How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M • Hacker News Board

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#591

Post by galangalalgol » Sat, Mar 19, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

a1pulley wrote: post #210

ryandrake wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > It's honestly quite scary how I'm in the top 2% of income earners in my generation and yet I could barely afford to buy a small place > I live in Los Angeles, where a "small place in semi-desirable area" gets listed for 1.5M and goes for nearly 2M. I'm somewhere in the top 5% of earners in California, but that $2M 1950s tract housing would be >50% of my post-tax income. I think the obvious answer here is that peo…

To be fair, it's doable as a senior or staff engineer at a big company earning 300 to 500k/yr. I'm (lucky enough to be) in that range and qualified for a $1.5M loan. Combined with 500k for a down payment, you can see how those $2M houses are technically affordable. For now. Income data always lags reality by a couple of years: in my experience, a lot of people have a lot more money than you'd think. The winners of th…

I'm a senior staff engineer with 20+ years of c++ experience and I make less than 200k even after stocks and bonuses. But I live in a part of the US where that gets me an almost 4000 square foot home within walking distance to nightlife and a short bike to a downtown with highrises and art museums and orchestras and operas. The weather is horrible swinging over 115 degrees over the course of a year, but right now it's wonderful out. Redefine what semi-desirable means. Yes I'd love to walk out my back door and dig clams or pull in a haul of crabs to cook on the beach, but putting all of us on a coast won't work. Also with a couple of exceptions in the Pacific Northwest climate change will hit the coasts hard. Cramming us all into condos on those few stretches of protected beach is even less feasible. Mountains will be somewhat less impacted, ski resort areas will expand and continue their price growth. But everyone moving there isn't really any more feasible long term.

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#592

Post by giraffe_lady » Sat, Mar 19, 2022, 2:02 PM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #576

sobkas wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Landlords have chosen to enter an inherently adversarial relationship with the goal of profiting from the other party. > There isn't any reason for it to be adversarial, it's certainly not inherently so. Only if one or both sides want to make it adversarial. Landlords compete with their potential tenants for houses to buy. When landlord driven price increase, it prices out people from buying a home/flat, but they…

So you're saying that in a capitalistic society, people with capital do better? Colour me shocked. The landlord also takes on risk and responsibility here. Like any business, if they do a shitty job they go broke. If they do a good job, they make bank and expand their business.

No because you can't really decline to have a home if none of the options are good for you. If there are only shitty landlords then you'll be forced to choose a shitty landlord.

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#593

Post by bliteben » Sat, Mar 19, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

BucketsMcG wrote: post #567

tmp_anon_22 wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Single Family homes have the benefit of more autonomy where as building up means you're living on-top of your neighbor, its not binary but we should acknowledge the clear QoL tradeoffs of condensed living. Maybe its inevitable and necessary to force more people into condensed housing, maybe the societal benefits really outweigh the tradeoffs.

As far as I'm concerned the quality-of-life tradeoff heavily favours higher-density housing. I live in an apartment block and so does everybody else for miles around. Our building, like almost every other around here, tops out at seven storeys. It's very solidly constructed, so there's little to no noise from neighbours, not that they make much noise to begin with as they're a pretty considerate bunch. The downside t…

You might as well live in the matrix, you seem to live in an artificial world with no connection to nature. I myself desire to live on the edge of "civilization" as much as I can, I know this presents a conundrum in that I'm creating a market for destroying it, but this is a human condition as old as time.

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#594

Post by orangecat » Sat, Mar 19, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

qeternity wrote: post #566

ohgodplsno wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People not being able to own homes is not "healthy". Having to pay 50% of your salary to landlords is not "healthy". It is concentration of wealth, it is the very definition of precarity. Unless your hope is to see a collapse of societies, things go really bad when people can't afford fundamental needs.

You replied without understanding my comment. Let me pose the question back to you: if everyone can comfortably afford food, housing and basic necessities, what is going to cause population growth to level off? Your characterization of bad things happening is exactly my point - you’re just failing to understand that I’m saying that’s the healthy part.

if everyone can comfortably afford food, housing and basic necessities, what is going to cause population growth to level off?

This is exactly backwards; both across and within countries, richer people have fewer children.

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#595

Post by yardie » Sat, Mar 19, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #140

TimPC wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These laws are hard to get actually correct. The major problem is court delays. There is a very high bar for kicking someone out before they get their day in court about whether it is fair to do so. This seems eminently reasonable but there is also a severe shortage of judicial services that result in court dates over a year out to resolve such issues. In that year of time, it's quite possible for a tenant with maybe…

From what I've heard is a common thing for landlords to do is a "pay to vacate" where they show up at the door with $1k in cash if the tenant will just leave.

My ex got about $40k cash to vacate her rent-controlled studio. Because turning off the heat during winter, greasy trashbins in the hallway, and holes in the staircase weren't doing it. The building was mostly elderly NYers and she was one of the few millennials so waiting for her to die wasn't going to work either.

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#596

Post by bliteben » Sat, Mar 19, 2022, 2:47 PM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #427

3np wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is missing the point that land is a finite resource and homes aren't fungible. It doesn't help most Californians that more homes can be built in rural Arkansas.

Land is a finite resource but housing units are not. Once America gets over it’s love affair with single family homes, we could undercut most speculators by just building up.

Why can't the US just have less people with a higher standard of living? Why is "progress" always more. Why do we have to make everything worse by shifting the baseline (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline).

