Housing is a human right.
Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
311–320 of 764 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#312Here's one way to think about it:
In many countries, government policy has been (in some cases explicitly) that house prices should always go up. (The calculation is that more people own homes than rent, so this should be worth votes on net.)
If you have an asset class that, by government policy, keeps getting more expensive, then that will be very attractive for investors.
Is this a good policy? No, I think it's catastrophically short sighted. But it's what we've got. But it's important to keep in mind that while a pile of manure may attract flies, the flies didn't create the manure...
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have long supported the privatization and commiditization of water. It should be sold on the basis of supply and demand with markets, futures, and so forth. Don't like almond farms, bottled water companies pumping millions of gallons for the price of a $200 permit, and golf courses watering their courses during a drought? Then you should too.
One thing you can absolutely guarantee when it comes to a necessity of life commodity, a black swan event will occur and people will die because they are priced out of the market. Imagine, if you will, when the Texas grid went all wonky and those people who choose to buy power at open market rates had to prepay for their $13,000 kw/hr electricity because the power company had a limit on how much credit they will give…
Black swan events can cause shortages no matter if it's a state controlled supply situation or decentralized market.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#314Earlier 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.
That would seriously restrict supply because once people bought a house with the intention of renting it out they would never sell due to the price control. Just like an entailment, this property can never leave the family line.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing wrong with renting, economies of scale make it cheaper than owning unless the government decides to ruin everything. (London vs Paris is a great example of this)
How can renting from a middleman who owns it be possibly cheaper than owning it directly? Unless the middleman is a charity which rents at a loss.
Middleman maintaining 100 apartments can do so for less money per unit than the guy maintaining a single apartment.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#316Like another comment here mentioned, housing is complicated. People don't want to live in a random house in the middle of nowhere ('roof over your head'). Some people prefer to be homeless on the street versus getting to a roof over their head that they don't like. People want to live where they want to live (near family, jobs, culture etc) Take NYC for instance. Politicians try to address the NYC housing crisis from…
housing is complicated My bullshit detector went off right here. Housing isn't complicated. It's only complicated by investment money being involved. Having a roof over ones head is a basic human right. In Australia, the market is so hot, very few young people can afford anything, if you're living in a nice place, you can easily be kicked out after your rent doubles. I know of good, professional people who migrated t…
> Having a roof over ones head is a basic human right.
Prove it.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#317Like another comment here mentioned, housing is complicated. People don't want to live in a random house in the middle of nowhere ('roof over your head'). Some people prefer to be homeless on the street versus getting to a roof over their head that they don't like. People want to live where they want to live (near family, jobs, culture etc) Take NYC for instance. Politicians try to address the NYC housing crisis from…
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?
Make small cities and towns desirable again and put those 50 people somewhere else.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
i don't have 'personal freedom' because i rent ?
You certainly have less of it.
Surely it's the other way around. The renter has far more freedom, they can easily pack up their things and go. The renter has also has far fewer responsibilities than the owner.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#319Unethical? Should be disallowed period. I do strongly believe that once a propery is yours what you do with it is your concern and nobody else's. However, the business practice of purchasing properties to profit from selling it again in the future should not be allowed. So, what should happen is the government should not allow the transfer of ownership when the seller has a) multiple properties and b) is selling a pr…
You've got this wrong because you're thinking about stable states, not state transitions.
1) "Multiple" here is wrong. What is the time when you own two houses? Well, when you're moving! You buy one, then you sell the other. During that time, you own two houses. That's multiple. Study the hermit crab.
2) Your three percent cap means that property renovation, repair, expansion, and so on is completely doomed. Why didn't you think of that?
This stuff is complex. It requires some careful, thoughtful approaches.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
In most of the UK (England and Wales), water was privitised in 1989 General consensus even amongst the right-wing media and the media that aims to appeal to conservative voters [1-4] seems to be is that we have drought and hosepipe bans while the private companies pay out £1b dividends and it's not right. [1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/54e5542a-1a6b-11ed-b1f4-6... [2] https://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/20…
Showing my age, but back in 1976, where I lived, water was being brought in by tanker day and night during the hottest summer on record. I'm not saying privatisation has been a glowing success but supply issues were much worse in the days of nationalisation, especially when you factor in the population growth over the past few decades.
There is the huge confounder that everywhere in the developed world - and even in the less developed world like East Germany, where I grew up, a lot of infrastructure was added and improved over the decades after WWII and it has nothing whatsoever to do with private vs. government (or, in the case of Germany mostly, for water and energy) municipal ownership. Many houses had coal stoves and privies a few decades ago, that is simply how it was, not a question of "we need to privatize water and heating".
Here in Germany especially water is usually operated and owned by local municipally owned enterprises, and I'd say it's a huge success. Even my home district in East Germany (GDR) build a huge water infrastructure project with a dam, many kilometers of large pipes, and one or more (don't know exactly how many) water processing plants, definitely nothing privately owned there. People including those in power just put a very high value on having enough and reliable supply of water in Germany, and it has nothing to do with private vs. government, given what we have now with mostly local and state governments providing. In recent years a lot more private companies entered the picture, but I'm not sure about ownership (municipalities also operate their own companies), in the end it's an attitude question more so than blaming it of "private better". You can have success or failure with either model.