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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

#981

Post by jet_32951 »

rwcarlsen wrote: post #867
slashdot2008 wrote: post #830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is lots of ag zoned land around me. nobody wants it rezoned to residential as that means more people and most people don't want more people around. People always buy the ag lots cause they are cheap and have low taxes if you have ag activity, and then want to build more housing on them than the zoning allows, because that is lucrative. just use a septic field instead of the sewer hookup if the county won't play…

Unfortunately, the health district won't issue a permit because of the existence of the "will serve" letter from the city. So this is turning into quite the ordeal to get sorted out. I'm really hoping to keep things out of the courts, but that is a very real possibility. And I live in a relatively low-regulation state. I don't know how anybody ever builds anything in CA or NY.

I had >30 acres (12 ha) in a famously restrictive county in CA in 1999. Zoned for timber production, one house per parcel.

Before the building permit was issued I had spent $120k on a fourteen-inch stack of documents and fees, for a house of 2200 ft^2 (~200 m^2).

It has got much more restrictive in the intervening time. New construction in the timber production zones has just about halted.

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

#982

Post by pwinnski »

KirillPanov wrote: post #946
milkytron wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I can't imagine agents would have much of an impact when compared to other causes of rising house prices. The way I see it, is that they are more of a kind of facilitator to increase the efficiency of the market, and don't have as much of a role in market behav…

There is a half-open set of prices the buyer will pay: [0..max). There is a half-open set of prices the seller will accept: (min..$\infty$] If these sets do not intersect, there's no deal no matter what the agents do. If the sets do intersect, the agents collude to ensure that the sale closes at the HIGHEST price in the intersection . That is why realtors are such a big factor in the housing crisis. They collude to p…

I have yet to encounter a realtor that competent, or possessing perfect information, but your mileage may vary.

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

#983

Post by poooogles »

xapata wrote: post #856
poooogles wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When the lump sum doubles yet the monthly payment is the same, has the cost really changed? Yes of course it has. You've just over doubled (interest rates are low but they're not nil) the time it's taken to pay back that loan.

Your payments go towards both interest and principal in a proportion that varies over the lifetime of the loan, such that your time frame is set by the terms of the loan. If you get a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, you pay it back in 30 years, regardless of the loan amount or interest rate. Look up "amortization table" if you're curious.

But the only way for the lump sum to double and the repayment to stay the same is to lengthen the loan period?

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

#984

Post by xhrpost »

mattnewton wrote: post #523
xhrpost wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yea I guess that's true, I feel like it only matters the first time you do it though. Like if year 1 you do $1T of debt, your debt burden after 1 year is $1T. In year 2, you inflate 50%, but need to borrow $2T. Your debt is now, in year 1 dollars, effectively (1 + 2) * .50 = $1.5T. Year 3 you do it again and take $3T in debt. Now effective debt load (in year 1 dollars) is (1.5 + 3) * .50 = $2.25T. So effective debt continues to increase despite the inflation.

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

#985

Post by bennysomething »

nimih wrote: post #657
bennysomething wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can investors decrease the supply of housing?

By backing policies and politicians that constrain the expansion of public and affordable private housing in the face of an increasing population. Or by purchasing homes they do not intend to use as a primary residence.

An investment property still has people living in it?

I've never heard of investors lobbying against social housing (in the UK at least).

Forcing investors and developers to provide "affordable housing" arguably makes the problem worse. I.e. it makes it harder to make a profit and therefore disincentivises building new homes.

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

#986

Post by duxup »

lliamander wrote: post #421
duxup wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not fair, that's just some unrelated thing...

It was a conspiracy that the original twitter thread brought up, and you seemed to be criticizing conspiratorial thinking in general. My point was that, of the conspiracies mentioned by the original user, the conspiracy to influence the 2020 election was openly acknowledged by its participants.

I guess I don't really understand the idea that "oh there was a conspiracy of some sort, sometime..." when it has no connection to the claimed conspiracy.

Seems like that's a common refrain from conspiracy theory fans, when they can't find evidence for their claim 'well there was another thing' comes up.... I'm not sure what they're trying to say.

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

#987

Post by JAlexoid »

RHSeeger wrote: post #901
Clewza313 wrote: post #869

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got it exactly backwards. Density is cheaper and more sustainable than running miles and miles of brand new sewerage, roads etc into spread-out suburbs. The big difference between Japanese and American cities is that Japan is built for trains, which scale up really well, and the US is built for cars, which don't.

I don't have it backwards, you're just not following what I'm saying. I agree that denser housing and construction in general is far more efficient. However... I'm not talking about constructing a town from scratch. I'm talking about an existing town. Adding the infrastructure for high density housing to a town that wasn't originally designed for it is very expensive.

Current "trend" is medium density housing, with smaller roads. Most of US is 9+ months out of the year a walkable climate.

Putting down a small self driving street car for short trips removes a lot of road congestion in town. And if you just place navigation tags into the pavement - you avoid the need for expensive AI based nav system.

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

#988

Post by pkaye »

neilparikh wrote: post #646
Justsignedup wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Many NIMBYs aren't purely financially driven. What they want is for their neighborhood to stay exactly as it was when they moved in, with the same type of people, and same amount of traffic. Bay Area has plenty of this type. Many of them already have had property value skyrocket (50K -> 2M is not uncommon), so they can just have both (high property values, and preserve their neighborhood exactly as they want it).

I see a lot of this from People on Nextdoor. They see their favorite landmark demolished to build yet another block of apartments and condos. I've seen a sporting goods store gone, a furniture store gone. A bowling alley was saved but it will be built around. Some places I've seen low density industrial being replaced with housing. Some people fear that at the end it will just be housing and big box stores left.

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

#990

Post by [deleted] »

ta1234567890 wrote: post #951
dragonwriter wrote: post #928

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most people will only buy a property once, so there’s very little potential downside for the agent, Agents do get repeat and referral business if they don't suck; the agent we use has been involved in several sales and a purchase for our extended family in a few years, and we've referred other people to her, too. > Specially when most of the buyers and sellers are in it for just one transaction in their whole lives…

> the agent we use has been involved in several sales and a purchase for our extended family in a few years, and we've referred other people to her, too. Great, so you are wealthy and have wealthy friends and family. Cool. That still doesn’t mean agents are not trying to get prices up. Your experience could mean that your agent noticed you had money and decided it would be in her best interest to treat you well. You…

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