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Homes in 97% of U.S. cities are overvalued, Moody's says

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Re: Homes in 97% of U.S. cities are overvalued, Moody's says

#591

Post by UncleMeat »

glerk wrote: post #481
turtledove wrote: post #345

The sooner we collectively decide that housing shouldn't be a market, the better. We all need it, and we should figure out mechanisms to make it available to all. Practically that means paying to build and maintain housing stocks, changing tax incentives so developers are incentivized to build more housing and less luxury housing, charging a premium for unused land in desirable areas (parking lots don't house people)…

Housing shouldn't be a market? Then how would housing be allocated? The state builds and gives housing to everyone? Maybe you should take a trip to Eastern Europe one of these days to see the final result of what you're advocating. Pros: everyone is given an apartment to live in. Cons: your city's skyline looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/5X1sIeP.jpg "We collectively decide" just means you decide for me. You think…

Is avoiding "skyline is ugly" really worth the enormous cost to society when so many people can barely afford housing? Is that belief system not worth criticism?

Re: Homes in 97% of U.S. cities are overvalued, Moody's says

#592

Post by twirlock »

turtledove wrote: post #345

The sooner we collectively decide that housing shouldn't be a market, the better. We all need it, and we should figure out mechanisms to make it available to all. Practically that means paying to build and maintain housing stocks, changing tax incentives so developers are incentivized to build more housing and less luxury housing, charging a premium for unused land in desirable areas (parking lots don't house people)…

No post body was provided.

Re: Homes in 97% of U.S. cities are overvalued, Moody's says

#593

Post by UncleMeat »

b112 wrote: post #580
turtledove wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surface parking lots take a huge volume of space that could be used to house tens or hundreds of families. It has nothing to do with "cars bad", and everything to do with "why are we letting all this precious resource go so poorly utilized?"

This is the problem. You have an agenda (cars are unimportant / should be banned), therefore, you cite parking lots as "poorly utilized". You also act as if there is a land shortage. There is not, with exceptions stated above.

No. The problem is "space is being used inefficiently." The reason to get rid of enormous surface parking lots is to build more efficiently, not to kill cars.

Re: Homes in 97% of U.S. cities are overvalued, Moody's says

#594

Post by UncleMeat »

carom wrote: post #517
trasz wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the house for rent is an investment, it’s obvious who should be taking the loss: the investor.

If you are passing laws to dictate what someone does with their property, then society should cover the losses. If they are free to do as they wish with their property then the landlord can cover losses. You're suggesting we privatize the costs of a social problem. This also assumes good faith on behalf of the renters.

Why? If we pass a law dictating that chemical companies have to pay for cancer patients that developed the disease because of their use of those company's products, does the state cover the losses of the people who hold stock in those companies? No.

Landlords always say that they should be compensated for the risk of homeownership. If that's true, then some landlords need to lose money.

Re: Homes in 97% of U.S. cities are overvalued, Moody's says

#595

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

midhhhthrow wrote: post #318
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t know how it is in most of Europe, but I think that, in the UK, you don’t actually own the land your house sits on; Lord Such-and-Such owns it, and collects rent from you. In the US, we own the land, and that is usually the real value. I’m the proud owner of a 0.125-acre New York postage stamp. It’s in a fairly affluent area, so is fairly valuable. In Wyoming, they’d laugh at it. I think Japan is similar.

You don’t really own it. That’s just a legal construct. If you have to pay rent to the government (property taxes) to “keep” it then you don’t really own it

In Virginia, you need to pay taxes for your car (at least, you used to. Not sure if they still do). This was different from registration, and applied, even if your car is sitting in your driveway without plates.

I think they also used to charge tax for significant-value property, like computers.

Re: Homes in 97% of U.S. cities are overvalued, Moody's says

#596

Post by pjmorris »

djbusby wrote: post #145
pjmorris wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a more concrete measure of value: house prices related to income. Historically (Robert Shiller has a chart for the US going back to 1890) house prices (and mortgages and rents) have maintained a stable relationship with income. Occasionally that relationship is strained but it has usually fallen back in line. One exception to this was the extraordinary, ongoing, support to the financial system post-20…

your comment is screaming for a link...is it this one? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA Case-Shiller Index?

