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Home Values Are Rising by $800 a Day in San Jose

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Re: Home Values Are Rising by $800 a Day in San Jose

#211

Post by Bartweiss »

acchow wrote: post #145
aphextron wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I know folks like to point at the big techcos in the area being flush with cash as evidence this can continue a long time. And in a vacuum, wage growth in tech could continue to keep pace, perhaps. But that is 300k in appreciation a year. It's not even about people on tech salaries at this point. Those people are being priced out of the market, too. It's an issue of foreign investment mainly from China either specul…

Have evidence of this?

(Not the same person, but:) if you want to look into this, vacancy rates are probably the place to start.

In Vancouver, for instance, it's very clear. ~280,000 housing units, of which ~25,000 were recently found to be owned-but-unoccupied. Which doesn't mean international owners, but does mean housing is being used not to live in, or even to rent, but as a pure investment - with obvious consequences for the people actually living there.

A very quick look doesn't turn up this number for San Jose, but it's the most obvious way to distinguish price hikes driven by capped housing and rising salaries from those driven by outside investment.

Re: Home Values Are Rising by $800 a Day in San Jose

#212

Post by Bartweiss »

jandrese wrote: post #200
jostmey wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The demand for housing is not the problem. It's the supply that is the problem. The supply is being kept artificially low

Why not both? This is classic Supply and Demand curves.

Sure, but in normal markets both supply and demand shift to reach equilibrium. In urban housing markets, increasingly supply is approximately illegal, so what would be manageable demand for any other resource drives runaway price growth like we see here.

The argument for not blaming high-salary tech workers is that when they demand anything other than housing (nootropics or standing desks or whatever other stereotype we might choose), prices don't react anywhere near as strongly.

Re: Home Values Are Rising by $800 a Day in San Jose

#213

Post by dsfyu404ed »

jrs95 wrote: post #69
taurath wrote: post #41

I have a pretty large group of generally geek-oriented friends across most of the western US, and tracking their migration patterns has been fascinating - we're basically all 1980's-born millennials. In the 2000's was when we met, those who had grown up there and those who were moving were in the same age group. Only about 40% were college educated or in tech/programming oriented roles. Of those, a small amount has r…

Maybe Colorado should implement some of what Hunter S. Thompson had in his platform for Sheriff of Aspen: 1. Rip up all city streets with jackhammers and sod the streets at once.... All public movement would be by foot and a fleet of bicycles, maintained by the city police force. 2. Change the name 'Aspen', by public referendum, to 'Fat City'. This would prevent greedheads, land-rapers and other human jackals from ca…

I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic but I think realistic option would be to implement a weighted voting system based on time spent as a resident of the area the vote is for. Want to move to our state, your vote is worth 1/10 when you arrive and gorws by +1/10 on the next calendar year eventually topping out at 1/1. Want to move towns within the state? You can keep your voting power in state elections but you're gonna restart from 1/10 for local elections.

This would put a stop to hordes of new residents from trashing places because it would give the existing residents time to react before the newcomers dominate local politics.

Experience/time considered in all sorts of contexts. The opinion of someone who's been doing something for years is more meaningful than that of someone who hasn't. Why don't we apply that to political representation. People who have been living somewhere for awhile probably have a better opinion on the future direction of that place than people who haven't.

Re: Home Values Are Rising by $800 a Day in San Jose

#214

Post by Bartweiss »

0x445442 wrote: post #178
blondie9x wrote: post #98

We need to build much more dense places that people can actually own. The housing situation is not sustainable. Many people end up living on the streets because affordable housing isn't available. There is too much demand and we aren't building dense enough to utilize the land available.

There's plenty of land in this country. I see no compelling reason why Google can't open up more offices in the fly over states. I'm guessing, if offered the same salaries, Google could find plenty of willing takers to move.

> I'm guessing, if offered the same salaries, Google could find plenty of willing takers to move.

There ought to be companies with data on this - some places allow fully-remote work without adjusting salaries for CoL. So I wonder: how many of their employees still end up living in high-cost cities?

Does anyone know of public data that could sort this out?

Re: Home Values Are Rising by $800 a Day in San Jose

#215

Post by jandrese »

Bartweiss wrote: post #212
jandrese wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both? This is classic Supply and Demand curves.

