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The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

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Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#161

Post by skybrian »

kareemm wrote: post #147
phnofive wrote: post #71

> A property that has four or fewer apartments is treated the same as a single family home for lending purposes. But five or more units requires a commercial loan. So we created a pro forma and told the bank we were investors looking to be slumlords and this building would cash flow. This is not a difference of perspective - home loans involve significantly more consumer protections than commercial ones; had things g…

What issues would they have had other than not paying $900/m that would have caused the bank to foreclose? Even a decade ago $900/m wasn’t a lot of money for rent in a major urban metro.

One risk might be some kind of legal dispute with the other partners, if they don't get along as expected? Or maybe some devastating expense.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#162

Post by jfengel »

bradlys wrote: post #151
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…

Main thing I see people attacking this guy over is the “I did it and so can you” mentality more than anything. It’s survivorship bias at its strongest. No different than the FIRE post trending here as well. Dude literally saw his NW double in a year and income go up 50% cause of stock appreciation. Along with incredible starting salary and overall close to top tier comp the entire way - and no kids or what not. I thi…

HN is part of a Silicon Valley venture capital incubator. It exists to be capitalism fetish porn.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#163

Post by AYBABTME »

rekabis wrote: post #10
fideloper wrote: post #5

> 5) You don’t need as much house as you’ve been lead to believe. Instead of trading up for a larger fancier house with more debt as you age, consider living simply and buying additional homes for diversified income. IMO (in the process of doing this myself), this is the most important point

> 5) You don’t need as much house as you’ve been lead to believe. For living arrangements, you are mostly correct. I can exist very comfortably in about 1,000ft². Heck, even 800ft² would be comfy and cosy. My problem involves my hobbies and domestic activities: I need a 200ft² cool room for the enormous amounts of fruits and vegetables I harvest every year, canning all that shit needs a 150ft² summer kitchen so I don…

And here I was thinking 950sqft was going to be cavernous for my family and my hobbies. We're currently in 750sqft and that's fine, in the Oakland/Berkeley area.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#164

Post by AYBABTME »

onion2k wrote: post #117
strken wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, I'm suggesting that wants and needs are a sliding scale with no clear dividing line except subsistence, and that it's therefore a bad idea to argue for lowering your standard of living to only what you strictly need. This is pretty obvious if you don't take a deliberately uncharitable perspective on what I wrote.

Anyone who thinks the privacy to sleep in your own bedroom and the luxury to have a second kitchen to use for canning fruit because it'd make using your first kitchen a little harder are two points on the same scale is just plain wrong. They aren't. One is a point on the scale of "things you need for basic human dignity", and the other is a point on the scale of "amusing shit deluded rich people think is normal." Tho…

A lot of people with good life outlooks and plenty of dignity have their entire family sleeping in the same bedroom. Your "basic human needs" are actually on a scale that isn't "basic" or "need" at all. I've spent 2y in such a setting, my wife grew up like that. Probably more than half of the planet lives like that.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#165

Post by refurb »

BirdieNZ wrote: post #132
refurb wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drive up the rent? “We are renting to willing tenants at the fair market price.” Landlord’s cant “drive up the rent” any more than employees can be unfairly paid too much.

Land rent works very differently than most other markets because land is of limited supply. "Fair market price" is determined by what people who live in an area can afford to pay, rather than primarily supply and demand. Add to that restrictive zoning laws and you end up with a situation where most landlords are extracting significant economic rents from their tenants without needing to provide any extra service or q…

I don’t disagree that zoning impacts prices, but it’s still “fair market price”, no?

I choose to move to SF knowing that rents were absurd compared to other cities I could have moved to. But I choose to roll the dice on SF being the better choice.

I get it that people who grew up in SF face a different choice - leave or not. But it’s still a choice for them.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#166

Post by refurb »

causality0 wrote: post #130
refurb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe sin is inheritable and I didn’t steal land from anyone, I was just born into a system that I’m doing my best to take part in.

The sin isn't heritable but land, like artifacts in the British Museum, doesn't stop being stolen because we've had it a long time or traded it amongst ourselves. I'm not advocating anything radical; I'm just saying it's reasonable to be a little uncomfortable about it sometimes.

That’s entirely a judgement call. I wouldn’t assume everyone feels that way.

The people my ancestors stole the land from, stole it from another indigenous tribe. Go back far enough and everyone is living on stolen land.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#167

Post by strken »

onion2k wrote: post #140
strken wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you're creating a scale of things you believe everyone ought to have and calling it "needs". If you're defining need in such a subjective way, then telling someone else to divide their life up by what they need vs what they want is telling them to live their life with only the luxuries they're unwilling to compromise on. That's a great way to live and I approve of it, but I remain steadfastly convinced…

I remain steadfastly convinced that it's good for humans to have some unnecessary luxuries. It'd be amazing if everyone had things they don't need. I'd love to live in a world where everyone had what they need and more . That's a no brainer. The problem is that you're saying "the luxuries they're unwilling to compromise on" should be considered needs because some entitled rich idiot isn't able to accept that they cou…

All of those things I listed are things I've either done, or that someone I know has done. Arguing that you need windows or a private room is ridiculous. You do not need them, though they're a reasonable want that nearly everyone has. Not having a private room to sleep in didn't kill me, it doesn't kill the billions of people who do it, and it wouldn't kill you.

The broader point here is that whittling away everything nice about your life to be "economically efficient" (as per the original comment I replied to) is a terrible idea unless you've got no alternative. People should have nice things, like windows and kitchens, and they should have better reasons than economic efficiency for giving them up. I don't think you or I disagree on this.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#168

Post by halpert »

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…

I've looked into moving to Japan. My family has a house in Setagaya, which had severely distorted what I thought Tokyo living to be. It turns out, a typical one bedroom apartment is like 20 sq meters.

Separate from that, I don't believe zoning has anything to do with housing shortages. Housing has "induced demand" similar to traffic. You can look at heavy traffic over a bridge and think, "if only we had another bridge, that would alleviate the traffic." But it turns out, when you do that, more people end up using both bridges and traffic becomes as bad as it was before. Housing is similar. If you build more houses, even more people want them. Look at places like NYC, which has extremely dense housing. It's still expensive.

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#169

Post by bluGill »

chaostheory wrote: post #109
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who rent also have voting rights for electing local governments in many places in the world.

True, but they still don’t have as much influence on local government as much as more affluent residents. The prime example would be Palo Alto. It’s the NIMBY capital of the world. Even Stanford University has trouble with development on land that they own.

That is mostly their fault for not voting (renters are less likely go vote and thus don't matter). Also their fault for not realizing property tax that the landlord pays comes from rent or lack of maintenance (complex because supply and demand sets rent prices, so tax is a second order effect)

Re: The carpetbagger’s guide to home ownership

#170

Post by HarryHirsch »

refurb wrote: post #165
BirdieNZ wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land rent works very differently than most other markets because land is of limited supply. "Fair market price" is determined by what people who live in an area can afford to pay, rather than primarily supply and demand. Add to that restrictive zoning laws and you end up with a situation where most landlords are extracting significant economic rents from their tenants without needing to provide any extra service or q…

I don’t disagree that zoning impacts prices, but it’s still “fair market price”, no? I choose to move to SF knowing that rents were absurd compared to other cities I could have moved to. But I choose to roll the dice on SF being the better choice. I get it that people who grew up in SF face a different choice - leave or not. But it’s still a choice for them.

Established landlords have friends on the local council, and can determine who gets a building permit. Prices are set by the two or three biggest players, who all know each other. That stuff happens all the time.
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