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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

#521

Post by aggronn »

mattmcknight wrote: post #413
davidw wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It's not really market oriented, it's tragedy of the commons oriented, as developers will build the cheapest thing they can on the premise that new residents can use existing parking, resulting in a reduction of value for others utilizing those commons. By not having parking minimums, it allows developers to pass those costs onto surrounding residents. There are townhouse neighborhoods near me with nearly impassable…

The solution isn't to build more parking, its to reduce the need for car trips. Improve transit and support commercial development in the neighborhood.

The fact is that we're in a housing affordability crisis. We need builders to build "cheapest thing they can" right now because housing is insanely expensive in most urban areas. Parking minimums make housing more expensive, and the fact that people are buying these homes is saying something important: housing is more important than parking.

Yes parking is nice, and there are costs associated with not having a dedicated parking space for each person. But those costs pale in comparison to the costs we pay for having a severe housing shortage. The economic costs, the costs paid in rents, the costs paid in health.

There isn't a world where you can have it all. But its clear that we need more housing, not more parking, and there is an unavoidable trade-off between the two.

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

#522

Post by dang »

meowster wrote: post #496
dang wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment refers to the original URL, https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1402434266970140676 , which we've since replaced with the article it points to (in keeping with the site guidelines).

There's an achive link in the top comment, and I think replying to that with the original URL would help rather than making fact of the change burried in the comments, but I can't reply to that archive link post.

When users post those paywall workaround URLs, we sometimes disable replies (when we see them), because usually the replies repeat the same old tedious argument about paywalls that has been off topic for years (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989, https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

We could turn that off so you could post the originally submitted URL, except I'm not sure that there are significant subthreads getting distorted by this change. I already put that URL at the top of the ones I saw, like the GP.

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

#523

Post by mattnewton »

xhrpost wrote: post #363
alert0 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now interest rates are low, they cannot use them as a tool in a crisis, for this reason they are printing money to lower the overall debt obligation of the US. Inflating away our debt. This will eventually lead to inflation at which point the interest rates will rise again (prediction, at the end of the decade). This is the correct play for where we are in the long term debt cycle. In my opinion, this is happen…

> for this reason they are printing money to lower the overall debt obligation of the US Except the way the US does it, the Treasury issues debt and then the Fed prints to buy the debt. So when we print $1T, we also take on $1T in debt. I know you mean lowering through inflation but as long as it's done this way I don't see how it matters. If the dollar looses 50%, we then need to issue $2T in debt and print $2T the…

The original trillion in debt can be paid back with 50% "cheaper" dollars though, right? That's the "trick" as I understand it.

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

#524

Post by crooked-v »

maxsilver wrote: post #510
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…

> Everybody opposed the rezoning and fought to defeat it. Why? That's kind of an important point. For example, unless this is NYC or similar, 49 townhomes is going to need a minimum of at least 110 parking spots (just to hold the occupants alone, assuming no one ever has guests ever). A realistic parking minimum should be 2.5 spots per townhouse. A lot of builders outsource their pollution to the local neighborhood,…

> Ok, that means it would likely carry the highest prices per square foot in 4 counties, which means it would immediately make that neighborhood the most expensive neighborhood in 4 counties. Could that be a reason it was opposed?

Artificially constraining expensive housing isn't a good thing. If the demand is there in the first place, doing so just means that the people who are interested will insteaad buy or rent existing homes that could have otherwise gone to lower-wealth families.

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

#525

Post by epistasis »

plank_time wrote: post #311
ska wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like prop 13 isn't the only way to avoid that. Some jurisdictions allow you to defer property tax indefinitely in the form of a lien against the house which seems like a reasonable way to do it.

Some of my neighbors are seniors who are on social security. Their houses were bought for about $160k in the 1970s. Which is expensive back then. Now they are worth $2M but they have no intention to move. Where would they live? And how can they afford the $30k/yr property tax? What stops people from selling their homes isn’t prop 13, it’s the ridiculous rise in house prices in the last 15 years. It creates no mobilit…

> And how can they afford the $30k/yr property tax?

The suggestion is to make them no pay that annually in cash, but rather on the future gains of the house.

Their house (or rather, the land) is going up in value far more than that per year. Asking them to forgo a fraction of their speculative real estate gains, when they never even plan to access it (according to you), does not make sense.

