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Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
141–150 of 764 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#142Rent seeking has never been considered ethical.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#143It's unstoppable. The big difference between today and hundreds of years ago is that it's not enough to have a roof over one's head. Few people farm the land to make a living. One must live close to employment, family, friends, community; ideally in a neighborhood with low crime, close to commerce, and with access to quality affordable education for one's children. Not every neighborhood or property is equally appeal…
> To seek otherwise would be to try to persuade businesses (through tax incentives etc.) to relocate to less-desirable areas, so that people will follow and invest with human capital.
I saw this in rural Austria, Im not austrian but it seems to have worked well. Many large industrial factories seemingly in thr middle of no where.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#14430 vacant homes for every 1 homeless person in the US and its just going to get worse.
Citation?
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#145Overseas investment in something so unproductive as housing is deeply problematic, yes
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#146Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
And what are we doing about CORPORATIONS buying up our neighborhoods? As far as I know, NOTHING.
"our" neighborhood implies that you own it - so if you owned something, and sold it, how can you complain that someone (or gasp, a corporation) is buying when you're selling?
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Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#148No, because governments' ability to procure it for the needy is a very separable problem. But let me play Devil's Advocate: agriculture, the foundation of the food supply, is one of the most commoditized markets that exist. Does this bother you too? Why not? If it's because food is generally a smaller part of income, highly responsive to market pressure to keep prices low in addition to some stabilizing subsidies fro…
Because you can make more food but god ain't making any more land.
We have plenty of land.
When I moved to Manhattan, I was shocked to see how many apartment buildings that are only a couple floors tall and don't have elevators. I assumed every building in Midtown would be at least 50 floors and house thousands of people.
Counting the office space, which is completely unnecessary when people can work from home, even the densest neighborhood of America's most populated city has tons of room. I would bet that we can fit 20 times more people in Manhattan if we got rid of the height limitation laws and converted all the offices to apartments.
On the other hand, when we consider the average suburb there is a ridiculous surplus of land. We could fit the entire world population into Texas if we used it more efficiently.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US housing market is regulated and subsidised…the American dream of owning a home is socialist…US mortgages are guaranteed by federal government.. this doesn’t happen in most other countries..
>the American dream of owning a home is socialist…US mortgages are guaranteed by federal government.. "socialism" =/= government intervention.
The government created the programs that gave massive tax breaks to the boomers who bought homes.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#150I definitely do. It's something that turns a basic necessity into a speculative asset, with a price distorted by the money poured into it. Airbnb is also a deeply harmful influence on housing prices. Imagine if we did the same thing with, say, water: privatized it and then "democratized" ownership of it. It's easy to get retail investors to buy things at inflated, speculative prices, so the price of water would go up…
>I definitely do. It's something that turns a basic necessity into a speculative asset, with a price distorted by the money poured into it
The 30 year mortgage is one of the greatest inventions in the history of mankind. Being able to swing hundreds of thousands of dollars of margin on a near-zero-down investment that requires nothing more than proof of income and has a manageable monthly payment is the single most powerful financial tool available to the vast majority of people.
That kind of leverage is only possible with the commodification and securitization of real estate. It’s not a perfect system, but it has led to intergenerational family wealth accumulation among the common population more than anything else before.