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

Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 262 posts

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#161

Post by nemo44x »

bombcar wrote: post #155
nemo44x wrote: post #15

Renting is underrated but owning is nice too if you want to root. However I think a lot of renters or people that complain they can’t afford a house also forget about the costs of property tax and maintenance. Those are 2 costs that never end and don’t remain fixed (in most places) over time. For instance, anywhere reasonably commutable to NYC and close to a train line is going to probably have 10’s of thousands a ye…

And anyone who owns a house (especially an older one) knows that property taxes are relatively minor compared to maintenance costs (which are erratic and often unaccounted even by small landlords). They really add up.

Depends where you live really. Live in an in-demand suburb of NYC and there’s a good chance you’re paying 20-40k a year in property taxes. Certain parts of north New Jersey and southern Connecticut contain really pricy real estate compared to national averages, for example. Maintenance will be far below that most years. But if you can afford a million dollar+ piece of real estate then a few k in maintenance per year isn’t an issue.

In certain areas the land is worth more than the structure on it. The east coast has a good bunch of that.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#162

Post by alentist »

eptcyka wrote: post #74
dragonwriter wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But those programs should be implemented as subsidies, not price controls! Subsidies for historic populations without price controls would be a windfall for landlords, and an accelerant to runaway general unaffordability. You could probably split the difference with weaker rent controls and subsidies that make it look like stronger rent control from the renters side, which might mitigate the worst problems of eithe…

Its simple - tax landlordism out of viability.

...and what? What do you expect that to do?

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#164

Post by chii »

cortesoft wrote: post #99
eulenteufel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking about the principles laid down in the article: a) Do not require significant initial funds for buying b) Do not have other people profit of the housing A simple solution congruent with these principles could be: Selling the house should be restricted to yield the amount of money you put in. This excludes money spend on repairs, etc., and is to be adjusted for inflation. You can keep living in the house as lo…

> Once you are dead, you lose the house and the inheritance will be the same money you would get from selling the house/apartment under the regulated terms. Where would this money come from, though? You only make money on the property when you sell it to someone else, so who is buying it? Not the next renter, because they are supposed to be buying into equity, not paying someone else's profit.

there in lies the problem - the payment in lieu of rent in the proposal is not meant to be equity, but is treated like that.

I think there's some cognitive dissonance in the proposal. The idea that you can live for free is just not possible in the modern, capitalist world. Rent is something that every entity has to pay - including owners (which is the imputed rent, or the opportunity cost of the capital placed into the building/land, or the interest payment).

If the gov't fronts the capital to build, but don't receive rent, then it's the same as tax payers footing the interest cost of that capital. So those who would be in this public-ownership housing is effectively receiving an interest free loan for the house, and their payment represents equity, and that's such a good deal that there'd be unlimited demand for this sort of housing.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#165

Post by dredmorbius »

lobotryas wrote: post #123
arcticbull wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root cause is way too little development relative to demand, orchestrated via zoning regulations. Wikipedia spells this out in detail for San Francisco [1]. > Since the 1960s, San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area have enacted strict zoning regulations. Among other restrictions, San Francisco does not allow buildings over 40 feet tall in most of the city, and has passed laws making it easier for neighbors to…

The real root cause is that everyone wants to live (for obvious reasons) in places where housing supply is constrained like SF, LA, or NYC. Home ownership is easy in places like Detroit or Oklahoma boonies, but unsurprisingly no one wants to go there. Instead of cramming more people onto the same set of square mikes, how about we develop more (non coastal) places for people to aspire moving to instead? Not everyone h…

Housing affordability and precarity are widespread problems. $/ft^2 an $/br is high on the coasts. Rent:income and evictions/10k are high throughout much of the U.S.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#166

Post by mgerdts »

InvertedRhodium wrote: post #78
jawns wrote: post #25

I'm a distributist, so I would prefer to see this type of system operated as a private cooperative, 100% owned by participants, rather than a government-run program. Why? Because then the people who get to make the decisions are the co-op participants themselves -- the people with the most skin in the game -- and the government can instead focus on areas where the participants actually need help, e.g. at the regulato…

How does that differ meaningfully from home owners associations and the like?

The one time I lived in a neighborhood with a HOA, i found it provided a private pool and and a way for neighbors to be more exclusive, not inclusive. For instance, one of the HOA rules was that you cannot have any vehicle with commercial signage or lettering (like a plumber's van) parked outside over night. If my parents were to stay the night, the rules said that their pickup with lettering advertising their small business was not welcome in my driveway.

As I was writing this, the term "sundown law" came to mind.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#167

Post by chii »

haram_masala wrote: post #94
MomoXenosaga wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The housing market is FUBAR because the people who already have a house absolutely 100% need prices to go up indefinitely to fund their lifestyle. The government can't do anything either besides tell banks to lend starters more $ because the system cannot be allowed to collapse.

Doesn’t this depend on whether those homeowners have borrowed against their (rising) equity? I wonder what fraction of homeowners actually do so. Personally I wouldn’t dream of it, so rising prices don’t really affect my lifestyle at all.

A lot of home owners use their equity to invest (typically, in another property).

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#168

Post by chii »

bradleyjg wrote: post #125
MomoXenosaga wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The housing market is FUBAR because the people who already have a house absolutely 100% need prices to go up indefinitely to fund their lifestyle. The government can't do anything either besides tell banks to lend starters more $ because the system cannot be allowed to collapse.

With interest rates having nowhere to go but up, look for the government to introduce the fifty year mortgage in order to keep the party going.

why would the gov't be in control of the mortgage period? That's between the borrower and the bank.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#169

Post by bradleyjg »

chii wrote: post #168
bradleyjg wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With interest rates having nowhere to go but up, look for the government to introduce the fifty year mortgage in order to keep the party going.

why would the gov't be in control of the mortgage period? That's between the borrower and the bank.

In the vast majority of US mortgages the bank is the government. It’s deceptive because borrowers deal with private originators and servicers, but they are just contractors for the government.

Re: Public-ownership rental as a third option to renting or owning a house

#170

Post by rsj_hn »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #127
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Habitat For Humanity[1] works in a similar way. At least in my town, families help to build or renovate the home they move into, and their mortgage payments are capped at a reasonable percentage of their income (I think 30%). 1: https://www.habitat.org/about/faq#homeownership

HfH typically provides the mortgage with a 0% interest rate also. They are a tremendous program that should be scaled up.

All these programs that subsidize the cost of borrowing merely drive up the price of houses. This is why things like the mortgage interest deduction or zero percent financing are not in the long term interests of home buyers when they are "scaled up", and when they are niche programs they are basically a convoluted form of charity. There is nothing wrong with that, some people like their charities to be convoluted and have a penchant for financial engineering, but at the end of the day charities, by definition, cannot scale: A large group can give money to a small group, but when the society as a whole gives money to itself then it is no longer charity, it's just spending money on yourself in a convoluted way.
Post reply on HN