Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cbsnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 768 posts

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

#651

Post by KptMarchewa »

mschuster91 wrote: post #636
jillesvangurp wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing natural about zoning restrictions. Those are designed to keep people out. Especially working class people. They get to live very far away from where their services are needed in some extreme cases. Fix the policy and house prices will drop. That creates a new problem of course for those who then end up with a Mortage that is under water. That's the real reason the policy does not get fixed.

Zoning restrictions make sense - without them, rabid capitalism takes over, and the only thing that matters is extracting the maximum profit out of any given piece of land. That in turn means no green anymore, ugly AF buildings (especially high-rises), a severe issue with traffic because public transport usually isn't even in the picture and the existing roads can't take up the traffic resulting from the newer densit…

>I'd rather like if people can move towards rural areas where possible.

That's counterproductive. Infrastructure for rural areas costs way, way more.

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

#652

Post by trgn »

marvin wrote: post #448
zamfi wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> USA was inoculated for a very long time, because horizontal expansion over cheap land allowed for expansion of supply. That era is over. True. > Car and highway technology is no longer adequate to expand cheaply and still remain within viable commuting distance. False. The US has mind-boggling amounts of land available. What's changed is the ability and desire to build on it. Used to be, the government would pay yo…

> What makes building housing expensive is policy, not a lack of "cheap land". I am flummoxed every time the discussion of housing prices shows up. Seems like 95% of everyone who comments is completely clueless to the most basic aspects of it. In the vast majority of Western regions, high home prices are caused by a deliberate decision not to allow building enough homes to match demand, in the places where people wan…

I agree with current zoning and permitting is harmful. I can't wait for a better urban life here, with services and amenities in proximity, which more homes closer together would enable. I don't think it will meaningfully reduce cost of home ownership. Infill development is more expensive, and the dynamics at play (if I'm correct) are moving to a European model. Generally pointing in a direction of demand having really high ceilings(the estates of those dead boomers are really going to help with that, the biggest wealth transfer in history is only just starting), and supply will be incredibly responsive to changing conditions, since a home is a claim to a location, sellers will only sell when they can buy again into the existing market.

It's very possible I'm wrong. We'll see what the rate hikes will do to home prices in the next 2-4 years, and already we're seeing relaxing of zoning in many metros, so we'll see the effect of that in 5-10.

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

#653

Post by thebean11 »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #605
southerntofu wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The current policy is to drive up housing prices by creating completely artificial scarcity. This is true but not in the way that you mean. As you said there is no shortage of space. But it's important to point out that on a global scale there is no housing shortage either. Vacant dwellings outnumber homeless people by far in most industrialized countries where homelessness is rampant (for example: 3 million empty…

"This is true but not in the way that you mean. As you said there is no shortage of space. But it's important to point out that on a global scale there is no housing shortage either. Vacant dwellings outnumber homeless people by far in most industrialized countries where homelessness is rampant (for example: 3 million empty dwellings here in France)." I always wonder about public transportation. It never really took…

The housing away from the city still needs to be pretty dense, otherwise you're building a ton of infrastructure to transport few people (or people need to drive / take the bus to the train station which isn't the end of the world).

> I can see residents downtown paying the most taxes being against it though - all it does for them in personal terms is erode their power.

It could also help subsidize their taxes to some extent since commuters are occupying offices and spending money in the city without occupying housing. Depends how things are set up. I don't think the people living in Manhattan resent people commuting from Jersey or Queens for work.

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

#654

Post by carapace »

kapuasuite wrote: post #571
southerntofu wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The current policy is to drive up housing prices by creating completely artificial scarcity. This is true but not in the way that you mean. As you said there is no shortage of space. But it's important to point out that on a global scale there is no housing shortage either. Vacant dwellings outnumber homeless people by far in most industrialized countries where homelessness is rampant (for example: 3 million empty…

The problem is, one, that those vacant homes are not necessarily in places people live or want to live (unless we’re shipping homeless people off to empty homes), and two, that homeless people aren’t the only ones in need of housing - there are far more people living in overcrowded housing, or who are unable to move out of their parents’ house, or can’t afford to live without roommates, than there are vacant homes. T…

Anecdote: I live in Park Merced:

> Parkmerced is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, designed by architects Leonard Schultze and Thomas Dolliver Church in the early 1940s. Parkmerced is the second-largest single-owner neighborhood of apartment blocks west of the Mississippi River after Park La Brea in Los Angeles. It was a planned neighborhood of high-rise apartment towers and low-rise garden apartments in southwestern San Francisco for middle-income tenants. It contains 3,221 residences (after sale of five blocks to San Francisco State University (SFSU)) and over 9,000 residents, and is one of four remaining privately owned large-scale garden apartment complexes in the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Merced

On my block, just on my street, there are over a dozen empty garden apartments, 2- and 3-bedrooms, that have been empty since (more-or-less) the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns. Folks started leaving and no one has moved back in. Next to my house there are three empty apt.'s to the left, one to the right, and four across the street.

The owners haven't lowered rents though.