The specific chart I picture was originally in a 2005 article in the NYT, but it is reproduced as the second chart on the Wikipedia page [0] for the Case-Shiller index. Note also that page's section on 'Key events and episodes.'

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case%E2%80%93Shiller_index

Re: Homes in 97% of U.S. cities are overvalued, Moody's says

#597

Post by tsss »

turtledove wrote: post #345

The sooner we collectively decide that housing shouldn't be a market, the better. We all need it, and we should figure out mechanisms to make it available to all. Practically that means paying to build and maintain housing stocks, changing tax incentives so developers are incentivized to build more housing and less luxury housing, charging a premium for unused land in desirable areas (parking lots don't house people)…

And how is that different from a market? All we have to do is tax land appropriately and remove NIMBY regulation that prevents higher density building. Over time the land tax will displace inefficient single family homes, parking spaces, etc where needed. A good way to celebrate the upcoming 150 year anniversary of the release and continued ignorance of the book that pioneered this policy.

Re: Homes in 97% of U.S. cities are overvalued, Moody's says

#598

Post by lumost »

frankbreetz wrote: post #96
lumost wrote: post #90

Yet another asset crash would annihilate whatever assets millennials have happened to acquire. This would leave the millennial generation largely asset free as they enter their 40s except for inheritance.

Wouldn't a housing market crash be good for most millennials? They can't afford housing and a real estate crash would change that.

Millennials have so far been a bi-modal generation in terms of economic outcomes. Effectively going through college debt birth lottery, and a career lottery.

If your a millennial who managed to get through the lottery and have assets, then you are likely heavy in housing and stocks. If assets crash, these individuals will lose out - but ultimately be at the same point as their peers who never accumulated assets.

It will add yet another economic catastrophe to the list, as people generally form businesses in their 40s and 50s we likely wont see much in the way of SMB formation.

Re: Homes in 97% of U.S. cities are overvalued, Moody's says

#599

Post by ehnto »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #464
turtledove wrote: post #345

The sooner we collectively decide that housing shouldn't be a market, the better. We all need it, and we should figure out mechanisms to make it available to all. Practically that means paying to build and maintain housing stocks, changing tax incentives so developers are incentivized to build more housing and less luxury housing, charging a premium for unused land in desirable areas (parking lots don't house people)…

The inevitable outcome of housing inflation and elimination of the middle class is slums: illegal housing. People will have to live somewhere. And when that becomes unaffordable they'll just improvise. This is not a technical problem but a policy problem. The solution is changing the policy. The current policy is to drive up housing prices by creating completely artificial scarcity. All the land is owned and earmarke…

The saying used to be that many think they are Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires, but I think at this point it's fair to say that many people think they are middle class when in fact, the middle class has been swept from underneath them and they are now more or less comfortably-poor. Public services, housing affordability, food availability, product quality, fair pay and benefits. Previously middle class people are struggling to mesh it all together into a middle-class life, the money isn't there and the availability and quality of products and services isn't there either.

I think that in order to protect it's ability to offer a first world living by it's communities, the US needs to fatten up it's middle class with better wages. There could be a number of ways to do that, but the basic goal is to get more money into the hands of the average American so they can spend it in the community and make the whole country better.

Re: Homes in 97% of U.S. cities are overvalued, Moody's says

#600

Post by teg4n_ »

ryanSrich wrote: post #238
teg4n_ wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20% return from Betterment? That’s hyperbole right? I have a betterment account and it’s nowhere close to that.

What are you getting? Are you looking at time weighted or money weighted? I just checked and I’m getting an average of 21.6% across 7 different portfolios on betterment (annualized, not cumulative).

The highest is 8.8 which is time-weighted cumulative, annualized is far worse at 2.2 for time weighted
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