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Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point

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Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point

#231

Post by raincom »

beebmam wrote: post #36

In large cities across the US (and probably most of the world), there is some very large scale foreign speculation in the housing market going on. This is leading to rising rents and rising home prices. In Seattle, for example, many (newly) wealthy Chinese people are buying houses purely for investment purposes. I know some of them. One of them has purchased 10 houses, and lives in only one of them (when they are in…

Very true. A friend in Seattle tells me that Seattle locals are buying second and third homes as investments, a new way of becoming rich through leverage.

Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point

#232

Post by mistermann »

sushisource wrote: post #193
mistermann wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is, if you grit your teeth and bought recently or even now, it's possible you could retire on the capital gains in Or you could be bankrupt. Either one seems equally possible to me.

Well, only if you were willing to move to a much, much cheaper area to realize those gains.

Not necessarily, if your house is going up $10k per month you could live on HELOCs. Easily possible in the last decade or so in Vancouver.

Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point

#233

Post by WillPostForFood »

ryandrake wrote: post #190
panda88888 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except all rental properties in the region would have to pay similar amount of land tax, so they would all raise the rent and the renter would have to choose either pay the higher rent or move to a cheaper area.

If all landlords could suddenly raise the rent, why wouldn't they already, regardless of the existence of the land tax?

No ability or incentive to coordinate - but a land value tax could facilitate it.

Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point

#234

Post by WillPostForFood »

dba7dba wrote: post #210

Govt should adopt a policy of gradually increased property tax based on the number of housing units (or total assessed value of all housing property) one person/business owns. It should be to the point where one cannot use buying/selling/holding housing property as a way to amass wealth infinitely. Maybe to a certain point, but not to the extent allowed now. To me, holding a vast number of rental units and amassing a…

So where does the incentive to build new housing come from once policies are in place to make sure it isn't profitable?

Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point

#235

Post by jacobolus »

nerfhammer wrote: post #205
wan23 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not anti-foreigner, it's anti-speculation. It's easy to see that home purchase prices are well beyond what any reasonable family would want to pay, and yet the prices keep rising. The problem isn't that it's foreign money coming in, it's that there's so much of it.

Well it's either greedy, scheming tech workers or greedy, scheming Chinese speculators. Isn't there a pattern here? The problem simply must be caused by powerful, scheming outsiders. Despite lack of evidence, as this comment is a great example, defying the claim of lack of such by GP as if it simply hadn't been heard.

A lot of it is greedy, scheming local slumlords, to be honest.

If we abolished Prop 13 statewide, did some minor up-zoning throughout the Bay Area (and had more mixed use zones), made new housing easier to construct (less drawn out process for people to block development, etc.), reduced parking requirements, worked on improving public transit, and taxed unlived-in buildings [or better, switched toward land-value taxes], did more planning at a regional rather than municipal level, we could take a lot of incremental bites out of the housing quagmire.

Unfortunately most of those are politically infeasible.

Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point

#236

Post by WillPostForFood »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #76

Everybody on this thread should spend the next five minutes reading about Henry George, his historic work "Progress and Poverty" and the Single Tax: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty An except from his book: "Take now... some hard-headed business man, who has no theories, but knows how to make money. Say to him: "Here is a little village; in ten years it…

you may lie around like the lazzaroni of Naples or the leperos of Mexico

Sounds like a racist. And wrong about many other assertions - show me a village that turned into a city where the wages didn't increase.

Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point

#238

Post by newlyretired »

brailsafe wrote: post #219
ryuker16 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bad but much more significant is restrictive zoning laws. I live in downtown chicago where rents are reasonable and skyscrapers for living at everywhere. Meanwhile, you gotta move heaven and earth to build high density housing in some cities like SF. Even suburbs will fight 4 story apartment buildings. It's not rocket science. Let the foreigners invest in building more of them. When the crash happens, the loc…

Do you have a reference for "reasonable" rents in Chicago or can you break that down at all? I'm genuinely curious. Coming from Vancouver where rents compared to salaries are considered beyond insane, what I found on Chicago's craigslist seem to be comparable. That is, accounting for exchange rate but not salaries.

Rent prices in Chicago are half of SF, according to crowdsourced data from Numbeo's cost of living calculator.

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point

#239

Post by Silfen »

nugget wrote: post #225
ryuker16 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bad but much more significant is restrictive zoning laws. I live in downtown chicago where rents are reasonable and skyscrapers for living at everywhere. Meanwhile, you gotta move heaven and earth to build high density housing in some cities like SF. Even suburbs will fight 4 story apartment buildings. It's not rocket science. Let the foreigners invest in building more of them. When the crash happens, the loc…

At least in downtown areas, Seattle is infamous for having some of the least restrictive zoning laws in the country. I was advised not to pay any premium for a condo with a nice view, for example, because there is almost no such thing as a "protected view" in the city, unless you're physically situated such that no theoretical future building project could obstruct it.

While this might be accurate of downtown, you've lost the forest for the trees. Seattle absolutely has protected views for many of the single family houses. If they expire, it's on 30-40 year time horizons. Most of the city's land is single family housing (often with large minimum lot size).

If you want to know what Seattle is actually infamous for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_process

Re: Rising Rents Are Pushing More Tenants Past the Breaking Point

#240

Post by webnrrd2k »

njarboe wrote: post #196
rsync wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To me, this is absurd. This is a human rights issue (homelessness is growing by a large amount)." Homelessness is a mental health issue. Nobody is homeless because of foreign speculators. Yes, people are indeed incentivized to relocate to housing markets that Chinese people have never heard of like, for instance, Tacoma . If those people spent half their time working and saving (like their parents did) as they spent…

It probably was the case 5 years ago that most homeless people in the US has some kind of mental problem. These people were almost all men and you would see them sleeping on the sidewalks or parks with almost nothing in the way of possessions. Now, at least in Oakland, there are tents everywhere. From single ones trying not to get noticed to tent cities with 10-50 tents all in one area. Many of these people have a pi…

I'm confused... Are you saying homelessness can't be a mental health issue because they now have tents? Or because they have possessions?
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