The theory is that they would rather keep the rents high and the apartments empty than lower the rents because if they do that it affects their ability to raise rents later on (rent control is the only way I afford to still live here. For better or worse my family pays less than half the market rate. However, as I am describing, the market rate is not "clearing the demand" or whatever the economic jargon would be. No one is renting at "market" rate right now.) The other problem is that rents going down affect the valuation of the property, something like that. IANAEconomist.

Anyway... There are literally hundreds of perfectly fine apartments ready to rent here in Park Merced, with the M line light rail going directly to downtown SF in about 20-30 minutes and a BART station in walking distance.

- - - -

Get this.

Some folks moved in to the place across the street on Monday, but then Wednesday the staff was here kicking them out: they were squatters. I spoke to one of the staff who told me that this was a group of people who were breaking in and squatting in units all over the property, that they had changed the locks on the house they tried to squat in, and that he had called the police, who asked if anyone was being violent (no) and then still hadn't shown up an hour later! They never did show up. The squatters moved all their stuff and their two dogs back into their vehicles and left.

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

#655

Post by trgn »

brnaftr361 wrote: post #476
MichaelBurge wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it would very quickly turn into tribute to the local warlord.

That was, at least the common narrative goes, the fundamental basis for most if not all states. Mutual defense. And it's hardly any different today. There have been many cases of non-state societies who did organize their own protections. But to try and connect the dots with such factions (many of which are still functioning today) and the modern man is an error. We're talking societies with scribal and priestly clas…

> 99% of daily life proceeds under conditions of total anarchy, authority and security are entirely illusory and we pay incredible costs to maintain those illusions

Those costs are totally worth it. I'd rather live in a nation with liberal democracy and property laws, than whatever more "pure" or original model you seem to have in mind.

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

#656

Post by aeroplanetext »

nemo44x wrote: post #60
pm90 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if there are buyers, competition, and houses are continuing to move quickly, They’re not though. Thats the whole problem. Asset bubbles can inflate the paper value and there might still be some trading activity. But if nobody can actually buy the asset, it’s pretty much useless.

People are buying them though. I think the problem is people think they’re richer than they are and don’t want to live in the places their income and wealth suggest they should. Previous generations handled this better.

People are very opposed to the idea that they can’t buy a house where they grew up, or in an area they feel is comparable. Which I suppose I can understand.

But to your point — things change, you aren’t rich enough, it sucks, get over it.

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

#657

Post by KptMarchewa »

pj_mukh wrote: post #637
mschuster91 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s no need to micromanage tenant-landlord relationships or setup governmental panels on who historically deserves to live where, if the government can just make sure there is an oversupply of decent housing at all affordability levels. The problem is, that is outright impossible in urban areas where almost all space is already built out, not to mention it is immensely wasteful (8% of all CO2 emissions is cause…

Having had lived in urban areas all my life, American urban cities are criminally under built. There is sooo much room for growth (note room doesn’t mean land, it means airspace). If you have a pastoralist dream, feel free to build rural housing units. But for the government to spread out the country and then try to connect it using extractive transportation technologies (gas, batteries etc) just seems like roundabou…

Land too. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/life/article/30-000-people-...

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

#658

Post by quesera »

turtledove wrote: post #617
UncleMeat wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should enforce this with the law. Right now, landlords raise rents anyway. I've never once heard of a landlord lowering the rent once they finish paying their mortgage, even though their expenses are now far lower.

Let me be the first then. I've been a landlord for a decade. I've paid back each and every one of my tenants the rent I collected in surplus to costs. Adjusted upwards to reflect the appreciation of the unit. I now rent at cost, choosing to believe that it's better to help the people who live with me establish themselves and build financial safety.

> I now rent at cost

Be very careful. If you are in the US, you might want to speak to a tax attorney.

The IRS treats property rented out at less than fair market value as a personal residence.

Your tenants may have to treat the difference as income, and you are not eligible for many of the usual deductions for investment property.

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

#659

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

endisneigh wrote: post #612
diordiderot wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landlords don't maintain the bloody house. They use tenant money to pay someone else to do it

Yes, they use the money in order to maintain the house. Furthermore owner-occupancy is a thing, where the landlord does some maintenance themselves. However no matter what, no landlord can maintain all aspects of the house alone. You think a single person can be a master of all trades and have all equipment on hand all of the time in an apartment, for instance? Why does it even matter if someone pays others to mainta…

I believe the argument would be that the tenant might be empowered to pay for their own maintenance if they're not paying rent to a landlord.

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

#660

Post by KptMarchewa »

refurb wrote: post #620
turtledove wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Because the current system leads to poverty, inequity, homelessness, waste, inefficiency, etc. And to be clear, I've proposed a system of adjusted incentives followed by but not necessarily required to be followed by a more planned system.

No doubt you'll need more "fixes" before you're done. It's like rent control in SF or public housing in Singapore. Design a new system and you'll create loopholes to be exploited. Fix those and new loopholes are created. And on and on. Easier to just remove government restrictions to supply and build until prices come down.

>public housing in Singapore

Which is a huge success.

Post reply on HN