471–480 of 1001 posts
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Now that duplexes are allowed, how long does it take to get one approved?
Still too long. The bill has not been fully implemented as cities have a few years to adapt it into their code. But you just keep pushing where you can.
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COVID denialism, election denialism, and “The Great Reset” are high profile crank subjects. Being a conservative Christian doesn’t make you a crank; those things do.
Respectfully, I think calling "The Great Reset" a 'crank subject' is itself a sign of conspiratorial thinking, or in the least, misleading/false information. I often see people label discussions of "The Great Reset" in this way, but that ignores the reality that the World Economic Forum literally branded their 2020 meeting as "Great Reset" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Reset ). If the WEF isn't a familiar nam…
Your own Wikipedia link says this neatly:
> According to The New York Times,[1 1] the BBC, The Guardian, Le Devoir and Radio Canada, "baseless" conspiracy theories spread by American far-right groups linked to QAnon surged at the onset of the Great Reset forum and increased in fervor as leaders such as U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau[1 2] incorporated ideas based on a "reset" in their speeches.[1 3]
This hurts people who already own houses, too - property taxes are assessed on the appraised value of the home, which is a function of what the similarly-sized houses in your area sold for most recently. My property taxes have increased 10% every year for the past several years (and it would have been more if not for a legislative 10% annual cap). I worry that there will come a day when I've paid off my mortgage but…
Some areas have legislation that prevents property taxes from increasing at too fast a rate. In those regions, the formula is changed a bit so that newer residences are charged at a high initial rate.
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That may have been the case when Prop 13 was sold to the public, but at this point it's mostly being used to accumulate wealth, not keep people on fixed incomes in their lifelong homes. If that was the goal, there is a much better solution - let the elderly accumulate the tax bill against the value of the house, and collect from the estate when they pass.
When houses get sold, capital gains need to be paid. This is nothing new.
In the current tax climate, we will never sell our houses. It's an amazing way to transfer wealth while avoid capital gains.
And if they don't want to sell, the kids keep the original prop 13 tax limitations as well. The current housing policies and tax system is a disaster.
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…
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Do you think people should be able to buy affordable homes? Isn't affordability affected when you are competing with companies with deep pockets? When those companies need ROI do you think they will prioritize housing affordability over profitability?
I'm not sure how much I care about whether people own or rent. The politics of the place I live are controlled by owners and are renter-hostile; I don't think increasing the rental stock is a bad thing, and am inclined to believe --- without making any value judgement about REITs and Blackrock ---- that it's probably a net positive. The compulsion to own homes and tie people's finances to the real estate market is a…
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Yes. If you believe that no town homes should be built in the U.S. than you might not qualify as NIMBY. But if you believe that town homes shouldn't be built next to you that's the definition of NIMBY. Of course every instance has a long list of reasons why next to them is especially bad, character of the neighborhood, parking issues, infrastructure, etc.... But the end result of everyone fighting increased density i…
The irony is that density means more people, more homes, more availability. That means more jobs open up and makes the place more lively. More desireable. That means the house property value will go up. They are thinking "will this make the property value go down in the next 5 years"? vs "will this make the property value skyrocket in the next 10 years". We are catering to short-term gains at the expense of long-term…
People essentially want to be surrounded by people of almost exactly their economic class to somewhat richer. To rich and stores they can’t afford to stay ie gentrification, to poor and you have to move ie white flight.
I was always turned off by how slow and illiquid that market was
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Consider that you may be far too trusting if you’re not considering conspiracy as a possibility at this point…
A conspiracy means that the truth about something is different from what we currently know. JFK, moon landing, flat Earth. Where is the conspiracy with banks buying houses en masse? They intend to turn every middle class family into a permanent renter and take any profit of the housing market for themselves. This is exactly what’s happening. We can simply say that this problem is more important than people believe, o…
An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.
Like, maybe the Fed is conspiring with the gov. and big banks to fleece the American people of their real estate assets…? Have you no ability to question things?