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How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

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Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#261

Post by legulere »

WalterBright wrote: post #166
njarboe wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are most certainly many things deeply wrong. Most people have negative savings every year. They have more debt. If one has bought a house, then it is very easy to go into more debt every year, when house prices are rising. Then they fall. Since the beginning of written history (the first written records are records of debts) there are stories and parables about the evil of debt and the need for debt jubilees. A…

Easy access to credit is an important component to a free market. Making borrowing illegal just leads to all sorts of inefficient contortions to do it another way. For example, businesses often need to borrow money in order to get started. For another, "bridge" loans and "revolving lines of credit" allow a business to operate when the timing of receiving payments does not line up with the timing of when bills are due…

As a counterpoint Arab traders did very well for hundreds of years without interest (until Europeans came). Interestingly they are probably where our free market ideas come from: there should be no worldly market interference, the market is shaped by the invisible hand which means the rules given by god.

Interest based credit is important for capitalism (use money to make more money), but certainly not for market economies (Use money as a tool to exchange goods you want/need). Both are distinct and can exist independently.

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#262

Post by em500 »

anovikov wrote: post #238
ddeck wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true in the US. In other areas, leaving the city might not be a realistic option. Consider Hong Kong as an (extreme) example, where leaving the city means emigrating to another country with another language etc. (yes, HK is technically a Special Administrative Region of China, but can be considered standalone in this respect). The median apartment price/income ratio here is 18, compared to a US average of 3.9…

Which means that probably ordinary people left Hong Kong and commute to work there each day right? It became like Paris where mostly only upper class lives. Definitely a rent on a minimal $500,000 apartment will also be above median household income.

No, ordinary people live in government subsidized housing (about half the population), or bought their apartment (99%+ of housing are high-rise apartments) in earlier decades when it was a bit more affordable.

For household who already own, their existing apartment also appreciated, so what matters is the cost of trading up. The hardest hit group are younger people between 20 and 35 who are stuck in their parents house for probably forever. 3 generations under 1 roof is pretty common.

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#263

Post by IanCal »

PoachedSausage wrote: post #140
pcsanwald wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people I know that don't have white collar jobs don't have any expectation they will ever be able to retire. I'd be very surprised if the majority of americans were in a position to be able to retire.

I'm in my thirties and work for a government funded research organisation doing work on a particle accelerator. I don't expect or want to retire, but then 'retirement' means different things. I would definitely want to retire if I worked as a brick layer. Pensions are a Ponzi scheme, don't fall for it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41204209

> Pensions are a Ponzi scheme, don't fall for it.

Pensions are mostly just highly tax advantaged wrappers for investments now. They are most definitely not ponzi schemes.

Your link is for a defined benefit pension, which is not typical anymore.

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#264

Post by 0xbear »

woodpanel wrote: post #244
0xbear wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a dude who makes $800k/yr and still lives paycheck to paycheck. Lack of savings is not necessarily caused by lower income. People tend to shovel money out the door as quickly as it comes in.

On Topic: is the house paid, rented or is he paying off a mortgage? :-)

Rented. He used to pay mortgage but felt too "tied down" and sold the house.

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#265

Post by tardo99 »

jjr8 wrote: post #12
setr wrote: post #5

Scrolling gets really messy on mobile but otherwise a neat way to show the visualizations. Still can't be assed to read it fully though with my scroll being screwed by intermediate textboxes though.

As I understand it, this type of scrolling map visualization is something designed and implemented by Esri specifically for arcgis.com. See https://storymaps.arcgis.com/en/ for more examples and details. It may be that the author of this article on housing developed the analysis, maps, and text but not the actual web UI. That might be something provided by Esri that is common to all of these "story maps".

The map stopped working for me about 2/3 of the way down the page... Divs started getting resized incorrectly.

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#266

Post by pjc50 »

sokoloff wrote: post #90
pjc50 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes; I'm in the UK where local taxes are levied on the occupant not the owner, so you have to pay them even if you rent.

