Land is for renters house is for renters. Basically a deeply ingrained class conflict despite all the irrelevant comments here confusing and obscuring some people are intended to be poor renters.
Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
261–270 of 764 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's amazing how many people in government globally refuse to understand this. The UK government has just been talking about inheritable 50 year mortgages. No one wants to build more housing. I think it might help people understand to put it in terms like this: there are 100 housing units out there and 150 people. How do we solve the problem?
Yeah. You just have to build more. Simple as that. I was talking to a NIMBY and converted her to YIMBY by relating to her that in Santiago anybody builds whatever the fuck wherever the fuck, zoning be damned basically, and that leads to rent being like $150 a month. For real, you get what you get in SF for $4000 a month for ah...$400 a month in Santiago. And the minimum is very low. Sometimes $100.
The NIMBYs are usually the ones owning the property and possibly charging $4k/month. They might say publicly how they want affordable housing but behind the scenes they’ll always vote against it.
Case in point Marc Andressen’s family as we discussed recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32350657
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's amazing how many people in government globally refuse to understand this. The UK government has just been talking about inheritable 50 year mortgages. No one wants to build more housing. I think it might help people understand to put it in terms like this: there are 100 housing units out there and 150 people. How do we solve the problem?
Land is an asset. It needs to be a liability. Virtually every other problem is either a distraction or an indirect consequence (e.g. NIMBYs, too much luxury housing) of this core issue.
Can you explain how making housing even more costly houses the extra 50 people?
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#264It's a natural first impulse, but it's wrong. What is the correct impulse is to be concerned about how lopsided most cities zoning is towards single family, as that is what is driving the market power that makes real estate profitable as a financial asset. If most of a city was zoned to allow up to multi residential highrises rather than most of a city being zoned for single family it would cut the appreciation abili…
> because city governments zoned everything wrong for the actual demand
This is the core problem. Commoditization, or rather, people cornering the market is secondary.
City government is doing this because it is elected by those who own single family units. This is self-stabilizing.
If the majority would live in multi residential highrises, there wouldn't be an incentive to artificially create scarcity. Instead, there would be an incentive to drop housing costs even further by increasing supply.
The problem is that nobody wants to invest in a city with a falling housing market. There needs to be some profit sharing between those who build the housing and those who own the real estate in the city center whose value increases when the city grows.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
If companies can't own houses, and people can't own more than their primary residence, where should renters live?
People can own multiple residencies, they just can't sell them at more than 3-5% profit. Corporations can't own residencial buildings if they are single family units but for multi-family properties, so long as it is being offered as rent/lease/purchase that should of course be allowed. I was focusing more on single family units but you are right to highlight that.
Plenty of people rent single family units.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's amazing how many people in government globally refuse to understand this. The UK government has just been talking about inheritable 50 year mortgages. No one wants to build more housing. I think it might help people understand to put it in terms like this: there are 100 housing units out there and 150 people. How do we solve the problem?
Yes, a ton of new homes need to be built, but also a lot of the existing homes are empty. The US has a vacancy rate of somewhere near 10%.
The US is a very big place, with lots of land that isn't in high demand. What's the vacancy rate in NYC or similar?
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You do not have a basic human right to the labor of the people who build and maintain these houses. But you should have the right to live under a government who provide this for you. It's like saying that you don't have a basic human right to have that doctor help you – no you don't, but you do have a right to have a doctor help you. Safe housing is a human right, as is healthcare, as is food and water, because the…
Why do you have a right to having a doctor help you? What if he doesn’t want to help you? Can the government force him to?
Doctors voluntarily take an oath to that effect. No government needed. Perhaps we need a, “Hestian” oath for home builders.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#268I 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…
> Airbnb is also a deeply harmful influence on housing prices.
It's simply unimaginable what it's done in cities across Europe too. I lived in a few places like Barcelona, Dublin and Berlin, and it's pretty much destroyed any rental opportunities for young people and artists. I'm all for regulation, including taxing them to make longer term rentals more profitable for owners.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#269>a basic human right You do not have a basic human right to the labor of the people who build and maintain these houses. This is where this entire discussion collapses for me. Yes, I agree there needs to be more access to housing. And it’s frustrating to me that our government is too inept to simply provide it. For instance: we have committed to about 45 Billion to Ukraine. At a cost of $100k/unit (achievable at scal…
> You do not have a basic human right to the labor of the people who build and maintain these houses.
Correct! However, a significant portion of housing costs is not due to the stuff that's built on them -- something produced by labor -- but by the LAND that lies underneath it. Nobody built the land, it was already there. Someone just acquired it one day, and as it exchanges hands the prices have been progressively bid up, sucking money out of the productive economy and redirecting it towards those that own land.
Land is a really big deal, and we need to stop conflating land with capital if we want to fix the problems with the housing market:
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#270Food and shelter are basic human needs, but food is one of the oldest commodities, and the financialisation of food has real advantages in ensuring an adequate supply of food, stable prices, etc. There's extensive empircal and theoretcial evidence here.
There are issues with housing markets in many areas of many countries. There may also be issues with the trend you've identified. But if so, you need to identify a much better argument, because I think you've got it exactly backwards - that is, the real problem with housing is that it's not a commodity. (Specifically, housing is not fungible, and there is no liquid market in housing. Houses are not like bushels of wheat!)
> Aren't startups like this just adding oil to the fire which is the real estate market?
I mean....are they? Offhand, the problem appears to be a limited supply, and some of the companies buying houses (like BlackRock) have been very, very clear about this - they analyse markets to find places where housing is in short supply, and buy houses there, because they don't think market forces will be able to impact prices.
In a normal market, money flowing in to a commodoity that's in short supply would quickly lead to an increase in capacity, but it doesn't here. That's a problem!
...but it doesn't seem like one created by BlackRock, nor is it being exacerbated by them. It's not clear they're making things worse. But sure, let's sock it to them and drive the price of housing down. :)
> I do not understand how will someone expect for future generations to achieve their own personal freedom and living inside their own four walls.
Also something to consider - there's no shortage of housing. There's a shortage of housing where people want to live. We could change one side of the equation (build more hosuing) or we could change the other (live other places).
It's very easy to see how we can expect future generations to have shelter; the world is full of empty land and the materials needed to create shelter; given modern technology, shelter is technically cheaper to provide that at any time in history. It just happens to be illegal to build that shelter in the places people want it.
Can we expect future generations to be able to live in the tiny, tiny scraps of land we've decided are incredibly desirable to live in (SF, NYC, London...)? Maybe not.