San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident • Hacker News Board

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#91

Post by klipt » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #15

biznickman wrote: post #4

When I lived in San Francisco, the newly built condo building across from me was fully empty (but fully sold) for all the years I lived there. This is a tower in SOMA. There was only one apartment which appeared to be a corporate one that was occasionally utilized. The rise of foreign money parking money in real estate has screwed things up on a global level. San Francisco has felt the brunt of this due to their insa…

I used to be instinctively against stuff like this, but I actually think it’s pretty reasonable now. People outside of a given city/country/etc. have no inherent right to participate in that place. Local residents should only allow outsiders to participate if they derive some benefit from it. Now, that said, there may be unintended consequences to eliminating foreign purchases of real estate.

Just tax the vacant homes at high rates and use that money to build even more housing. Win/win for the city.

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#92

Post by aaronbwebber » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

biznickman wrote: post #4

When I lived in San Francisco, the newly built condo building across from me was fully empty (but fully sold) for all the years I lived there. This is a tower in SOMA. There was only one apartment which appeared to be a corporate one that was occasionally utilized. The rise of foreign money parking money in real estate has screwed things up on a global level. San Francisco has felt the brunt of this due to their insa…

I call bullshit. Say what tower it was, and when it was built, and what time frame you are actually talking about so we can verify for ourselves whether it was actually empty or not, or even if it was empty whether it was empty for a good reason (e.g. not having it's habitability permit). Otherwise this is the worst kind of anecdata - not even enough detail to verify that the anecdote is true, nevermind whether it is actually a representative sample of a larger issue or just an odd case.

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#93

Post by harryh » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

ahelwer wrote: post #14

You can't build yourself out of the housing crisis when the problem is one of distribution, not one of supply. The idea that housing should be treated as an investment is, itself , the problem. How can you want housing to be affordable while also wanting housing to gain in value, i.e. increase in cost? These are completely contradictory aims. Zoom out for a second and consider how wild it is that we turned a life nec…

You can't build yourself out of the housing crisis when the problem is one of distribution, not one of supply.

This is wrong. There is no distribution problem with housing. It's not that people can't find a house to live in, or a house has to be shipped across the country and the rail line is broken.

The problem is that people can't afford housing. And they can't afford it because demand has increased dramatically while supply has been artificially constrained by government.

The solution is to remove the government constraints on supply which will lower prices. Now obviously the trick is that existing owners don't want to do this, and they have a lot of political power. So I don't really see this happening, but if it somehow could happen that would be the path to the answer.

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#94

Post by Qworg » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

lkbm wrote: post #67

Reedx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are houses throughout the Bay Area sitting empty, just being used as a relatively safe store of value. That goal is already achieved without having to deal with the overhead of managing the property and tenants. So the homes just sit... empty.

Seems strange. Surely a management company would happily handle all that hassle and provide a secondary income stream. Sign a couple forms and boost investment income by a few percent? Surely that's not significantly more burdensome than the bureaucratic hassle of purchasing the property in the first place. I guess there's some significant tax/regulatory difference between capital gains from holding property vs. an i…

AFAIK, if you CAN rent a property for $X and it remains empty, you can take it as a loss. $X tracks inflation/value, which was a huge problem when I lived in Pittsburgh. Places that were empty for 40 years had ludicrously high rents (4X+ new places), so they just remained empty as tax write offs.

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#95

Post by nicksellen » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

macinjosh wrote: post #41

biznickman wrote: post #4

When I lived in San Francisco, the newly built condo building across from me was fully empty (but fully sold) for all the years I lived there. This is a tower in SOMA. There was only one apartment which appeared to be a corporate one that was occasionally utilized. The rise of foreign money parking money in real estate has screwed things up on a global level. San Francisco has felt the brunt of this due to their insa…

> The rise of foreign money parking money in real estate has screwed things up on a global level. If the property tax is paid and the maintenance is kept up what is the problem created solely by the fact some homes are empty? The only reason these properties have such high values is because there is a demand that is not being supplied. Supplying more housing makes this a non-issue. > San Francisco has felt the brunt…

> This is the real issue. Governments restrict housing supply for whatever misguided reasons and prices go up, those prices make it a good place to park cash. Government should stop picking winners and losers.

