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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

#271

Post by saosebastiao »

nerfhammer wrote: post #75
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…

Build sufficient housing and they won't see it as a sure-thing investment anymore. They're betting that local politics will never allow this to happen.

You're right, and they're right. It would take a monumental shift in politics for local governments to give up their ability to buy favor with local residents through land use code.

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

#272

Post by tomjakubowski »

cc439 wrote: post #125
vkou wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The value landlords provide is the assumption of risk. The premium you pay to rent is in exchange for vastly limiting your exposure to said risk. In hot housing markets, the value they provide is having access to the capital necessary to own property. A 30 year old hairdresser in Seattle isn't renting because they don't want to deal with risk - they are renting because they can't save up a $XY,000 downpayment, and…

Were 30 year old hairdressers ever able to afford a home inside a major metro area? I'm sure one could have afforded a home in Seattle 40 years ago, but the Seattle metro area wasn't even among America's top 20 largest metros until the 70's . The problem with the assumption that something is wrong with Seattle's housing market is that people's perceptions of what Seattle "is" haven't changed to reflect the fact that…

Sure, probably. The hairdresser who cut my hair when I was a child managed to buy a home in the Chicago metro area about 20 years ago. Maybe she had another source of income but I don't think so.

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

#273

Post by projectramo »

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.

Yes, I think the largest property owner in the US is Blackstone, a private equity firm that bought the property at the downturn.

From a strictly economic perspective they are helping increase demand when it was low and increase supply later on. They got rewarded for that.

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

#274

Post by jogjayr »

downrightmike wrote: post #137
sampo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What can be done I wonder? The best option would be to build more. Unfortunately, this also seems to be the least popular option.

Building expensive housing is the game right now and they go unpopulated. There is no desire to build affordable housing.

It's not so simple as "luxury housing" vs "affordable housing". Location dominates every other factor when it comes to how much a place should rent for, including fancy amenities. Why else does a shoebox in SF cost twice as much as a modern 2-bedroom apartment in downtown Atlanta?

If developers build more luxury units then the prices of the older apartments will drop. At worst it's better than having no new housing stock at all.

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

#275

Post by brailsafe »

newlyretired wrote: post #238
brailsafe wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Oh okay. Ya that sounds about given what I've heard and what other commenters have said about SF.

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

#276

Post by brailsafe »

setr wrote: post #244
brailsafe wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had found 1 room shared by bunkbed airbnb's for ~$1500/mo in SF, in a shitty location but forget where specifically about a year ago; and that was pretty cheap for near the heart, afaict $1900/mo got me a 2-story townhouse in chicago just south of the south loop; maybe 15 min by train to the heart of the city, 20 min walk to chinatown Had 3 proper bedrooms and an attic, so with 3 roomates it was more like $450/mo

That's insane.

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

#277

Post by brailsafe »

ryuker16 wrote: post #228
brailsafe wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I meant compared to San Francisco and New York. Then again, canadian salaries are lower and exchange rates are a factor.

Ok that makes sense from what I've heard. Have spent a small amount of time in Chicago and generally like the place.

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

#278

Post by jandrewrogers »

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…

The population growth in Seattle each year exceeds the growth in housing supply required to house them, despite the level of new construction in Seattle. This has been the case for some time and will continue for the foreseeable future. There are not many cities that could absorb ~2% population growth year after year.

Even absent any non-resident speculators, the demand is still going to significantly exceed supply such that the prices increase given that housing is not growing at the rate of population. Foreign speculators may or may not make it worse but they aren't the primary cause of price increases; simple supply and demand is sufficient to explain it.

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

#279

Post by closeparen »

neilparikh wrote: post #174
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…

I'm not sure why it matters if the buyer is foreign or American. You would get the same issue if an investor from Texas decided to buy 10 houses and live in 1. The key issue here is that there's housing that's unoccupied, even under lots of demand. The fix for that is to tax or ban unoccupied housing, not ban foreign housing.

>if an investor from Texas decided to buy 10 houses and live in 1

An investor from Texas can simply open a Vanguard account. The theoretical mechanism for Chinese speculation is that real estate is the path of least regulatory resistance compared to stock markets, etc. under Chinese law.

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

#280

Post by closeparen »

rsync wrote: post #180
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…

"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…

>basic human right to live in a walkable neighborhood

Somehow we have a societal consensus that it's your basic human right to live in a quiet neighborhood free of traffic, shadows, or other humans. It's good to see some push in the opposite direction.

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