So what it seems like you are really saying is that they deserve to have full speculative real estate gains accessible to them, just because they are wealthier than younger people and were able to get into the capitalism game earlier. That due to their unearned wealth, that they did nothing to create, that comes purely at the expense of others being able to live in the area because land is zero sum. They should have to pay less just because they have greater power? Absolutely not.

Saying "I'm so wealthy that I can't pay taxes, and I'm not willing to even delay paying taxes until sale" is fundamental wrong-headed.

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

#526

Post by ryandrake »

wwweston wrote: post #500
jedberg wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a red herring when prop 13 was passed, and is a red herring now. 49 other states don't have prop 13, and yet seniors aren't priced out of their homes. There are plenty of other solutions. Some states allow you to just pay the same amount each year and put the difference as a lien on the house until you sell. Some states have something like prop 13, but it is applied to entire counties. ie. They allow the ent…

> This was a red herring when prop 13 was passed, and is a red herring now. 49 other states don't have prop 13, and yet seniors aren't priced out of their homes. Prop 13 is bad in at least half a dozen ways, but I'm not so sure this problem isn't coming elsewhere or even is absent. It seems to me California may have experienced a leading edge of metro dynamics that are going to come for other states soon. > everyone'…

> Residence-first real estate policy needs to include tax that increases on the number of properties owned (and maybe even more steeply in a supply constrained market).

People might try to get around this by forming corporations or trusts that hold max one property each. There is really no need to count how many other properties someone holds. Just do a re-assessment every year and ratchet up the assessed value on all housing that the owner does not occupy, including vacant property and renter-occupied. Seems a lot simpler.

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

#527

Post by KptMarchewa »

maxsilver wrote: post #510
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…

> Everybody opposed the rezoning and fought to defeat it. Why? That's kind of an important point. For example, unless this is NYC or similar, 49 townhomes is going to need a minimum of at least 110 parking spots (just to hold the occupants alone, assuming no one ever has guests ever). A realistic parking minimum should be 2.5 spots per townhouse. A lot of builders outsource their pollution to the local neighborhood,…

>A realistic parking minimum should be 2.5 spots per townhouse.

A realistic approach in the face of coming climate doom would be max 0.5, for the people that really need cars as primary transport due to disability etc.

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

#528

Post by delaynomore »

yongjik wrote: post #383
plank_time wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re saying that old people should be driven out of their houses because younger, richer people deserve to live in their houses. I’m sure your feelings will change as you get older.

I own a house in East Bay, and paying >$10k/yr of property tax. While I don't mind tax in principle, it greatly annoys me that I'm paying much more than my neighbors just because I bought it a few years ago. And why would my opinion change when I get older? Prop 13 won't do shit to lower my taxes, I'll have less income and still be paying through the nose, because the city needs money and half of its residents are pa…

>why would my opinion change when I get older? Your opinion might change if property price around East Bay continue to appreciate and your new neighbors are paying even more.

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

#529

Post by milkytron »

davidw wrote: post #251
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…

Without knowing more, it sounds complicated: denser infill housing is good in so many ways. Mixed use, with commercial on the ground floor and housing above is even better in many situations, but not all developers do that kind of thing. So it kind of depends on what the alternatives are and what the housing situation is like where you live. There are places where "the perfect is the enemy of the good" in terms of wh…

Where I live now is planned to be a 15 minute neighborhood. I moved into one of the first new developments of many, all residential, all within a 5-10 minute walk of a train station.

There are about 1000 housing units being built, and there has been zero commercial development. It's great that they are building dwelling units here all around transit, but the only businesses that already exist are industrial, a gas station, and a dollar store. Commercial land owners have been refusing to sell to developers as they watch their land value increase. It's a real shame, but it does seem better than what existed before and the area certainly has potential.

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

#530

Post by jeffbee »

foogazi wrote: post #202
seanp2k2 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve ranted about this before but CA Prop 13 not only makes housing a good investment, but one that you’re extremely incentivized to hold onto forever and never move. Two people can be living in houses next to each other valued around 1.5m, and one of them will be paying 1/10th the tax. If anyone wants to buy a house, they have to first be able to afford the property, so the barriers to entry are so much higher for t…

Prop 13 biggest beneficiaries are corporations. > so the barriers to entry are so much higher for those who didn’t have the foresight to purchase a home 40 years ago. 40 years ago it was still expensive to buy otherwise everyone would have bought, including the investment funds

40 years ago a home in the Bay Area cost about 3x median income. Now it is more than 10x. Buyers in 1981 benefitted enormously from high interest rates. I know they whine about it now, but objectively it was a massive windfall for buyers.
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