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The housing market needs more condos

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Re: The housing market needs more condos

#141

Post by everforward »

staticman2 wrote: post #120
everforward wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know why you wouldn't desire rules about noise if your home is attached to another home where loud neighbors would bother you. The level and type of noise that reaches nuisance levels is highly subjective, which leads to conflict between neighbors. You also have no control over your neighbors, so you might be able to practice your guitar for a decade and then suddenly your neighbors move and the new ones do…

Depending on state law and the requirements of the condo bylaws major changes in the condo rules in many projects require a supermajority of residents to vote in favor of such a change, so rule changes aren't necessarily something that can be easily or arbitrarily changed for important aspects of the project.

Yeah, but then it's on me to run a counter-campaign to preserve rights that I already have.

I get the reasons why those processes exist, especially for condos, but it's just not for me. I grew up in a rural area, so my idea of ownership is probably tainted by space being a non-factor and enforcement of any kind of laws, much less non-governmental ones, being sparse.

I'm hanging on to hope that remote work will become a major factor in the job market so that I can move back to the country without having to resort to the rural IT job market.

Re: The housing market needs more condos

#142

Post by thisrobot »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #66
thisrobot wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Seattle there are a ton for town homes being built, split lot and connected, most without any hoa. When they need work I bet you’ll see a lot of neighbors suing neighbors to fix and replace shared elements. I would never move into shared living space that didn’t have some sort of hoa to manage any the shared space.

As someone with an interest in the Seattle market, I'm wondering if one should consider Mercer Island preferable to Seattle to rent or purchase a residence. Do you have any insight?

Very different places. Lived downtown for 15 years. Never been to Mercer island as it pretty much only residential and hard to access. Those can be good or bad depending on the person.

Re: The housing market needs more condos

#143

Post by Wonnk13 »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #131
Wonnk13 wrote: post #46

I'm in the process of moving to Boston and it's utter insanity. Housing here is like something out of Kafka novel. Now I empathize with my friends who lived in SF pre-covid. Build, Build, Build!! I do think it's important now more than ever with remote work to build more duplex / 3 bedroom condos. I'm 33 and I have no desire to move out to the burbs, but marrying and starting a family in a 2 bedroom condo isn't total…

> starting a family in a 2 bedroom condo isn't totally appealing to me. I think the main issue is not the condo itself but where the condo is. From my experience living in an apartment but with walkable area around me and several large parks within walking distance felt very much equivalent in life quality than now living in a house with a garden. If anything large park areas are usually a lot more interesting for ki…

completely agree!!

Re: The housing market needs more condos

#144

Post by trinovantes »

pydry wrote: post #134
trinovantes wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free market is simply reacting to the artificial scarcity caused by zoning laws, which is the exact opposite of a free market Make it legal to build more supply then speculation will move onto other assets

The scarcity is driven by land being untaxed. There is very little cost any more to treating property as a bitcoin-like store of wealth. This is partly why there 1.5 million empty homes - 3x the number of homeless. China has a similar problem which is why it has ghost cities - thats where the hoarding instinct channeled wealth. Zoning laws are a red herring. They're the worst enemy of the property developer building…

> 1.5 million empty homes

Where? Source? If you were talking about the recent article about empty Canadian empty homes, it was already debunked since it includes cottages, student rentals, and unsold homes on the market.

It's also illogical an investor would leave empty homes unrented for prolonged period of time if rent could be collected.

> China has a similar problem which is why it has ghost cities - thats where the hoarding instinct channeled wealth.

Real estate in China is only reliable asset to invest in. The government also strongly encourages real estate as majority of public revenue comes from land transfer tax.

Nobody invests in the stockmarket unless they are high up in the CCP since they can literally destroy entire industries without oversight i.e. recent education/tech stocks losing their entire valuation overnight

> Zoning laws are a red herring. They're the worst enemy of the property developer building yet more luxury condos to be shoved into a hedge fund's real estate portfolio but they dont address the underlying cause of not enough property.

An investor trying to artificially pump up the price of an easily replaceable commodity will eventually will eventually run out of liquidity and everything will self correct. Thanks to zoning laws, the rate of new construction fails to meet demand. Even now, the demand for 1br condos are still unmet and why it's the only thing that gets built whenever developers win permits for dense non-SFH construction.