Interesting. TIL this; thanks. I like that approach as it makes clear the financial flows and put the tenant in the logical frame of mind of "am I getting what I'm paying for?" when considering new civic projects or other budget items.

It would be nice if it worked that way, but local tax rates tend to be a matter for national politics, resulting in all sorts of messed up incentives. National government imposed a freeze on council tax increases for a while. The council tax system also has not had a house revaluation for two decades and the upper "band" is quite low, so it's regressive at the high end.

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#267

Post by woodpanel »

zaroth wrote: post #141
danans wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I suppose if your call center employees simply must be living in downtown S.F. the answer must be that we just need lax zoning and higher density! The call center employees living en masse in SF is a very far fetched claim that requires strong evidence here, along with the implication that they are what necessitates higher density. This framing is insensitive to both call center workers who likely could never a…

Hmm... I never said anything about "en masse". It was a reference to the Yelp/Eat24 call center employee controversy from last year. [1] In cases like these, I think it's very reasonable to question why those kinds of jobs should be the ones increasing demand in SF and, therefore, driving up prices for everyone else. If you think my framing is insensitive to call center employees, I think you may have misunderstood m…

> I think the property owners of SF are well within their rights to tell people who want to build affordable housing towers to get lost.

And that is the problem!

The concept of property ownership is crucial when it comes to NIMBY vs. YIMBY. Because with politically entrenched tight zoning, property owners can tell others what to do with their property too.

Whereas in cities with lax zoning you effectively get stronger property rights. And in countries which constitutionally protect property ownership you basically see a very elastic housing market and thus not as much gentrification/housing-shortages.

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#268

Post by chaostheory »

dragonwriter wrote: post #248
chaostheory wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the SF Bay Area include the cities an hour east of SF?

> Doesn't the SF Bay Area include the cities an hour east of SF? No, an hour east of SF is deep in the Central Valley.

Could be wrong but I feel that's more than an hour east especially when you account for traffic - at least the cities that are actually inexpensive. Dublin, Pleasanton, and Livermore are no longer inexpensive cities with cheap real estate. Neither is Alamo and other nearby cities.

So the problem with living beyond Pleasanton is that you will spend most of your life sitting in traffic. Why do you need to sit in traffic? Because almost all the jobs are in the Bay Area. Maybe that won't be as big of a problem soon though once you have Level 4 autonomous driving. Personally I still wouldn't go for it with that.

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#269

Post by rsheridan6 »

pcsanwald wrote: post #104
ianai wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this highlights how expensive living is and how little income is. If we're going to have a "free economy" without an end of life safety net (i.e. Social security) then it has to be possible to work a lifetime and retire on savings made. But most indicators show little to no saving for most people. It sure seems something is deeply wrong.

Most people I know that don't have white collar jobs don't have any expectation they will ever be able to retire. I'd be very surprised if the majority of americans were in a position to be able to retire.

I don't get how this is supposed to fit in with the fact that discrimination against older workers is a big thing. Who is supposed to be hiring these 70 year olds with no savings?

Re: How Many Years of Life Does That House Cost?

#270

Post by rsheridan6 »

stevenwoo wrote: post #109
dv_dt wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cant help but notice in the OP visualization, the houston area is cheap - a year of work, and reputed to have little regulation - like zoning regs for flood watersheds, or regulatory oversight over chemicals stored in warehouses...

Cockroaches are rampant in larger apartment complexes. If you go to poorer or less well maintained places and restaurants, the things are literally crawling over everything - it's hard to believe it's America. Mosquito breeding areas in all the ubiquitous slow winding bayous and creeks. The one month or so of winter cold enough to freeze results in sleet not snow most of the time due to prevailing atmospheric conditi…

I lived in Houston for a few years and I'd take its flaws over being house poor in a coastal city.
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