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Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

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61–70 of 210 posts

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#61
You have no business being in #1 cities if you don't have monetary capital to go along your skills.

In London home prices (average) increases every year by more than average salary. If you've not bought in, you're being better off somewhere else. No point in earning $200k (gross) if $50k (net) is hoovered up by someone in rent.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#62
post #7

I can’t help but think of Snow Crash where Hiro Protagonist (and many others) lived in the U-Store-It former storage facility. This is the the real cost of allowing (particularly foreign) capital to be parked in real estate in the developed world. In NYC for example most new developments are ultra-luxury not because building affordable apartments is uneconomic, it’s just that the ultra-luxury end is way more profitab…

> This is the the real cost of allowing (particularly foreign) capital to be parked in real estate in the developed world. It's amazing to me that people don't recognize this as xenophobia when other forms ("Mexicans are taking our jobs!", "Migrants don't have the same values!") are so readily called out. High housing prices are a self inflicted problem. When you mix supply restrictions with tax breaks explicitly des…

People downvoting this are missing the point, because you're absolutely right: the problem word is not foreign capital, but foreign capital and the extreme global inequality thereof.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#63
post #7

I can’t help but think of Snow Crash where Hiro Protagonist (and many others) lived in the U-Store-It former storage facility. This is the the real cost of allowing (particularly foreign) capital to be parked in real estate in the developed world. In NYC for example most new developments are ultra-luxury not because building affordable apartments is uneconomic, it’s just that the ultra-luxury end is way more profitab…

> This is the the real cost of allowing (particularly foreign) capital to be parked in real estate in the developed world. It's amazing to me that people don't recognize this as xenophobia when other forms ("Mexicans are taking our jobs!", "Migrants don't have the same values!") are so readily called out. High housing prices are a self inflicted problem. When you mix supply restrictions with tax breaks explicitly des…

California Proposition 13, to me, has been a ticking time-bomb of a 'youth tax' over the past forty years. As much as I respect that it serves to protect the vulnerable and elderly from heightening costs, it has unduly shifted that burden onto everyone else.

I believe todays homelessness is surely in part being caused by this untouchable stick-in-the-mud legislation.

Property tax appraisals for neighboring houses are wildly variant, some times by a factor of 20x (eg, home market value of two million or more, but taxed on a state appraised value of 100-200k). So a young person buying their first home seemingly must always pay a significantly higher annual property tax when compared with the family next-door who've kept the property family owned for a generation.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason people dislike foreign capital specifically is when the houses come just a piggybank and remain empty. It is bad enough when capital (local or foreign) drives up home prices, but it feels worse when the homes sit empty. Note, this affects everyone because people get knocked down the ladder incrementally.

> the houses come just a piggybank and remain empty seems like a poor investment to me. You're just pissing it away on property taxes. So why not let the rich do this and basically redistribute their wealth?

You get the property appreciation, potentially leveraged; and you get what might be called the "option value" of being able to move into and sell it at a moment's notice.

Weirdly, many of the foreign moneyed people know that they and/or their family may have to drop everything and leave their country of origin at any point to flee a purge, and the property is a bolthole for that possibility and a financial reserve that is hard for China to seize.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#65

Keep doing what you’re doing central banks! Your policies of persistent inflation have robbed us of our ability to save our wealth and accurately plan for the future. You’ve decided that devaluing our wages 2% per year is in our best interest meaning we must perpetually fight with our employers to keep our wages we fought for the previous year. Your policies of QE have driven asset prices so high we have no hope of e…

This is a very weird view on inflation, given how hard central banks have fought to bring it down to manageable levels.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#66

You have no business being in #1 cities if you don't have monetary capital to go along your skills. In London home prices (average) increases every year by more than average salary. If you've not bought in, you're being better off somewhere else. No point in earning $200k (gross) if $50k (net) is hoovered up by someone in rent.

Land of opportunity, eh? I bet there are plenty of people arguing that if you ever want to make decent money you have to be in the #1 cities.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#67
post #60

Keep doing what you’re doing central banks! Your policies of persistent inflation have robbed us of our ability to save our wealth and accurately plan for the future. You’ve decided that devaluing our wages 2% per year is in our best interest meaning we must perpetually fight with our employers to keep our wages we fought for the previous year. Your policies of QE have driven asset prices so high we have no hope of e…

Over the last four decades, the slow and steady annual inflation looks very easy to plan for: http://www.inflation.eu/inflation-rates/united-states/histor...

You’ve lost your mind if you really believe inflation has only been roughly 2% the last decade.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#68
post #59
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, this money being parked from overseas isn't even benefitting the local economies. It just props up property values for a select few homeowners. The people buying these houses are just leaving them empty. There has been some private investigation of some of the homes being bought and built in BelAir right now. One home was found to be owned by a Nigerian politician through multiple layers of shell compan…

It’s worse than that: they’re not even payin* their fair share of property taxes either. For example: - 157 West 57th St #77, asking $49m, paying $4,200 in monthly taxes [1] - 301 West 53rd St #3E, asking $1.85m, paying $1,681 in monthly taxes [2] Why is an apartment asking 25 Times as much only paying 2.5x the property taxes? You can largely blame Bloomberg and Andrew Cuomo for this. [1] https://www.elliman.com/new-…

Those property taxes sound high!

I pay over $3500 to rent a house in Santa Cruz while my landlord only pays $2700 per year in property tax. The place is worth $1-2M depending on what website I'm checking.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#69
post #29
post #7

I can’t help but think of Snow Crash where Hiro Protagonist (and many others) lived in the U-Store-It former storage facility. This is the the real cost of allowing (particularly foreign) capital to be parked in real estate in the developed world. In NYC for example most new developments are ultra-luxury not because building affordable apartments is uneconomic, it’s just that the ultra-luxury end is way more profitab…

The thing is, this money being parked from overseas isn't even benefitting the local economies. It just props up property values for a select few homeowners. The people buying these houses are just leaving them empty. There has been some private investigation of some of the homes being bought and built in BelAir right now. One home was found to be owned by a Nigerian politician through multiple layers of shell compan…

Well it's that, plus low density zoning regulations

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the the real cost of allowing (particularly foreign) capital to be parked in real estate in the developed world. It's amazing to me that people don't recognize this as xenophobia when other forms ("Mexicans are taking our jobs!", "Migrants don't have the same values!") are so readily called out. High housing prices are a self inflicted problem. When you mix supply restrictions with tax breaks explicitly des…

When reading an article about New Zealand restricting foreign real estate investment, I found their reasoning compelling. Housing can be used to house people, or for speculation, like Bitcoin or gold. If you believe that providing shelter takes strict priority for the limited housing stock then it is moral and necessary to restrict the demand from investors. Quantifying the scale of the problem is another issue, but…

In Australia non resident foreigners are, for the most part, only allowed to buy new builds. In Sydney some have called for an empty residential property tax, but it hasn't come about yet.
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