It's almost as if after you waste a lot of time and money fighting NIMBYs you'd want to build whatever provides the highest profit margins.

Without zoning laws, eventually the 1br demand will taper out and developers will need to build other unmet demands like 3br low rises to stay in business.

Re: The housing market needs more condos

#145

Post by jjav »

massysett wrote: post #25
Victerius wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> condos don't see similar appreciation, get hit harder in downturns and are one of the last types of properties to recover in value afterwards. This is fine. I don't buy a condo with the hope of recouping my money. I buy a condo to have a roof over my head. I couldn't care less if my condo loses 80% of its value. It would lower my property tax bill in fact. I don't expect a ROI > 0 for the furniture either. For my r…

If all you want is a roof over your head, why not rent? It's less risky. You may well find yourself caring if your condo loses 80% of its value if you need to sell it and you can't repay the loan.

> If all you want is a roof over your head, why not rent? It's less risky.

Renting is far more risky. You never know when and how much it will increase every year.

If you buy something (condo, or house) you now know what your "rent" will be for the next 30 years, it's never going up.

Re: The housing market needs more condos

#146

Post by jjav »

nicbou wrote: post #63
oldsecondhand wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because rent would hurt you really bad when you're pensioner.

The alternative is to tie up a significant amount of money into a home. In Germany, ~12% of the purchase price is lost to fees. A lot more is lost to interest. Some more is lost to things that are normally included in your rent. Oh and you need to pay for maintenance. You need to take care of maintenance. To illustrate my point, most German landlords fail to beat inflation. Some 20% are losing money. The homeowners I…

> Home ownership is also throwing a lot of money away

It doesn't matter how much overhead it has in a vacuum. What matters is how much goes to overhead when compared to renting, which is the only other choice (other than being homeless).

Re: The housing market needs more condos

#147

Post by jjav »

tdeck wrote: post #24

The housing market also needs more row houses. Those have fewer of the disadvantages of condos but unfortunately they're illegal to build in most (almost all?) parts of the US.

> The housing market also needs more row houses. Those have fewer of the disadvantages of condos but unfortunately they're illegal to build in most (almost all?) parts of the US.

Row houses? You mean townhouses? That's the same thing as condos (shared structure, HOAs), with all the drawbacks.

Nothing illegal about them, tons and tons of those are being built in the bay area.

Re: The housing market needs more condos

#148

Post by whimsicalism »

notfromhere wrote: post #137
sidlls wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost nobody, having had the pleasure of living in even a modest SFH, would prefer to be packed in like sardines the way modern high-rise buildings do. It's possible to make high density housing that doesn't feel like that, but it's not as profitable so developers don't. That's why the vast majority of high-rise condos are one and two bedroom shoeboxes instead of spacious three (or more) bedroom homes. We won't get…

You could just do a lot of 4-5 story buildings like in Paris. Building up too high has its downsides because it requires more space on the ground, plus a good percentage of space (30-40%) in a high-rise isn't actually usable living space. Most places don't need high-rise condos everywhere when low-rise condos in a dense neighborhood orientation would work out great.

Per a given unit of land, building up obviously has tons more living space than a single family home.

Re: The housing market needs more condos

#149

Post by notfromhere »

whimsicalism wrote: post #148
notfromhere wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just do a lot of 4-5 story buildings like in Paris. Building up too high has its downsides because it requires more space on the ground, plus a good percentage of space (30-40%) in a high-rise isn't actually usable living space. Most places don't need high-rise condos everywhere when low-rise condos in a dense neighborhood orientation would work out great.

Per a given unit of land, building up obviously has tons more living space than a single family home.

To build up you also have to build out horizontally. Mega towers with buildings aren't always the most efficient use of space.

Re: The housing market needs more condos

#150

Post by aaomidi »

pydry wrote: post #127
aaomidi wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China just builds out entire cities years before they're necessary.

It's not a deliberate policy. There's precious little else to put your money in so the Chinese end up using property as a savings account. Developers will often skimp on construction quality as a result, since they know that nobody will actually be living in them.

You seem to have read the western propaganda that has misrepresented the situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-occupied_developments_in...
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