse…

How do you propose dealing with NIMBYs who refuse to be reassured?

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#66

Post by narrator »

Being a Bay Area native, my opinion is that the push back to increased growth is due to the horrible traffic situation. More people means traffic gets worse, muni gets more crowded, commutes get longer. The only people who want growth are real estate developers and recent transplants who are fine with not trying to actually go anywhere besides home and work.

There's a point where the congestion starts to lower quality of life drastically and people would rather deal with high rents then being stuck in traffic for hours or stuffed into a filled to the gills muni, bart or caltrain with people coughing up flem around them.

Getting to work in downtown is awful when there's a Giants game going on and they wanted to eliminate pier 30 parking and put another stadium in there? I'm glad that got shot down. San Francisco is full. Get over it.

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#67

Post by pfooti »

0xffff2 wrote: post #60
pfooti wrote: post #58

Legit thought experiment and not a troll, because I'm curious about thinking through this. What happens if legislation is passed that more or less prevents people from owning property that's not their primary residence? Like: if you don't live in it more than 190 days a year, you pay a really high property tax on it. I've always thought a big part of the landlord - tenant issues around rent control, fair market housi…

Have you ever bought a house? I have. I do not want to go through that process every time I move. Plus, while I have purchased a house before, it ended up being foreclosed on and I certainly couldn't get a mortgage now (and I shouldn't... I can't afford a mortgage). I would be pretty SOL if owning a house was a prerequisite for not being homeless. How is commercial property treated? What prevents a company building a…

I have bought a house. I think one reason it's so painful is that it is a relatively rare occurrence which usually represents a huge transfer of wealth. If, on the other hand, home sales were more common and (presumably) for less money per transaction, you could imagine that this process would be simpler.

I'm not super-interested in debating the implementational details of what's obviously a thought experiment - mostly what I'm interested in getting input on is: would home prices go down? would monthly mortgage rates go above or below current rental rates? would there be more or less pressure to build new units?

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#68

Post by AnimalMuppet »

pfooti wrote: post #58

Legit thought experiment and not a troll, because I'm curious about thinking through this. What happens if legislation is passed that more or less prevents people from owning property that's not their primary residence? Like: if you don't live in it more than 190 days a year, you pay a really high property tax on it. I've always thought a big part of the landlord - tenant issues around rent control, fair market housi…

If you do that, you'll get more single-owner homes, and less rental units, but you'll kill the ability to have apartment buildings (or, at most, one per owner). More single dwellings and less apartment buildings doesn't sound like the path to "more affordable housing".

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#69

Post by pfooti »

VintageCool wrote: post #61
pfooti wrote: post #58

Legit thought experiment and not a troll, because I'm curious about thinking through this. What happens if legislation is passed that more or less prevents people from owning property that's not their primary residence? Like: if you don't live in it more than 190 days a year, you pay a really high property tax on it. I've always thought a big part of the landlord - tenant issues around rent control, fair market housi…

My opinion is that San Francisco's housing problems are at root a case of demand vastly exceeding supply. The solution is to produce more housing. This would happen naturally when demand exceeds supply, except that San Francisco has an excess of regulations that prevent construction of new homes and new apartments and a strong political coalition opposed to the construction of new housing. Adding more restrictions on…

I don't doubt that demand exceeds supply. San Francisco also is not really a representative sample of US (or global) home ownership vs rental and so on.

All that aside, I don't really see the line of argument that links my proposed idea to "more restrictions". My initial thinking was something like (basically): current market forces (especially in SF) favor the consolidation of ownership in the hands of the few people who can afford the large capital investment required to build new housing.

IOW: home prices are ridiculously high at least in part because the future value of rent extraction makes these homes good long-term investments for people who don't live there. See also: removing units from rental for AirBnB service in the long-term (sources differ on how many units in SF are lost to permanent AirBnB hotel status, but they seem to all agree that at least some are off the market for this reason).

So, what happens if this element of the market is removed? I know, I know: it's central to capitalism, I'm becoming a communist, etc etc. What happens when the supply - demand relationship is between residents and other residents? Do home prices trend upwards? Does the current bloc of owners and rent-controlled residents stop acting to fight against further expansion?

Re: San Francisco's Fog Over Growth

#70

Post by api »

narrator wrote: post #66

Being a Bay Area native, my opinion is that the push back to increased growth is due to the horrible traffic situation. More people means traffic gets worse, muni gets more crowded, commutes get longer. The only people who want growth are real estate developers and recent transplants who are fine with not trying to actually go anywhere besides home and work. There's a point where the congestion starts to lower qualit…

Too bad transportation infrastructure is completely verboten in America.

New York has it grandfathered in (was built before the car era) and New York does not have this problem. The simple reality is that cars don't scale beyond a certain density because, well, cars can't pass through other cars. Cars work fine for light to medium density but beyond that you must either build trains or stop growing. (Or waste billions and countless hours every day with millions of people stuck in traffic.)

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