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#597

Post by flir » Sat, Mar 19, 2022, 3:01 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #552

xenadu02 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK that's not actually true. There are some crazy edge cases but for the most part if a tenant stops paying rent you can absolutely evict them in SF. Most of the horror stories from landlords are attempts to evict for reasons besides non-payment - which SF does make somewhat difficult.

You'd be surprised. SF Rent Board will always seek the solution that keeps the tenant in their home. So a tenant might stop paying rent, a few months later you get an eviction hearing, but then the tenant pays the rent this month and promises to pay the back rent . Your eviction has just been denied. Tenant falls back on rent again, but made a good faith effort to pay some of the back rent. Eviction denied. Finally,…

Honestly, that sounds great. The risk of being a rentier should be higher than the risk of an index tracker. A lot of our problems can be traced to the fact that bricks and mortar are seen as a better RoI than stocks and shares, and one way to fix that is to change the risk profile of being a landlord by increasing tenants' rights.

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#598

Post by newbamboo » Sat, Mar 19, 2022, 3:11 PM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #427

3np wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is missing the point that land is a finite resource and homes aren't fungible. It doesn't help most Californians that more homes can be built in rural Arkansas.

Land is a finite resource but housing units are not. Once America gets over it’s love affair with single family homes, we could undercut most speculators by just building up.

Nonesense. People are going homeless because they can’t pay 3k a month to rent a shitty studio. Low income housing cannot be produced for less. Boomers wanting to mow lawns is obviously, for clear thinking individuals, not even a factor.

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#599

Post by sobkas » Sat, Mar 19, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #589

sobkas wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you honestly believe being a landlord is such a slam dunk you should take out a mortgage, buy a property somewhere in United States (there are places as cheap as $50K) and rake in the cash. I'm sorry, but I am not sociopathic enough to profit from other people misfortune (not being able to to buy a roof over their heads). Not everything is about making as much money as you can squeeze from other people.

You don’t personally need to be. If it’s free money why hasn’t someone done it? Why are there houses sitting there vacant? I also disagree with the silly assertion that landlords are sociopaths would you rather people be homeless? If someone is unable to afford to buy a house what should they do? Also - are business owners sociopaths? Doctors? Farmers? Medical device makers?

> You don’t personally need to be. If it’s free money why hasn’t someone done it? Why are there houses sitting there vacant?

I have seen some articles that it starts happening there too. For example buying houses in Detroit, through web of shell firms and sitting on them like some kind of slumlord dragon.

>I also disagree with the silly assertion that landlords are sociopaths would you rather people be homeless? If someone is unable to afford to buy a house what should they do?

I'm sorry, if you are using your economical advantage to outbid people in house market and then propose this people a rent that is higher than mortage on same house? With bonus points for squeezing them on rent so they can't save money to buy their own house(with or without mortage). Then use all that money to buy even more houses? So even more people can't afford them? Yes that a sociopathic behavior. Also word slumlord exists for a reason.

>Also - are business owners sociopaths? Doctors? Farmers? Medical device makers? Are you trying to make argument for me?

Because under capitalism only function of business is to make money for shareholders(aka. owners, this include companies not publicly traded). It's as sociopathic as it can be. If your only goal is to make more money, you are not a good person. There are owners that don't do that, but in the end they will have more disadvantages when competing with ones that do. It involves breaking the law/shady behavior if you think you can get away with that. Leaving money on the table is a sure way to get yourself a competitor that will take it and use it against you.

Farmers: there are decent ones, but if they want to squeez as much money they can from animals/crops they have, they will do some horrific stuff. Just ask yourself why there are laws popping all over the US that make it illegal to film whats going on farms(including factory ones)

Doctors: there are decent ones, as always. But there are doctors that will just come by during medical procedures in, in-network hospitals as out of the network doctor and then slam patient with horrendous bill, just for being there(or helping in some small way). Shilling to pharma companies by prescribing/overprescribing their drugs? To have a fun trip to Hawaii/other perks? Dr. Wakefield, crooks that sell bleach as cure all drug, other scam artist in white gowns? Selling dewormer as a cure for anything but worms? As I said before there are decent doctors, but also a bad ones. It's only a problem if we allow them to do this stuff and don't take any actions to stop them.

Medical device makers: Have you read anything about EpiPen? P-value hacking? Pushing your do nothing failed drug as hope for sick people through FDA/etc.? This entities are businesses, their goal is to make money. Accidentally they can save some people, but it's not their goal. It's money. I have wrote some words about it earlier.

So sociopathy isn't who you are, it's what you do.

I'm not saying I'm a good person, I'm definitely not, but even I sometimes raise an eyebrow seeing things some people do.

Re: How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

#600

Post by ww_wpg » Sat, Mar 19, 2022, 3:32 PM UTC

3np wrote: post #401

paxys wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is if people start hoarding medicine then new companies can pop up and fill in the gap, or existing ones can increase production, making the whole thing pointless to do. Same goes for every other "necessary to life" product. Temporary disruptions will be handled by the market in the long term, and in the worst case government can step in and regulate. Housing is probably the only sector where all the laws and r…

This is missing the point that land is a finite resource and homes aren't fungible. It doesn't help most Californians that more homes can be built in rural Arkansas.

The legal restrictions on where you can build a new home are more of a problem in California than in rural Arkansas so your response doesn't address OP's point.