Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 595 posts

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#351

Post by quickthrower2 »

wishinghand wrote: post #261
quickthrower2 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government could build affordable housing and rent it out at a reasonable price. "Council houses" as they are called in the UK are built very well. They are often ugly, but I'm sure that these days they can be built well, cheaply and made to look OK.

When I visited a friend in England I accidentally stayed at a council estate that someone put up on AirBNB illegally. While it wasn't a slum, it definitely wasn't "just OK". I suspect the reason why that particular unit didn't look like a slum is because the owners were renting it out and doing their best to keep it nice. Not a single bit of that place was built well. Maybe it was cheap. Looked OK from the outside bu…

What was specifically wrong? Structural issues or cosmetic. A private house from 1960 that hasn't been renovated since, unless carefully maintained will also look shit on the inside. Look at property that is auctioned in the UK, for example.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#352

Post by refurb »

thephyber wrote: post #219
tinza123 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. A good portion of the 40m job loss are not gonna be fully recovered even if the situation improved a little, not to mention it is getting worse by the day.

I actually suspect part of the widespread looting is because people who used to have low paying hourly wages before COVID lockdown feel this dread and desperation as this economic depression unfolds.

Yup, must be that. Couldn't be people just wanting to steal.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#353

Post by [deleted] »

avancemos wrote: post #42
cycrutchfield wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody was ever advocating for indefinite or long-term lockdown policies. That's a strawman.

Also: “ Durham leaving stay-at-home order in place indefinitely” https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/triangle-sandhills/news/202... . NJ stay at home order continued indefinitely | FOX 5 New York https://www.fox5ny.com/news/nj-stay-at-home-order-continued-... . And many many more...

[deleted]

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#354

Post by ianai »

thephyber wrote: post #332
ianai wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It’s a faulty line of reasoning. I’ve felt it before though so it might be a “gut feeling” fallacy.

I think it's only faulty because it's incomplete, but the demand side is a real factor. There are tons of discussions here and elsewhere trying to figure out how to "recreate Silicon Valley elsewhere" (which would theoretically spread the demand across a much larger area).

Another end is making it more difficult to flip real estate as a career. But that’s at the buy instead of rent demand side-but they’re totally related and affect each other.

No times been better than post-covid for a desire to branch SV outward. My two cents would be looking at how to employ the people outside SV. Like is it noise about quality of their education or abilities? Not being able to interact with them locally?

I had this thought recently to make a programming “agency”. How to structure an organization that actually works on a programming task comparably to how a 1-3 person team would, but regardless of program complexity. Wonder if this and hiring people to WFH are compatible.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#355

Post by bsanr2 »

busyant wrote: post #267
ianlevesque wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These stories that come out of the woodwork every time tenants are mentioned are why I’ll never be a landlord.

> These stories that come out of the woodwork every time tenants are mentioned are why I’ll never be a landlord. My wife and I own a number of (8) rental properties. My wife manages them and we rarely have problems with tenants. I will tell you what I think is the secret. My wife figuratively crawls up the ass of all prospective tenants. She needs to see credit history, pay stubs, and proof of punctual rent payments…

Not so amazed on this end. A landlord that demands a lot from a prospective tenant upfront without any indication that it's going to be reciprocated in terms of responsiveness to maintenance issues, understanding when crises (like pandemics) come up, etc., is a red flag. It means you're going to be seen less as a customer who's paying for a service and more as a simple monthly source of cash. Those are the types of landlords that will shamelessly pull all kinds of tricks: jack up your rent annually, remodel nearby units when they want you to move out, and otherwise do whatever they can while skirting the law (if that) to get as much of your paycheck as possible. If your credit is screwed up, they'll make it worse. If you're in a bad way, they'll introduce even more instability into your life. It's generally not worth it.

Rent-seeking sucks. People just want a place to live.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#356

Post by uoaei »

gshubert17 wrote: post #233
sytelus wrote: post #200

Meanwhile stock market is preparing to for its record high :).

> Meanwhile stock market is preparing to for its record high :) Yes, and I don't understand it. The S&P500 is within 8% of its all-time high (3393). Even without a second wave of coronavirus cases and deaths, the current levels of unemployment, defaults, and bankruptices, I can't see what supports these asset price levels. Any ideas?

