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

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 1001 posts

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

#601

Post by paganel »

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…

> they know your neighbors will do the dirty work of artificially constraining the housing supply

And then the same middle-class (mostly white, with some Asian mix on the West Coast) plays the "revolt game" of supporting the Afro-American and Latino US population, blaming the latter's condition only on racism, totally ignoring the class war now unfolding in the States of which they (said middle-class) are the "baddies" part. Absolutely appalling.

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

#602

Post by pwinnski »

ta1234567890 wrote: post #540
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…

And, at least in California, realtors will always push prices up. It’s pretty much never in their best interest to lower the price. Even the buyer’s agent gets paid a percentage of the sale price, so if they try to lower it they’d be essentially working against themselves. And this is without even accounting for all the schemes realtors create (like listing below market to get a lot of offers and create artificially…

This depends heavily on the market at the time, since there are pressures from multiple directions.

All else being equal, 6% of a higher price beats 6% of a lower price. But 6% of a lower price today in exchange for an hour of work beats $0 if the buyer walks and is not so easily replaced, and it might even beat 6% of a higher price if the higher price comes after many additional hours of work.

Over a long enough timeframe, the trend is toward higher prices, but it's not clear how much of a factor agents are in that, compared to many other factors.

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

#603

Post by maxsilver »

michaelmrose wrote: post #567
maxsilver wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Artificially constraining expensive housing isn't a good thing Again, this isn't California. This is the Midwest. We have gentrification problems even in cities that are still losing population . And we've never constrained housing, for our cities that are slowly growing, many have built more new units than residents for years now. Most cities have no meaningful housing shortage here, but every city currently has a…

I'll do you one better maybe people that don't intend to live in them at least half the time shouldn't be able to buy a second home.

I agree 100%

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

#604

Post by standardUser »

CapmCrackaWaka wrote: post #551
spoonjim wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After I spent my entire net worth plus a good chunk of my future net worth on this house you can be damn right I’m going to vote to protect its value.

Hmmm this just seems like a bad decision on your part. I bought my house in 2018 and it was expensive, yes, but definitely manageable on my salary. I definitely would not buy a house right now, especially if it required spending 'my entire net worth plus a good chunk of my future net worth'.

For most Americans, if you want to own property you drain most of your savings and take on debt worth many times your annual income. If people did not do this the demand for real estate would crater.

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

#605

Post by asdff »

nradov wrote: post #455
no-dr-onboard wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange argument considering public schools (and in general _many_ public services) in CA are in terrible condition. Maybe I'm missing the point though.

CA school funding per student is above the national median. If some schools are in terrible condition then it's due to incompetent management, not lack of funding. Conditions in my local CA public schools seem reasonably good.

CA cost of everything is above the national median, no surprise dollar spent per pupil is higher. If it were the same that would mean teachers are making significantly less and who knows what other compromises. Prop 13 changed a lot about how schools are funded (local vs state) and has lead to some challenges in certain districts relative to others, and it took decades for education funding to reach parity with pre prop 13 levels.

https://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/op/OP_998JCOP.pdf

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

#606

Post by rcpt »

delaynomore wrote: post #528
yongjik wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A pitch copied straight from pyramid scams.

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

#607

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #77
cosmojg wrote: post #32

If only so many people didn't treat land and houses like investments, there wouldn't be such a disastrous hoarding problem. Henry George's Land Value Tax [1][2] seems like an obvious economic fix that would require a large fraction of the population to change how they think about land and natural resources, but most of them are invested in such a way (i.e. owning multiple houses on multiple parcels of land, often wit…

I agree that we need to stop treating houses as investments, because they're a basic fundamental need everyone has. IMO, the problem could be fixed by having stricter laws prohibiting people who aren't residents from owning homes in another country. The requirement to become a resident is only to live in a country for over 6 months out of the year. Before that, you can just rent. We could also do things like limit th…

Landlording is not the problem.

Not everyone wants to own the place they live in. Lots of people plan on only being in a location for a year or two or four, and would rather just rent.

Some people would just rather rent indefinitely.

The problem is free handouts for homeowners in general.

The handouts entice the landlords, because for the last 30 years with the exception of 3 years (2005-2008) - housing on leverage has absolutely destroyed equities as an investment.

If you got rid of the handouts, this wouldn't be the case. Then you wouldn't have people like Blackrock gobbling up houses. They'd just be buying equities (the things that are supposed to be investments?) instead.

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

#608

Post by dragonwriter »

maxsilver wrote: post #593
michaelmrose wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can only build dense housing in the places where there are no few jobs and few people it doesn't help much. The fact that the locals are by definition negatively impacted by new development is a great reason to take virtually all say away from the locals. Anyone who is already a home owner will find that increasing supply of homes a necessary function of the society decreases the value of the asset in which th…

> It's like they are throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars in bags full of hundred dollar bills over your fence and you are complaining about income tax. They aren't throwing dollars over the fence, they're throwing debt over the fence. Sure, my property is on-paper worth more. If I cash that out, I just have to spend it all (every other house got more expensive by an equal amount, and I have to live somewhere).…

> Property values are not real wealth, it's not real money.

I don’t know, having $100k+ more in equity than a couple years ago it acts like having an asset with real monetary value when I go to a bank looking for credit, having a big effect on both the amount of funds I have access to and the terms on which I can get them.

It’s not liquid like cash, so there is more work to take advantage of it, but its definitely real.

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

#609

Post by dcolkitt »

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…

So, what? What business is it of the local government? Why can't we just let consenting adults make their own personal decisions about the details of the housing and parking they choose to live in?

Some people may only need limited parking. Some people may not need any parking. Maybe they're making a mistake and will regret it. Maybe not. Maybe nobody wants that, in which case the developer will pay the cost. Who cares! This is how freedom works. Can we please just stop ramming regulations down people's throats. "Well, no trust me. I'm from the zoning board and I know you're really gonna need two parking spots."

Imagine if we had a clothing board, and anytime a company came out with a new apparel style they had to get approval. "I just don't think anybody wants shorts that far above the knee. Permission denied". Just let the market decide, for God's sakes.

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

#610

Post by _greim_ »

dnautics wrote: post #463
_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…

You don't think geoism is just naive? This idea that the state can magically assign a value to property and not have it go sideways for the politically disenfranchised (the poor) is pure fantasy. If you haven't gone through the process of buying a house. I suggest trying it (especially during a frothy market), and each step of the way stop and think, "how would geoism get turned around to screw the poor".

I'll give the standard reply here: this sounds mainly like a criticism of the current system. Are you specifically proposing some loophole in geoism that could be gamed in such a way to make things worse for the poor, beyond how things stand in the current system? Or is this more of a "things will end up badly for the poor no matter what we do" kind of sentiment? I can certainly understand that, but it isn't a good excuse for apathy.
Post reply on HN