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If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

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Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#371

Post by lliamander »

anthony_romeo wrote: post #298
xdennis wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What conspiracy? “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.” is something they said.

Who is "they"? Some article in a newspaper? A handful of researchers and futurists? Edit: Got it. It's from a list of unsurprising predictions from [at least] the marketing department of the World Economic Forum. Thanks.

It was from a series of predictions made by the WEF in 2016 about life in 2030[0].

The claim of many is that the WEF wants to bring about a world in which the vast majority of people don't have ownership.

Reuters "fact checks"[1] this claim by saying that it was merely a prediction, and that it isn't actually a goal listed on their website.

I find the fact check unpersuasive. The WEF says "you will be happy" about not owning anything. That they would even think that reveals something about the values of that organization. If that is part of what they would consider to be a happier world, why would they not push for it (in private, if not in public)?

[0]https://www.facebook.com/worldeconomicforum/videos/101539205... [1]https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-wef-idUSL1N2MR1UU

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#372

Post by dv_dt »

dragonwriter wrote: post #105
dv_dt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why CA has prop 13 which limits increases to property taxes from year to year specifically because CA had seem property boom/bust cycles kicking people out of homes because of irrational real estate prices.

Well, no, California has Prop 13, because wealthy investors in property used constructed images of that scenario to build support for a law to transfer more wealth to the already wealthy, not because its was a real problem (and, even if it was, Prop 13 doesn’t focus on dealing with that problem.)

There are problems with prop 13, but it does prevent people from being kicked out of their owned homes for temporary market conditions that are out of their control.

Imho the problem was that the politics of the day got it passed to cover commercial properties too, when it really should just cover primary residences. And not secondary homes or rental properties.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#373

Post by scotuswroteus »

opportune wrote: post #229
scotuswroteus wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lost me at the end. You lack political acumen if you think this is how politics works: " If there's a credible threat to build plenty of housing, they'll move on." The Yimbies supported Mayor Breed. She hasn't changed the political problems in SF that you're (for the most part, accurately) diagnosing here. The problem with most anti-activist government screeds like this is that they lack the same nuance and sophi…

I don’t even understand this comment at all. So the solution to NIMBY activists controlling local government is to do... nothing? You know YIMBY is itself an activist movement right? Activist isn’t a code word for “crazy left wing people I don’t like”, it just means people who are hyper politically active (moreover N/Y IMBY is not clearly demarcated on political lines IMO). All you have done is said the person you ar…

If you don't understand the comment "at all," I suspect replying to you won't resolve the issue.

>All you have done is said the person you are replying to is an idiot for YIMBY but the only argument is that they support Breed.

That's not all I've said. Read slower.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#374

Post by divs1210 »

anthony_romeo wrote: post #298
xdennis wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What conspiracy? “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.” is something they said.

Who is "they"? Some article in a newspaper? A handful of researchers and futurists? Edit: Got it. It's from a list of unsurprising predictions from [at least] the marketing department of the World Economic Forum. Thanks.

WEF said it themselves, then deleted it after backlash.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#375

Post by iso1210 »

brightball wrote: post #218
davidw wrote: post #125

Here's why investors buy up houses: they know your neighbors will do the dirty work of artificially constraining the housing supply, which makes it a good investment. Here's one who comes right out and explains this: > Meanwhile, local opposition to building is so commonplace and the approval process so cumbersome, time consuming, and expensive, even when a proposed project complies entirely with requirements, approv…

I just experienced something similar to this and it makes me wonder if much of this is just perception. We recently dealt with an out of state builder pushing to have a property that was zoned Neighborhood Commercial to be rezoned to something more flexible so that he could build 49 town homes with 49 parking spots on 5 acres of land. Everybody opposed the rezoning and fought to defeat it. The project would have been…

49 parking spaces for 49 houses seems like a disaster in anywhere other than the densest of US cities. Surely most houses have at least 2 drivers?

5 Acres is 2 Hectares, so that's about 25 houses per hectare. Typical new housing estates in the UK is about 25 hours per hectare, with minimum of 3 parking spaces (including a garage if given) for a 4 bed, and 2 for a 3 bed.

Even that number of spaces is too low - especially when one is a garage (which nobody uses to park their car)

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#376

Post by JKCalhoun »

beervirus wrote: post #180
JKCalhoun wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't heard that one. 2000 election stolen? Absolutely.

That seems unlikely. Here’s one high-profile example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum...

Wow, how is it I had forgotten the FBI Director, James Comey, announcing just days before the election that Hillary Clinton was being investigated?

It's been a strange past 4 years....

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#377

Post by nicoburns »

matwood wrote: post #236
nicoburns wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your liability has. If the interest rates goes back up to late 20th rates, your monthly payment isn't going to stay the same.

After all the adjustable rate issues from the last housing crisis, I believe most mortgages since them have been fixed rate. I don't care what interest rates do, my mortgage rate is never going up. This touches on another point. For home owners like myself, inflation is a good thing as it makes my highest monthly expense relatively cheaper.

Ah, this may be country-dependant. It's pretty much impossible to get longer than 10 years fixed here in the UK, and the rates are high.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#378

Post by rcpt »

oh_sigh wrote: post #346
_greim_ wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently went down the Geoist/LVT rabbit-hole myself. It strikes me as uniquely appealing across the political spectrum, since it reduces tax on wealth-creation AND redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor. Sadly, this very fact provokes enough superficial resistance to keep it out of the Overton window. Whenever it comes up, shouters on either side have plenty of ammo to blast it, saying things to the effect…

It's never appealing to make a long time member of a community leave because they can no longer afford the land they've owned for years, because other people say "I want that" I move to a cheap, small town. I embed myself in the community and help build it up over decades. And then, at the peak popularity, in part due to my presence, I am forced out, because someone who has never been here says that they would like t…

You've obviously never seen a Nextdoor thread about rent control.

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#379

Post by davidw »

iso1210 wrote: post #375
brightball wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just experienced something similar to this and it makes me wonder if much of this is just perception. We recently dealt with an out of state builder pushing to have a property that was zoned Neighborhood Commercial to be rezoned to something more flexible so that he could build 49 town homes with 49 parking spots on 5 acres of land. Everybody opposed the rezoning and fought to defeat it. The project would have been…

49 parking spaces for 49 houses seems like a disaster in anywhere other than the densest of US cities. Surely most houses have at least 2 drivers? 5 Acres is 2 Hectares, so that's about 25 houses per hectare. Typical new housing estates in the UK is about 25 hours per hectare, with minimum of 3 parking spaces (including a garage if given) for a 4 bed, and 2 for a 3 bed. Even that number of spaces is too low - especia…

The real disaster (environmental and economic) is that so many places regulate parking so strictly rather than being more market-oriented and allowing people to figure out how much they want.

https://www.planetizen.com/features/113459-perils-central-pl...

Re: If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund

#380

Post by wolverine876 »

FredPret wrote: post #366
matthoiland wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everybody works but the vacant lot. I paid $3600 for this lot and will hold 'till I get $6000. The profit is unearned increment made possible by the presence of this community and enterprise of its people. I take the profit without earning it. for the remedy read Henry George. - Billboard posted in an empty lot, Rockford Illinois, 1914

That's a common meme - that asset appreciation is unearned wealth. But it's not. That investor could've spent the 3600 on hookers and blackjack. Investors freezing their money in communities in the form of real estate or other investment is a key part of those communites becoming richer and more complex. There's a real risk of losing your money - there's no worse financial nightmare than holding real estate that you'…

How did the investor in that empty lot make the community richer?
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