Your not understanding is a direct consequence of the decade+ of discussion around the stock market as if it's "the economy". Of course conflating the two will cause confusion when they eventually diverge.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#357

Post by kovacs »

MiroF wrote: post #305
kovacs wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trolls? Sounds like YOU need to understand what QE is. From Wikipedia... "Quantitative easing (QE) is a monetary policy whereby a central bank buys government bonds or other financial assets in order to inject money into the economy to expand economic activity." Sounds pretty inflationary to me. Especially when they buy up illiquid mark to fantasy assets that nobody wants and unloads them on the taxpayer to foot the…

There are so many issues with this comment, it's hard to pin point any exact one. You're right that it's idiotic to describe QE as "deflationary" (don't know where they go that idea) but QE is neither inflationary nor deflationary as either description would be reasoning from a price change [0]. > The fed has effectively destroyed any price discovery on any assets Don't see why this would be the case - price discover…

And yet you didn't manage to find a single one to point out and inform me of where I'm misguided, only a condescending response. Address any one of my claims about asset prices and the fed's actions distorting price discovery, please. I'd rather be wrong and realize that I'll be just fine not panic buying assets while free money is distributed and stocks rip to infinity, ignoring any and all fundamentals.

Tell me how I'm wrong about housing prices in the last ten years doubling and tripling in some areas. Tell me again how my USD are just fine and buying the same amount of goods and services they did 10 years ago, because I contend their buying power has been effectively halved by the moral hazard presented by the fed and Congress not allowing failures to happen. They're doing the exact same thing right now. How will this end? Deflation? I used to think so but not anymore. JPow even said himself that he has unlimited power to print money. They'll sooner destroy the currency than allow a deflationary depression to take hold.

Again, please, educate me as to what my "many issues" are with any of what I've said.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#358

Post by dmarlow »

MiroF wrote: post #273
shuckles wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being smug and sanctimonious in response to having claims of lacking empathy being debunked isn’t a good look.

Sorry I'm confused. Was it not the GP that referred to people on Section 8 as having "things come easy" to them? That seems like a clear failure of empathy and I fail to see how it was "debunked."

No, I claimed that I allowed my tenant to not pay their portion, at a cost to me in several ways. Please re-read my posts.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#359

Post by stx »

ianlevesque wrote: post #183
jungletime wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're very lucky. Rented to a single mother with two teenage sons. The teenage sons that decided to strip down living trees of their branches, to make bonfires for parties in the backyard. Two trees are severely damaged, and anything that was burnable in the landscape is burnt. I don't even know how to go about pricing out the damage. Insurance is paying for their rent, because the last house they lived in burned do…

These stories that come out of the woodwork every time tenants are mentioned are why I’ll never be a landlord.

I have one way worse. My Dad rented a couple houses for extra income when I was a kid. One tenant was evicted for reasons I cant remember. To get revenge they spread bird seed or grass seed all over the living room carpet and then turned the sink on and stopped the drain. When my dad came into the house later the seeds has sprouted and were growing out of the wet carpet.

Re: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

#360

Post by MiroF »

kovacs wrote: post #357
MiroF wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many issues with this comment, it's hard to pin point any exact one. You're right that it's idiotic to describe QE as "deflationary" (don't know where they go that idea) but QE is neither inflationary nor deflationary as either description would be reasoning from a price change [0]. > The fed has effectively destroyed any price discovery on any assets Don't see why this would be the case - price discover…

And yet you didn't manage to find a single one to point out and inform me of where I'm misguided, only a condescending response. Address any one of my claims about asset prices and the fed's actions distorting price discovery, please. I'd rather be wrong and realize that I'll be just fine not panic buying assets while free money is distributed and stocks rip to infinity, ignoring any and all fundamentals. Tell me how…

I isolated two.

One is that overall inflation does not make price discovery problematic, because price discovery is a mechanism based on the relative pricing between things.

Two is that inflation is projected to dip below historical levels, so claims of a great inflationary spike that should be met by riots are not at all backed by empirical evidence.

You're not really engaging in good faith, so I'm not going to continue this chain.

Post reply on HN