Restriction of housing is not limited to Government, housing developers also do it:

"[Kate] Barker reached a similar conclusion in her interim report, where she noted that in order to maximize their profits, developers control the rate of production and ‘trickle out’ no more than 100–200 houses a year from a large development. ‘This may not be desirable from society’s point of view,’ she wrote." (from https://www.annaminton.com/bigcapital)

Personally, I trust the reasons that a Government would limit housing more than I would a for-profit company who are probably operating in the interests of investors who don't live in the affected areas.

Even more than Big Government control though, I would prefer the people that live in an area to have the biggest say into how things are run.

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#96

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

lkbm wrote: post #67

Reedx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are houses throughout the Bay Area sitting empty, just being used as a relatively safe store of value. That goal is already achieved without having to deal with the overhead of managing the property and tenants. So the homes just sit... empty.

Seems strange. Surely a management company would happily handle all that hassle and provide a secondary income stream. Sign a couple forms and boost investment income by a few percent? Surely that's not significantly more burdensome than the bureaucratic hassle of purchasing the property in the first place. I guess there's some significant tax/regulatory difference between capital gains from holding property vs. an i…

[deleted]

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#97

Post by tqi » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

zapita wrote: post #44

woah wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of homeowners in SF who have made huge gains from their property investment pay lip service to their liberal worldview by insisting that any new construction must meet the most stringent review and have a very high percentage of units set aside for affordable housing. This way they are able to stop new construction, exacerbating the housing crisis and making their investment more valuable, while claiming they ar…

Also lots of deflection by blaming tech workers for cost increases.

One of the most frustrating things about the hostility that "native" Bay Area residents show toward new transplants is that in many cases, "native" Bay Area residents are ones getting rich off of the high rents.

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#98

Post by refurb » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #20

jayd16 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should really just repeal prop 13 for commercial and non-primary home real-estate. edit: forgot to add non-primary home.

Repeal it for everything except owner-occupied residences. That's the way homestead works in Florida.

Repeal it for everything.

Just do what Texas does and allow deferred property tax payments for when the owner dies or sells.

Why should we be giving tax breaks to people who have seen incredible appreciation of their homes. Those are the last people who should be getting tax breaks.

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#99

Post by wetpaws » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

macinjosh wrote: post #41

biznickman wrote: post #4

When I lived in San Francisco, the newly built condo building across from me was fully empty (but fully sold) for all the years I lived there. This is a tower in SOMA. There was only one apartment which appeared to be a corporate one that was occasionally utilized. The rise of foreign money parking money in real estate has screwed things up on a global level. San Francisco has felt the brunt of this due to their insa…

> The rise of foreign money parking money in real estate has screwed things up on a global level. If the property tax is paid and the maintenance is kept up what is the problem created solely by the fact some homes are empty? The only reason these properties have such high values is because there is a demand that is not being supplied. Supplying more housing makes this a non-issue. > San Francisco has felt the brunt…

You can't satisfy demand for speculative assets. China tried to do it by building entire cities, and still failed.

Re: San Francisco has nearly five empty homes per homeless resident

#100

Post by klipt » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

lkbm wrote: post #67

Reedx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are houses throughout the Bay Area sitting empty, just being used as a relatively safe store of value. That goal is already achieved without having to deal with the overhead of managing the property and tenants. So the homes just sit... empty.

Seems strange. Surely a management company would happily handle all that hassle and provide a secondary income stream. Sign a couple forms and boost investment income by a few percent? Surely that's not significantly more burdensome than the bureaucratic hassle of purchasing the property in the first place. I guess there's some significant tax/regulatory difference between capital gains from holding property vs. an i…

There's large downside risk to renting out property. One bad tenant trashing the place can cancel out years of rent.

And in the Bay Area people invest more for appreciation than rent. The rent/price ratio is much higher elsewhere.