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Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#321

Post by _8j50 »

rib3ye wrote: post #292
_8j50 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right that throwing money at it isn't a solution. But corporations should not own residencial housing and no one should be allowed to sell propery at a meaningful profit if they own multiple properties. The government should excecise it's power of taxation to take the profits of an investment housing sell (as defined above: multiple property owner selling at profit) with something like a 95% tax on profit and…

Incentivizing individual home ownership I get, but killing the home flipping market, I don’t. Personality, I don’t want to renovate an out of date home, I just want to move in and done with it. Taxing flippers to death doesn’t seem progressive to me.

That's the first argument I usually get as well. I am very much saying end flipping. I don't know what is progressive about that at all. But to be practical, perhaps loosening the profit tax based on how long you owned it makes sense. Perhaps 1% for every year owned? That way you can flip it, live in it 20 years and sell it with inflation adjusted 20% profit?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#322

Post by jefftk »

MattRix wrote: post #216
missedthecue wrote: post #191

Earlier 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 national vacancy rate isn't very helpful. Abandoned houses in the industrializing cities or decaying rural towns don't help people who are trying to live closer to where jobs are. Look at the vacancy rates in the cities that are strongest economically, and you'll see just a few percent.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#323

Post by hackerlight »

nemo44x wrote: post #275
hackerlight wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what country you're in, maybe wherever you live has that (albeit most likely it's woefully insufficient). I'd just add that a property tax isn't that, because it also taxes the building.

It’s property value + land value. Even if I make 0 improvements to my property my tax seems to go up every year. It’s because the property value has gone up even if the improvements haven’t.

Yeah that's a property tax, not a land tax. Far from ideal because it punishes people for improving the land that they're occupying, which is the opposite of what we want to be doing.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#324

Post by danpalmer »

thepasswordis wrote: post #224
danpalmer wrote: post #218

Earlier 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?

You clearly didn't read my answer. No individual is forced to help you, you don't know their situation, but you have a right to have society in general help you.

Also using "he" to refer to a hypothetical doctor is somewhat exclusionary, I suggest "they" instead to be more neutral.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#325

Post by HEmanZ »

MattRix wrote: post #216
missedthecue wrote: post #191

Earlier 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%.

There are absolutely not a lot of existing homes sitting empty. I know the internet really wants to spin this as a "look at greedy people hoarding housing!" but real statistics begs to differ. Rental vacancies across the US are at about 6%[1]. This is spread across a wide number of areas, in major metros the vacancy rate is sub-4%, which is probably close to the minimum vacancy rate needed to turn-over tenants who want to move in/out of an area.[3]

Home vacancy rates are currently at about 0.9%(!!)[2]

These are both very low. In home vacancies it's probably the lowest the US has ever seen, and in rental rates it's almost the lowest, and many metropolitan areas are probably experiencing the lowest rate they've ever seen.

Supply is the problem. Almost every other comment I see on this topic seems to suggest that the issue is something else, but this is all really simple economics. Supply in the places where people want to live is very low, demand is very high (and possibly higher than ever due to pandemic pressures), prices go up up up until the supply-demand curve settles down.

I'm not afraid to use the government to try create justice in housing, but the fact is that the only thing that really matters at scale today is SUPPLY. If we get more supply in the places people actually want to live, prices will go down. The fastest and cheapest (and probably only) way a government can make this happen at the scale needed is by making construction of (or conversion to) new dwellings much cheaper. If you are proposing policies that don't do this, I think the best outcome is nothing and the likely outcome is an even more messed up market that will inevitably privilege the rich over the poor.

As far as commoditizing housing, I just don't think it's a problem (and probably not very viable either) so long as there is enough housing supply. Anyone who thinks the residential-real-estate party is never going to stop is out of their mind or trying to scam investors. The party will stop.

[1]https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/05/housing-vacan.... [2]https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USHVAC [3]https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/rental-vacancy-rate...

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#326

Post by ShaneMcGowan »

I’m a huge proponent of banning all foreign entities and funds purchasing homes here in Ireland, and capping the number of properties nonforeign entities can purchase. (No cap on building their own property is still a grey area for me though)

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#327

Post by DAVer98 »

LBJsPNS wrote: post #147
chii wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

Quoted post unavailable.

This is why nations as a whole are being done away with by the market controllers who have the capital.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#328

Post by _8j50 »

UncleEntity wrote: post #314
_8j50 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Supply should come from new housing right? People selling their house to move to another house is a transfer of propery not generating supply.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#329

Post by feet »

missedthecue wrote: post #200
feet wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nestlé is at the forefront of taking over a water supply and selling it back to the locals to enrich the corporation at the expense of the humans who live there

If you don't like that, the logical thing is to support water commiditization so that nestle doesn't get it for free.

Water commodification is exactly what Nestlé is doing

What we need is regulation to stop them from doing that, not a different company selling and capturing the water. That's just more of the same thing which solves nothing.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else feels the commoditization of real estate is unethical?

#330

Post by josh_p »

yasp wrote: post #316
bamboozled wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

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