Sure, but in normal markets both supply and demand shift to reach equilibrium. In urban housing markets, increasingly supply is approximately illegal, so what would be manageable demand for any other resource drives runaway price growth like we see here. The argument for not blaming high-salary tech workers is that when they demand anything other than housing (nootropics or standing desks or whatever other stereotype…

Increasing supply shouldn't be that hard. High rise apartment buildings can house thousands of people using a small amount of real-estate. Opposition to them is mostly political. They do make it more difficult to design your city services, but that's not an insurmountable problem either.

The Bay area should look a lot more like Manhattan, not that Manhattan is the gold standard in affordable housing...

Re: Home Values Are Rising by $800 a Day in San Jose

#216

Post by nugget »

mbesto wrote: post #82
scythe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's no signs of progress to increase inventory SB 827? That's what's kept me from buying. The fact that housing in the Bay is political scares me off. I'll bet on economics every day, but not on politics.

SB827 passing will only begin to tickle the situation. It's a good start, but nowhere near what needs to be done. NIMBY'ism is part regulation, part culture. I don't see the culture part going away anytime soon. Out of curiosity - is there anywhere in the US in history where housing that had the highest value in the country was affected massively (negatively) by regulation?

Wait and see what happens as a result of SALT deduction reform. Property taxes in the most expensive zip codes just became twice as expensive for many people. California may be less effected due to proposition 13 but places like Texas and New Jersey could be hit hard. I'm guessing we'll start to see the impact (whatever it is) in early 2019 when 2018 tax returns are due.

Re: Home Values Are Rising by $800 a Day in San Jose

#217

Post by seanmcdirmid »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #176
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seattle in the early/mid 90s had a grittier grungier feel. Before that, I remember when the Alaskan ferry docks were still downtown (today they are in Bellevue), it was much more of a lumber jack/plaid/fishing boat feel back then (early 80s and late 70s). Of course, my dad and mom’s impression of Seattle was quite different from mine own, as well. Change is just constant I guess.

The Seattle of Harry and the Hendersons! I visited with my girlfriend in 2015 and stayed in the suburbs where her girlfriend's guy was working for MS. The burbs seemed pretty peaceful and green (older suburb—but I don't know the city). Maybe they were in Redmond proper. It was a beautiful area, and I could definitely live with that. It's too bad it's pricing people out like that. We were there only too briefly so we…

Canada? Isn't Vancouver just a more expensive Seattle with better/cheaper food?

If other countries are up for comparison, I would really love to move to Brisbane someday.

Re: Home Values Are Rising by $800 a Day in San Jose

#218

Post by mulmen »

jiveturkey wrote: post #194
mulmen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an economist but if property tax growth is effectively capped at 2% and teachers are paid out of property tax then any time housing price grows by more than 2% teachers are at a disadvantage to buy a house.

It’s not tho. It adjusts to market at each sale. In between sale it moves slower but then it readjusts.

Does the new buyer pay the tax on appreciation in all the previous years? If not teachers are getting screwed twice.

If a house is appraised at $10,000.00 in 2000 and doesn’t sell for 10 years it pays $2000.00 in taxes. Since teachers are paid out of this tax their salaries increases are capped at $2,000.00. If wages (and housing prices) in general went up at even 3% per year then teachers have to compete against other buyers with double the cash.

The only way teachers aren’t getting screwed here is if every house sells every year.

Again, I’m not an economist and these numbers are obviously a gross oversimplification.

Re: Home Values Are Rising by $800 a Day in San Jose

#219

Post by mulmen »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #210
mulmen wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from a small town in Idaho. I recently went back to visit family. Everyone was eager to tell me that the direct flight from Seattle would be cancelled in favor of a town 45 minutes away. The local airport which used to serve the region is losing commercial service to the largest metro area in the region. Getting out of town will take an extra transfer and a 45minute to two hour drive. That town has stagnated and…

If I wasn't in tech I'd prefer to tough it out in some small town in some "backwards" state. Better to be marginally less wealthy and free to live how I want than run the race by the rules of some coastal city for little benefit.

It doesn’t have to be about coastal vs inland. It’s more about growth vs stagnation.

Be careful about romanticizing the idea of rural life if you haven’t already done it. It’s nothing special in my experience.

Re: Home Values Are Rising by $800 a Day in San Jose

#220

Post by ynniv »

oxymoran wrote: post #199
ynniv wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you would build more if you could.

Landlords do not build they own. Contractors and developers build. If you could own one building and charge $2500 or own 5 building and charge $600 each, what would you choose? You would make $500 more owning more buildings, but you would also have more overhead and work managing them all.

Is this a trick question? I would build another one AND charge $600 each. Developers build for clients with money, like landlords.
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