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The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

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Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#81

Post by srvmshr »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #7
refurb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a wealthy SF landlord story, this is an house cleaner . It’s an impressive story of someone slowly building up a real estate portfolio in the Bay Area. Most of it through creative means and living lean. It’s actually an impressive story.

It's impressive in the way a trainwreck is impressive. There's no reason why housing appreciates year after year. It should be a depreciating asset, like a car or at most value-neutral. But misguided government policies have caused housing to be out of reach for the greater part of the population. Have you seen the housing price index for Pittsfield, MA: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ATNHPIUS38340Q Pittsfield. I…

> It should be a depreciating asset, like a car or at most value-neutral.

The building unit depreciates, but the total value usually goes up due to the land value, not the construction value. Cars would also appreciate hypothetically if metals suddenly became more expensive.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#82

Post by VRay »

endisneigh wrote: post #57
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you're just making an argument equivalent to "it's not weird that some cars appreciate, look some of the classic Mustangs" instead of distinguishing it from housing in any way. The reason housing increases in value to the extent that it does is that areas where it's in high demand prohibit creating more of it. It would be like prohibiting the construction of new cars. Obviously that would make existing cars cost…

> The reason housing increases in value to the extent that it does is that areas where it's in high demand prohibit creating more of it. It would be like prohibiting the construction of new cars. Obviously that would make existing cars cost more in general, independent of the fact that some cars are worth more than others. Yes, and the areas that are desirable and the ones that are restricting the construction. Even…

You're the one ignoring reality. In your defense, basically every clueless voter living in the US and a lot of Europe does it too, though.

In Tokyo, you can work part time as a non-union, non-salaried janitor or a nail stylist and make enough to live within 20 minutes of the bustling heart of downtown. That's due to light zoning restrictions making housing into a depreciating asset for everybody instead of a stupid fucking pyramid scheme

https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#83

Post by refurb »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #36
ip26 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s at the root of all these stories about, ”I can’t afford to live where I grew up” . Buddy, I can’t either, but when my parents bought it was a fruit orchard. Today it’s the hottest real estate market in the world. It’s apples and oranges.

A colleague told me about her daughter - she finished college and has a regular job but cannot afford to move out. That's in rustbelt central. Yes, you can live with roommates, but if you are late 20's it becomes awkward, and when at some point the children arrive it becomes a habitability issue.

Living with roommates or even your parents is pretty common globally. Not the end of the world.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#84

Post by VRay »

People are fighting the wrong fight when they attack this guy (or attack the people attacking this guy, for that matter)

It isn't SF Bay Bros'/foreigners'/companies' fault that houses are too expensive. It's because of strict zoning laws and a lack of building enough housing to match supply with demand[1]. Demand keeps going up way faster than supply, nationwide, and we're all feeling the squeeze

[1]: A great example of this is the super low housing costs in Tokyo. My mother in-law and sister in-law are renting a 3 bedroom apartment right now, 20 minutes outside Shinjuku (one of the "Giant Bustling Megacity" parts of Tokyo) for $1300/month, which they can comfortably afford while working part time doing low end janitorial work. More info here: https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#85

Post by chmod600 »

ausbah wrote: post #73
chmod600 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people place misdirected blame for unaffordable housing on themselves or others who buy, fix up, and rent out houses. It's pretty obvious that the cause of unaffordable housing is elsewhere. But being the one to actually collect rent is a kind of guilt-by-association.

is one of the incentives for those who rent housing not to keep the available housing supply low (at least to a certain point)?

If you grow carrots, you would prefer to keep the overall supply of carrots low so that your carrots will fetch the highest price. But what you are actually doing is increasing the supply of carrots. So incentives and results are two different things and we shouldn't conflate the two.

I assume by "incentives", you mean that they'd manipulate the law to limit other suppliers. I'm sure that happens, but as a landlord you don't have to do that. And being a landlord (who isn't manipulating the law) doesn't make the problem any worse.

Criticism should be directed at the real problems. Those are a mix of law and culture and just inertia.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#88

Post by enord »

nitrogen wrote: post #43
TulliusCicero wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Owning as the only housing model doesn’t make sense. There’s plenty of reasons someone might prefer to rent instead, most of them having to do with not being in a position to put down roots. Which necessitates some kind of landlord.

Owning shares that could be transferred from house to house would make a lot more sense than renting.

Money. The shares you are talking about already exist, and they're called "money". Of course, the relative value of shares wrt. the house will fluctuate over time and you'd have to account for this when transferring between houses, except this is calculated for you by the market when you just use money.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#89

Post by dzhiurgis »

VRay wrote: post #84

People are fighting the wrong fight when they attack this guy (or attack the people attacking this guy, for that matter) It isn't SF Bay Bros'/foreigners'/companies' fault that houses are too expensive. It's because of strict zoning laws and a lack of building enough housing to match supply with demand[1]. Demand keeps going up way faster than supply, nationwide, and we're all feeling the squeeze [1]: A great example…

Tokyo is somewhat good example, but brushes off things that houses are much smaller and IIRC you don’t own land below it.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#90

Post by gonzo41 »

VRay wrote: post #84

People are fighting the wrong fight when they attack this guy (or attack the people attacking this guy, for that matter) It isn't SF Bay Bros'/foreigners'/companies' fault that houses are too expensive. It's because of strict zoning laws and a lack of building enough housing to match supply with demand[1]. Demand keeps going up way faster than supply, nationwide, and we're all feeling the squeeze [1]: A great example…

Out of curiosity, how big is a 3 bedroom apartment in Japan?
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